French Foreign Legion Information

July 14 marks France’s national holiday, Bastille Day. Beyond the main military parade in Paris, where the French Foreign Legion was represented once again this year, Legion units also take part in local celebrations held across the country and in France’s overseas territories. On July 14, 2026, Foreign Legion soldiers joined national holiday events in ...

In early July 2026, a French Foreign Legion sergeant serving with the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) died during a training course in the Alps. He was 32 years old. On Tuesday, July 7, 2026, Sergeant Vladislav Pena, a 32-year-old legionnaire assigned to the 2e REG at Saint-Christol (in southeastern France), took part in ...

Paris marked Bastille Day (France’s national day) on July 14, 2026, with its annual military parade down the Champs-Élysées, running from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde in front of President Emmanuel Macron — his last such parade before his term ends in 2027. As usual, the French Foreign Legion participated. ...

Starting in early July 2026, legionnaires of the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment (2e REI) will form the core of a forward battalion held at 48-hour readiness for a one-year rotation as part of NATO’s Allied Reaction Force (ARF) — the alliance’s revamped rapid response mechanism, which replaced the earlier NATO Response Force. The forward battalion ...

In northern France on July 4, 1916 — American Independence Day — a tall, twenty-eight-year-old Harvard graduate rose from a wheat field near the village of Belloy-en-Santerre and charged a line of German machine guns. He was not French, and his country was not yet at war. He was Alan Seeger, member of the French ...