A weekly programme focusing on people and the situations which shape their lives
Reporters: James Astor, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, John Pitman, Denis Tuohy, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

This week: The Foreign Legion, Beau Geste - and since...
"Your friends cannot possibly buy you out and your consul cannot help you. For five years nothing but death can remove you from the Legion."

Even before P.C. Wren's Beau Geste signed on, the Foreign Legion has been an endless source of myth, speculation and romance. The reality is even more colourful. Today, 9,000 men drawn from 52 countries wear the kept blanc of this elite fighting force, and are ready to fight and to die for their officers and each other, in the fiercest corners of a troubled world.

The Legion has always discouraged journalists and film crews. But now, a Man Alive team led by Desmond Wilcox has been 'in' the Legion, watching them train and fight, examining its mystique, its traditions, its role as a mercenary army and meeting the legionnaires of today- including a 19-year-old Cockney who signed on during a drinking spree in Paris, a 48-year-old Yorkshire-man, now a Legion NCO, the veterans of Dien Bien Phu, of Narvik and men who once fought for Hitler.
(Life in the Legion: page 10)