Spanish Foreign Legion (Sp.: Tercios de extranjeros). Despite the name, a primarily Spanish unit founded in 1920 for service in Morocco by Lt Col Millán Astray, after an attachment to the French Foreign Legion. His greeting to the first bandera (regiment) was ominous: ‘There is nothing finer than to die with honour for the glory of Spain, as you will soon learn.’ The Legion's signature war cries became: ‘AAbajo la inteligencia!’ (Down with intelligence!) and ‘AViva la muerte!’ (Long live death!).
Maj Franco was put in charge of the new depot at Dar Riffien outside Ceuta, soon known as the best in the army. The Rif war exploded when Abd el-Krim directed the 1921 massacre of thousands of Spanish soldiers retreating from Anual, reducing Spanish control in eastern Morocco to a small garrison at Melilla. Rushed there, the Legion mounted the first of many punitive forays. During the 1924 retreat from Chaouen to Tétouan in west Morocco, a disaster even greater than Anual, it fought a month-long rearguard action under Franco.
In a combined operation with a French offensive from the south, Spanish and Moroccan troops led by Franco and the Legion landed at Alhucemas in September 1925 and fought their way to the rebel capital of Axdir, which they destroyed. Abd el-Krim surrendered to the French in 1926, Franco was made brigadier general, and the much-wounded and now one-armed Col Millán Astray resumed command, only to be shot through the face with the loss of an eye in March. The following year he was promoted away from the Legion (although remaining honorary colonel for life), having led it in 62 of 845 engagements in which it suffered over 2, 000 dead, 6, 100 wounded, and only 285 missing. By contrast, desertion to the enemy from its French equivalent was notorious.
The Legion and the Moroccans, collectively the Army of Africa, added to their fearsome reputation by the ruthless suppression of the Asturian miners' revolt in 1934, again under the direction of Franco. At the start of the Spanish civil war they were the only combat-tested regulars in a short-service conscript army. Under Yagüe, the Legion secured Morocco before flying to the mainland in the first airlift in history. Less publicized than the Republic's International Brigades, a significant number of foreign volunteers were incorporated into the Legion. Most were Italian Black Shirts under their own officers, but French monarchist volunteers formed their own Joan of Arc bandera. Used as shock troops throughout, the Legion suffered over 37, 000 casualties.
After the war, it returned to Spanish Morocco, its last major battle honour being won at Ifni against the Sahara Liberation Army after Moroccan independence in 1956. Post-Franco and after Spanish Sahara was relinquished in 1976, it survived calls for disbandment and its three tercios evoked Spanish imperial grandeur at her vestigial overseas outposts, ‘Gran Capitán’ (Córdoba) at Melilla, ‘Duque de Alba’ at Ceuta, and the rapid reaction ‘Don Juan de Austria’ at Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands.
Bibliography
- Scurr, John, The Spanish Foreign Legion (London, 1985)
— Hugh Bicheno
