tribute to the French Foreign Legion

The Engraving

The memorial in tribute to the French Foreign Legion has been done on the same base as that of the French Aviation. The engraved representation concept gives a prominent place to the image compared with the text.

Presentation concept of the panels

The French Foreign Legion Command did not want to follow a chronological representation of some of the heroic deeds accomplished throughout its history, but they rather adopted the Legionnaire Code of Honor as a guide, for the monument to keep a timeless quality.

THE LEGIONNAIRE CODE OF HONOR

1. Legionnaire, you are a volunteer serving France      faithfully and with honor.
2. Each Legionnaire is your brother in arms      irrespective of nationality, race or religion. They are your family.
3. Respectful of the Legion’s traditions and      honoring your superiors, discipline and comradeship are your strength,      courage and loyalty are your virtues.
4. Proud Legionnaire, your uniform is always      elegant, your behaviour modest but worthy, your quarters impeccable.
5. Elite soldier, trained rigorously, your      immaculate weapon is your most precious possession. Your physical fitness      is your constant duty.
6. The mission is sacred. You will fulfill it      enterily at any and all cost, within international law.
7. In combat you will act without passion or      hatred, respecting the vanquished enemy. You will never abandon your wounded,      your dead or your weapon.

Heroic deeds or figures, significant in the history of the Legion, illustrate each of these sections of the code. It is mentioned, for example:

The handover of the Legion to Spain in 1835, the conquest of Algeria, Crimea, the conquest of Tonkin, the battles of the Great War, Lyautey and the pacification of Morocco, Indochina and Algeria, Kolwezi and Bosnia.

Among the figures, we can find General Bernelle, General Rollet (the "Father of the Legion"), Mac Mahon, Cole Porter, Edouard Daladier, Lieutenant-Colonel Amilakvari, Lieutenant-Colonel Jeanpierre and Pierre Messmer.

In addition, in the middle of each side of the monument there is an illustration of the Legion parade on the Champs-Elysées, in Paris.

In conclusion, on the latest panels of the wall and as a summary of the Code of Honor, the legendary battle of Camerone!

The town of Felicity is Francophile. This is likely the result of the French origins of its mayor, Jacques Andre Istel, whose uncle, Flight Lieutenant Raymond Crémieux was awarded the Military Medal during the Great War WWI.

Have his family backgrounds anything to do with the interest he has always shown in aeronautics ? The fact is that being personally largely responsible for the development of parachuting, particularly skydiving, in the United States, he is the honorary president, for life, of the International Commission of the Parachuting Federation.

The town of Felicity was awarded the Foreign Affairs Medal by the French government for actions promoting France in the United States.

So, it is not surprising that Jacques Andre Istel has wanted to build a memorial dedicated to the French Aviation.

With an original design, the illustrations etched in the granite of this museum-wall remind the American people of the pioneering role of France in this area. Was not it in France that the Wright brothers received the strongest support for the development of their flying machine, at a time when the American army had not yet seen the possibilities of this new military equipment ? And talking about parachuting issue, should not we remember that over two hundred years ago, on October 22, 1797, the Frenchman Andre Jacques Garnerin was the first to make a parachute descent from a hot air balloon ?

This monument, which was inaugurated on March 16, 2002, is a real promotion of the image of France in the United States.

Samples of panels

First parachute descent by Andre-Jacques Garnerin

First English Channel crossing by Louis Blériot

First supersonic transport: The Concorde

PROJECT GENESIS

A French born U.S. Citizen, Jacques-Andre Istel, has created in Felicity (California), at eight miles west of Yuma (Arizona), the " World Commemorative Center®..". Based on 100 feet long granite monuments, each composed of sixty engraved panels; the site includes at the present time sixteen walls.

Jacques-Andre Istel, after a childhood spent in France, immigrated to the United States in 1940 at the age of eleven years old. A graduate of Princeton, with a strong taste for action, he joined the Marines and participated in the Korean War.

A skydiving passionate he created in the fifties, a parachuting company for training and equipment supplies. Besides, being the one who initiated the U.S. Army to this form of jump, he perfected in this discipline and became the U.S. Sport Parachuting team captain.

In 1985, he decided to cease his parachuting activities to concentrate on his project the " World Commemorative Center® " located on the land he had bought in the early fifties at the limits of California and Arizona . The monuments that are being built are designed to live through four millennia.

In 1998, having created the town of Felicity from scratch, with the legal bases for his project and the first two memorials built, he decided to dedicate a monument to the Birth of Aviation (l’histoire de l’aviation française). To do so he gets in touch with the French Air Force History Department, and four years later, the museum-wall as it is called, is inaugurated.

It is a mural with images carved in granite - From the Montgolfier brothers hot air balloon to the Ariane rocket – that is designed to attest to "the primary and pioneering role of France opening the sky for humanity", to quote the formula panel presentation of this memorial.

The day after the inauguration in March 2002, Jacques-Andre Istel, a former Marine who has great admiration for the French Foreign Legion, decided to build a new memorial to this elite force of the French Army. The project is implemented fast. The monument was inaugurated on March 10, 2003, anniversary of the establishment of the Foreign Legion. The day of March 10 was proclaimed "French Foreign Legion Day" by California and Arizona regional authorities.

General view of the Birth of Aviation” Quest for the Sky” wall

ACHIEVEMENT ON THE CALIFORNIAN GROUND

OF A MEMORIAL TO IMMORTALIZE

THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION 

HEROIC DEEDS AND ACTS OF COURAGE

supported by

association pour le développement du rayonnement

de la France et de la mémoire de la Légion Etrangère

aux Etats-Unis