I didn't write this file for Onyx in the first place. After the release of War!, a small group started writing an alternative sourcebook (codenamed : alt.War!). They wanted to put into it what they thouht what should have been in War! : information on Shadowrun era warfare, and a more complete overview on the South American conflict. The project is more or less dead on Dumpshock Forums while Frank Trollman (as usual) went on his own alone on the The Gaming Den.

At first, I considered taking part in the project only for some fact-checking. Especally what I do usually, a sort of guarantee that everything will be compatible with older sourcebooks, even on the most obscure and forgotten points. The team wanted to describe some typical militar units, including the famous French Foreign Legion. The choice fell upon the 1er régiment étranger de cavalerie.

The 1er REC, an armored cavalary regiment, is not exactly what people first think off when you speak about the Foreign Legion : in most people's mind, the Foreign Legion are guys walking trhough swamps, and surviving two weeks in the jungle or desert without food and ammo. Actually, all légionnaires follow the same trianing course, but the 1er REC remains a tanks regiment (currently AMX-10RC light tanks).
So I took on my own to write this part, since I had the easier access to source only available in French, along with some knowledge token on the French armed forces, and, more important maybe, French background in Shadowrun.

Actually, choosing the 1er REC was really interesting from a political point of view. In Shadowrun history, the French nobility took part in a conspiracy to overthrow the 5th Republic and have its members at every levels of the political and economical scenes. As I said in the file, the Orléans family has an history with the Legion, and cavalry is the military aristocrat specialty of choice. The irony is also the 1er régiment étranger parachutiste played a central role in the failed Algiers putsch of 1961 against general de Gaulle (he disbanded the regiment right after).