Photo French Foreign Legion Indochina ca. 1951 with Swastika

[Oberbootsmann]

Found that one inside a former Waffen SS and later French Foreign Legion soldiers photo album. Looks like a Wehrmacht food bag.
I'm wondering how this ended up in Indochina.

Regards, Matthias

[Willmore]

Very interesting photo and topic. I understand that a lot of Wehrmacht equipment/surplus seems to have been reused by the french in Indochina. I’ve seen things like zelts, weapons, camouflage material, camouflage parachutes (Fallschirmjäger type) and of course, former Wehrmacht and SS troops themselves.

A book about German nationals/ex soldiers in the Foreign Legion.

L'Ennemi utile : 1946-1954, des vétérans de la Wehrmacht et de la Waffen-SS dans les rangs de la Légion étrangère en Indochine.

In English -
The Useful Enemy: 1946-1954, Veterans of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS in the ranks of the Foreign Legion in Indochina.

• Of the nearly 73,000 legionnaires who fought in Indochina, 30,000 are Germans or Austrians.
• From the FFL archives it is estimated that only 3,000-4,000 were ex Waffen SS members.

[pete]

Were there any known Croatians? I.e those who may have escaped May 1945 and got to other areas to surrender?



Pete

[Willmore]

Hi Pete,

If you follow the link below and look at post 15 (#15) by a user called Kruska (dated Tue Aug 28, 2012 9:04 pm), I haven't read the whole thing, but the poster talks about the various nationalities of the Legion at various times.

http://histomil.com/viewtopic.php?f=...11764&start=10

Quote -

2nd wave
From 1946 - 1950 easily 70% of the LEF consisted of Germans, around 20,000 Germans and German speaking persons (Hungarians, Czechs, Russian, Romanians, Croatian, Tirolean etc - of German descendent "Volksdeutsche" had joined the LEF in that period.

Hope this helps.

On a side note, I also found this about Ukrainian SS members who joined the french.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th...Foreign_Legion

13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion

During late 1944, a nominally Ukrainian battalion of the FFI – composed of recent defectors from the 30th Waffen SS Grenadier Division— was attached to the 13th Demi-Brigade. Two groups from the SS division had defected to the FFI on 27 August. One included 818 Ukrainians based at Vesoul, under the direction of Major Lev (Leon) Hloba, who had shot their German officers and surrendered to the Haute-Saône arm of the FFI in the Confracourt Woods. They brought with them 45-mm antitank guns, 82-mm and 50-mm mortars, 21 heavy machine guns, as well as large amounts of small arms and small-caliber ammunition. That same day, a similar defection occurred near Camp Valdahon – hundreds of men brought with them an antitank gun, eight heavy machine guns, four mortars, and small arms and ammunition. The defectors became known as the Bataillon de Résistants Ukrainiens.

On 6 April 1945, the unit was seen attributed the Ordre de la Libération.