Markoff was the real hero

My thoughts on Markoff are rather mixed. I agree with you to a point. As a fighting soldier his spirit of valor cannot be disputed. As a human being he was motivated by greed which made his character dishonorable...however as a woman, I must say I found him to be incredibly sexy in some perverse way.

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That is a very interesting observation on Markoff. His maniacal admonition to his men as they were about to be over run, "laugh, laugh like jackals,you scum" did, in fact, break the morale of the attacking hordes.

I recalled those words when I read much the same order by an American military man to his men as they were about to be over run on a hilltop. And it resulted in the same affect - breaking the enemy morale - and victory.

Does anyone know of any other actual events like this?

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*beep* you, your sick military mindset, and The Foreign Legion. Did your mother have any children that lived?

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I almost forgot....you probably admire Hitler's military prowess, too, don't you? Sick pig.

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The French Foreign Legion was founded in 1831 and has had an average strength of thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of men ever since, with a typical enlistment being for five years.

Thousands and perhaps millions of men have gone though basic training in the French Foreign Legion, which I hear is very tough, hard, demanding, and perhaps even brutal and cruel even today. But after recruits are broken in and become Legionaries there is no need to treat them any harsher than other military units in other armies do.

There have been tens of thousands of Legion NCOs who led Legionaires in regular duty and combat after the men had been through basic training, each NCO with their own individual leadership styles within the limits of what was permitted in the Legion.

And how many mutinies have you ever heard of in the French Foreign Legion? Not very many, I believe.

But that madman Markoff with his lust for sadistic cruelty drove most of his men insane with hate and fear within a few weeks of taking command at Fort Zinderneuff, and provoked them into plotting mutiny and murder - Markoff's murder.

Markoff's Legion career was an utter failure, and he was saved by the bell when the Arabs attacked, only to be killed attempting to steal a jewel which wasn't there.

It was rumored that Markoff had been a guard at a Siberian penal camp (under the Tsar or the Soviets) and had been disgraced for being too cruel.

Most real Legion NCOs may be tough and harsh, but I think that most of them would be insulted by your suggestion that Markoff was not much, much worse than a typical Legion NCO.

Markoff was based on sergeant Lejaune in the original novel Beau Geste (1924), and this is what it says about Lejaune:

And later, through the coming to the Legion of a deserter from the Belgian army, we learnt a sinister, significant, and explanatory fact.

Lejaune had been dismissed from the Belgian Congo service for brutalities and atrocities exceeding even the limit fixed by good King Leopold's merry men.

There had been an exposure engineered by foreign missionaries, a world-wide scandal, and some white-washing--in the course of which Lejaune had been washed out.

From being a sergeant of the Belgian army, and a Congo rubber-station factor, autocratic, well-paid, and with absolute power, he had become a legionary, and by forcefulness, energy, and courage had made good.

Once more he had scope for the brutality, violence, and ferocious arrogance that had been his assets in the Belgian Congo, of terrible memory.

At times he was undoubtedly mad, and his madness took the form of sadistic savagery.

Lejaune is clearly based on a general idea of the brutality of a typical official in the

Congo Free State

, and possibly also based on reports of the specific crimes of specific officials in the Congo

of terrible memory

. P.C. Wren was an adult when the crimes of the

Congo Free State

were exposed to the world.

If you have ever seen the move Apocalypse Now you may have heard that it is largely based upon the classic novel Heart of Darkness (1899,1902) by Joseph Conrad. The character of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now is based upon Kurtz in Heart of Darkness.

And Kurtz in Heart of Darkness is based upon typical evil officials in the Congo, and possibly also on specific evil officials - the names of Georges Antoine Klein and Leon Rom have been suggested.

So in a sense Lejaune/Markoff and Kurtz - one of the most famous movie villains of all time - can be considered basically the same person, even if P.C. Wren didn't specifically write that Lejaune had used a different name when in the Congo.

And don't think that Brian Donlevy or the writers of the 1939 Beau Geste didn't know at least a little about the real atrocities in the Congo which inspired Lejaune's back story, or that they would have wanted to give Markoff any good qualities except for courage, will power and brains.

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I think the OP is a little confused. Markoff disobeyed the orders of his commanding officer by murdering two deserters instead of sending them to be court-martialed. He also tried to murder the mutineers, contrary to military law. Finally, he drove the men to mutiny. The original commanding officer, the one who died, was in command at Zinderneuf for a month and maintained the strict discipline necessary to keep the fort running and yet the men respected him enough that they were praying for him to get better when he became ill with the fever he died from. Markoff was not a hero at all. He was completely incompetent as a commanding officer, and he showed his true colors when he tried to rob Beau. Does the OP forget that Beau was a soldier under Markoff's command and that no commanding officer can possibly justify robbing one of his men? Is that the OP's idea of a hero?

http://thinkingoutloud-descartes.blogspot.com/

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