WITH THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION IN SYRIA (1928) – Written by a British former member of the French Foreign Legion using the alias John Harvey. Previously, Balladeer’s Blog examined the excellent 1895 short story collection titled Garrison Tales From Tonquin (Tonkin), a fascinatingly ahead of its time look at the French Foreign Legion in Vietnam during and after the Sino-French War. American James O’Neill wrote those powerful stories based on his own experiences in the Legion during the 1880s and 1890s.
This John Harvey work is nowhere near as literary as O’Neill’s forgotten writing. Harvey was a deserter who presents a fairly self-serving account of his time in the French Foreign Legion, largely depicting himself as a victim fooled into enlisting based on false promises by the recruiter. He doesn’t deal with larger issues the way O’Neill did.
John Harvey’s With The French Foreign Legion In Syria instead wallows in the tawdry and brutal side of the Legion. Instead of James O’Neill’s poetic, astonishingly prescient tales, this volume presents an ugly and sensationalistic take on the FFL. It would have stood in stark contrast to stories romanticizing the Legion as written by P.C. Wren and others. No movies of the time would have touched these violent, vulgar Peckinpah-style antics. Get ready for a look at some Legionnaires who would make The Wild Bunch look genteel.
Harvey provided a very readable, albeit bleak, account of the FFL’s First Cavalry Regiment, or 1er REC. That cavalry unit was headquartered at Sousse in Tunisia, rather than in Algeria, like most other French Foreign Legion units in North Africa. That provides an element of novelty for readers of Legion history, as does the Syrian setting during the Revolt of 1925-1927. Continue reading
Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at several buried treasures which legends maintain may still be out there for the finding. 
Overseas readers have been asking me about the Liz Cheney situation in Congress. Since Balladeer’s Blog is an Independent Voter site I’ve always made it clear I would be fine if both the Democrats and Republicans splintered into multiple smaller parties because neither one represents the needs of their constituents at this time. That’s why people know they will get a response from me that is NOT motivated by political party bias.
And remember, even if you hate Donald Trump, another reason the Cheney-Bush Warmongers opposed him is because HE KEPT THE U.S. OUT OF ANY NEW WARS. Even the most anti-Trump media outlets in the U.S. are often willing to concede that point. AND SINCE THE CHENEY-BUSH WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WANTS ALL-WAR, ALL THE TIME, WITH VAGUE OBJECTIVES THAT THEY CAN ALWAYS CLAIM HAVEN’T BEEN MET YET, THAT IS WHY LIZ CHENEY AND HER ILK BASH TRUMP. If you back her, you’re backing open-ended warfare, among other things. 
*** John McCain, the racist Republican warmonger who did more than anyone else to try to stop America from having its first African-American president, was, of course, LATER treated like a statesman by the Democrats’ media outlets because he feuded with Trump. Hell, if you have a short memory or were too young to have noticed it, John McCain was, once upon a time being likened to Hitler, etc. For just one small (and light-hearted) example, you can still see Family Guy reruns like the one depicting the time-traveling Stewie and Brian encountering Nazis in the World War Two era wearing John McCain buttons. (The cartoon dates from around when McCain and Sarah Palin were running for president and vice president in real life.) 
Balladeer’s Blog’s recurring feature Forgotten Television goes way back this time around with a look at the state of the new broadcasting technology in 1940. Great Britain and the Soviet Union had been making as many, if not more, milestone achievements in tv programming through 1939. However, World War Two brought an end to BBC television broadcasting at 12:35PM on September 1st of that year. The Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey’s Gala Premier was the last item broadcast via television in the U.K. until 1946, when the BBC resumed programming with that very same cartoon. 
JANUARY – The FCC holds hearings on potentially licensing television broadcasting. It will not finalize its actions until April 30th of 1941, but in the meantime stations around the country continue pioneering tv programming. 
PART FIFTY-FIVE – Here is a look at some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the April of 1912 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the character: 
*** Judges and other high officials who betrayed their public trusts. He favored the recall process for judges as well as others. 
PART FIFTY-FOUR – There was no February issue of James Larkin Pearson’s version of The Fool-Killer in 1912, so we resume with the March issue, put together with Pearson’s new printing machinery. The Fool Killer’s targets this time around included: 
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK 
*** J.B. McNamara and J.J. McNamara, who had pleaded guilty in December 1911 to the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1st of 1910. Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, represented the men but was blamed for mishandling the situation. 
Though purists reserve the label Wild Geese strictly for those Irish Jacobin troops who left Ireland after the Williamite War ended in 1691, romantic military tradition has tended to consider almost all Irish expatriates who served in overseas armies from the 1580s into the 1800s and beyond as part of “the flight of the Wild Geese.” 
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