French Legionnaire Breaks Rules, Fires Tracer, Sets Chunk of Europe Ablaze

Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise at 8:57 AM on July 25, 2009.

Since 1830, the French Foreign Legion has offered a face-saving refuge for screw-ups. If you've really blown it, professionally, romantically, or let's say, in the eyes of the criminal justice system, you can always become a Legionnaire--or so Frank Sinatra has led me to believe. But where do you go if you're already in the Foreign Legion when you make your colossal error? That's what happened to the Legionnaire who accidentally set fire to 1,300 hectares of scrub land with a tracer bullet he'd been ordered not to use. Dude nearly burned down Marseilles. The blaze was so huge that the Prime Minister flew in to call the fire a "clear and inexcusable professional blunder." The forty-something adjutant has been suspended. Maybe Blackwater's hiring?

Tagged as: france, fire, foreign legion

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.