French Foreign Legion in popular culture

Beyond its reputation of the French Foreign Legion as an elite unit often embroiled in serious fighting, its recruitment practices have also led to a romantic view of it being a place for a wronged man to leave behind his old life to start a new one, yet also being full of scoundrels and men escaping justice. This view of the legion is common in literature, and has been used for dramatic effect in many films, not the least of which are the several versions of Beau Geste.

In his oeuvre Danish artist Adam Saks has concerned himself extensively with the French Foreign Legion and its colonial history as well as with the individual's solitude and aggression.

Foreign Legion fiction was commonplace in American pulp magazines from the mid-20s through the late-30s. Magazines which published Foreign Legion stories include Frontier Stories, Battle Stories, Blue Book, Action Stories, Adventure and Argosy. Short Stories, in particular, included a lot of Foreign Legion stories. In 1940, a Munsey pulp, Foreign Legion Adventures reprinted stories from early-30s issues of Argosy; it only lasted two issues. Certain authors specialized in these stories. Among the most popular were J.D. Newsom, Bob Du Soe, Theodore Roscoe, and Georges Surdez. P. C. Wren appeared in Blue Book in the mid-30s. The settings for Foreign Legion stories were almost always in North Africa, although sometimes "off-trail" locations were used, e.g. Indochina, the Western Front, Haiti. Stories often centered on the various nationalities of the soldiers.

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