FIGHTING FOR THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION: Americans Who Joined the First World War in 1914

1-237990

On 24 August 1914, 44 Americans joined the Foreign Legion. This book covers three of the young volunteers: David Wooster King, Alan Seeger, and Eugene James Bullard. The three men represent different pillars of the American soul, and their lives and dreams symbolize the story of how America became modern and remind us of the strong historic ties between France and America.

* David Wooster King - a 21-year-old dropout from Harvard, son of a rich businessman. King survived four years in the trenches ending as an officer in the US Army chasing German spies in Switzerland. He became a modern global adventurer and when the world went to war again David King was the first to volunteer for an even greater adventure in North Africa.

* Alan Seeger - a 26-year-old poet and dreamer from a New York family of intellectuals. Seeger was killed during the Battle of the Somme on 4 July 1916. Six weeks earlier, he wrote the famous poem, I Have a Rendezvous with Death which was to become his legacy and the favorite poem of President Kennedy. It has inspired a line of American presidents during the 20th century and is an indestructible poetic lifeline linking France and the United States of America.

* Eugene James Bullard - the last of the three legionnaires and a 19-year-old entertainer and boxer from Columbus, Georgia. His father was born a slave and his mother was Creek Indian. Although wounded at Verdun and invalided out of the French Army, Bullard became the world's first black aviator. After the war he settled in Paris and ran a bar in Montmartre before going to war for France again in 1940.