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Perun

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Hello Volt,
Our member Sarahlouise had a photograph of two men posing in uniforms. On the back of that photo it said Légion en orient” (without the word étrangère). I found the post but when clicked on the attachment I got the “page not found” message.
 

Perun

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Hello Peter,
It probably is , and I'll do a bit more reading about it. The first sentence in the link you provided is kind of confusing:
"The Armenian Legion (French: Légion arménienne) was a foreign legion unit within the French Army...."
What triggered my memory was the title of the article in French (on Volt's link) :
" La version française de cet article: Légion étrangère en Orient : 1915-1919 ".
 

voltigeur

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Hello Volt,
Our member Sarahlouise had a photograph of two men posing in uniforms - on the back of that photo it said "Legion en orient" (without the word "etrangere"). I found the post but when clicked on the attachment - "page not found".
Yes, this forum has been reformatted, that is probably why the links do not work any more.
However, the S.P. would indicate a French army postal address (Secteur Postal).
 

Peter Lyderik

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Hello Peter,
It probably is , and I'll do a bit more reading about it. The first sentence in the link you provided is kind of confusing:
"The Armenian Legion (French: Légion arménienne) was a foreign legion unit within the French Army...."
What triggered my memory was the title of the article in french (on Volt's link) :
" La version française de cet article: Légion étrangère en Orient : 1915-1919 ".

There is no mention of the Armenian Legion in any of the books I have read about the Foreign Legion, so I don't know where the connection is, besides that they where foreigners, so therefore a legion of foreigners, a foreign legion... :)
 

Le petit caporal

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L' Armée d’Orient were still fighting on after the 11 November... Hostilities ended when the French and others controlled the Balkans (Bulgaria)... Think the Serbs helped out too.
 

Rapace

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We're talking of two different units here:
• A battalion of the Foreign Legion, formed in Algeria and incorporated with a Zouaves unit into a “régiment de marche” (*), the 1er RMA (Régiment de Marche d’Afrique), dispatched to fight in the Dardanelles. That’s the link posted by Joe above.
• A unit made of Armenians, called Légion arménienne brought up by Perun. It was created later, after the Franco-Armenian agreements of Oct 1916, to materialise the role of the Armenians in the fight against the Ottoman Empire and to support their political ambitions to have their own state. Not sure that this Armenian Legion was ever part of the “official” Foreign Legion.

Note that the term “Legion” is confusing since, in the history of the French military, it was used to designate a number of units that had nothing to do with the FFL. The most infamous being the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), created by the Vichy regime to fight in Russia alongside the Germans in WW2.

(*) Temporary ad-hoc unit generally created for the duration of a specific campaign (even if it may last several months or even years).
 
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