THE TIMES: Amid the pomp of the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris next month, Alex Rowe, Newcastle-born and Gloucestershire-raised, will be invested as a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur for his service in the French Foreign Legion.
It is an honour unheard of for an English legionnaire, but Adjudant-chef Rowe is frank: he would much rather have joined the British Army. While his twin brother, Mark, was accepted into the Royal Engineers, Adjudant-chef Rowe was rejected because of a childhood detached retina.
The decision still rankles. While he speaks matter-of-factly about quelling African rebellions and escaping death in a Taleban ambush, mention the British army and he suddenly becomes animated. “I became a sniper, this is the point,” he said, his accent veering between Geordie and French. “You can’t get into the British army because you’ve got a f***ed eye, and you become a sniper in the French Foreign Legion. Something’s gone wrong there.”
Not just a sniper, but one of the most highly decorated of all legionnaires. He has seen action in Bosnia, Kosovo, central Africa, the Ivory Coast and Afghanistan, winning an astonishing five citations for bravery. In his first interview, he told The Times: “Most guys will have one citation, some will have two. Three is very rare. Five is . . .” here he tailed off into a very Gallic shrug. “But I haven’t done anything more than my job.”
At a Legion training camp near Toulouse, Adjudant-chef Rowe, 43, explained how he went from running a pub in Stroud to being a hero of France’s elite and mythologised unit. Furious at his medical rejection by the Army, despite acceptance by Sandhurst, Adjudant-chef Rowe tried to run away to the Legion at 18. His mother talked him out of it, but just before his 21st birthday he flew to Marseilles, walked into a recruiting office and “basically disappeared” from the outside world. Continue reading and comment >>> Chris Smyth | Monday, June 14, 2010
