In my travels around New Orleans, I tend to come across old French Foreign Legion insignia in antique and curious goods shops. My guess is that francophiles and Cajuns in the area often at one point would sign up for life in the old Legion then return home at the end of the contract and, holding their old insignia as souvenirs of places long gone, they would eventually ebb away from them when they passed on to the great barracks in the sky. Echoes of history, I suppose.
This one is appropriate today.
It belongs to the 2nd Foreign Legion Transportation Company, 519th Transportation Group (2e Compagnie de Transport de la Legion Etrangere du Groupe de Transport No 519) which only existed from June 1949 to 31 July 1953– disbanding 70 years ago today.
Rushed into battle, it had been created from 120 members of the 1er REI based at Sidi Bel Abbes following a crash course (no pun intended) in truck driving.
After forming in Algeria, CTLE 2/519 spent its life in Indochina. While there, it was largely based in the Cholon district of Saigon, and ran troops, ammunition, food, mail, and vehicles throughout Cochinchine, working primarily with the famed 13e DBLE and the Legion’s 1er REC.
Collecting Foreign Legion Badges tell us that CTLE 2/519’s badge was approved on 20 April 1950, and that “many variants of the badge exist, the normal version of the badge is made by Drago, Paris.”
