ON Nae Nel 9 PCE ong om Pte | Rivka Crk de Pt Ua ) \ Petes e punt ' = adTHROUGH THE GATES OF HELL Wicd acaeim aco esc sroud history cloaked inTuroucH THe Gates Or Het gionnaire wise from top left: Practice for transportation of the severely wounded; assault course training; an Eastern European Le one swallow guarantees days of illness; this three-metre wall must be scaled by each soldier Clock traverses a fetid pool strung with barbed wi carrying a rifle and sand-filled haversacik. (Ail pictures French Guiana.) ve from all over the world at th the Foreign Legic f France. Sor hacked. t of bare Pr Td Legionnaires of his group to get over an nee an ey Lt Datei Regina, French Pr Teeth Reet ea Pereeren Ped Jour hours bya al Sea torpeacekeeping effor a, Rwanda t ing World War II, nearly every Legio: e's pro-Nazi Vichy gove Algeria granted indep new surge of re Spaniards in Germa mer Soviet bloc tory, points out: past and begin quest for danger and suff e Legion's n fighting commando tact drops, amphibious lar ngs, hostag nong the toughe: elped land the and sabotage. The planet, a quality that has the Gulf War. It has also hell, it used to be sai a definitive his. casion eak to be found itary operations, including a drive dee ally h by and against Legionnaires. dese s worked to Says oneee a Li eed eed ug Cad Era a aes OMe fu Peau Attracted by the macho image of the Legionnaires, Italian photographer Giorgia Fiorio tracked them for ten months, sharing tents in Bosnia, mosquito nets in Chad and the discomforts of Guiana’s malarial jungle. Along the way, she met a hotchpotch of humanity, including, she says. a bandit from Brittany and a Saudi prince, a doctor and a writer — “tough guys, fragile souls” Fiorio, who weighs just 48 kilograms, seems fragile her- self. But she lugged a nine-kilogram camera bag through jungle mud pits and up shell-pocked mountainsides. She learned to sleep anywhere. And she won the admiration of the men, not one of whom, she says, showed her any disre- spect. “The fact that they are so tightly closed is not because they have something to hide,” Fiorio says ‘but because they are a family. That is what gives them their strength.” At Fort Croci, a remote post on the Chad border, Fiorio accompanied a commander as he delivered Christmas gifts and champagne to troops performing guard duty in the desert. On the Legion's annual feast day, she got to see sol. diers enjoy breakfast in bed while officers cleaned latrines. She came away enamoured. The Foreign Legion, Fiorio says, “is the last true adventure for men”. @ Giorgia Fiorio is an Italian photographer whose work has appeared in many magazines in Europe and the United States, including Life. Tala Skari is bureau chief for Life magazine in Paris, and has lived in the city for the last 15 years