The French Foreign Legion has always been shrouded in myth, but the story of the Battalion of the Damned is one of the strangest and darkest chapters in its history. After World War II, France faced a critical shortage of soldiers to fight its colonial war in Indochina. The French government devised a desperate solution: empty the prisons of traitors and collaborators, and offer them a second chance through blood and fire. The French penal system was crowded with men who had served Vichy France or fought directly for the Germans.
These were men like the Milice, the infamous French paramilitary gendarmerie that had hunted down resistance fighters, brutal war criminals who had served on the Eastern Front. The government circulated a proposal in 1948: volunteer for service in Indochina, fight against the communist Viet Minh, and return as free men with their crimes pardoned. Nearly four thousand inmates requested to go back into uniform. The recruitment criteria were strict.
Anyone sentenced to fifteen years or more was barred, as were men over forty. The volunteers were a collection of the most despised men in France: former members of the SS Charlemagne Division, the LVF, and the Milice. They were hardened veterans, many decorated for their service in the German military, but they were permitted no rank higher than private. French officers were assigned to command them, many of whom had fought against these men during the war.
The unit was named B. I. L. O.
M. , the Overseas Light Infantry Battalion. It was never part of the French Foreign Legion. It had no cap badge, no colors, no official identity.
It existed to be used and discarded. The first company embarked for the Far East on December 1, 1948. The French Communist Party immediately began demonstrating against this controversial unit, but the government ignored the protests. The men were initially sent to Cambodia for sector security.
They cleared guerrilla groups from heavily contested areas, protected convoys, and fought in numerous skirmishes. They took casualties but never refused to fight. In March 1949, they transferred to South Annam in Vietnam, garrisoned at Ban Noi and Nha Trang. They were assigned to isolated forward operating bases and given the task of training pro-French Vietnamese guerrillas.
Despite their dangerous assignments, the men of B. I. L. O.
M. earned decorations, including the Croix de Guerre for combat heroism. After six months of service, the French government officially recognized them as fully French soldiers, but there was no question of amnesty or rehabilitation for their wartime crimes. They were expendable assets, deployed wherever the fighting was most dangerous.
Some were promoted to junior NCO rank, but the decision was made against regulations, suggesting their superiors saw their value. The French government eventually decided to be rid of these men. They were parceled out as training instructors, supervising local guerrillas in increasingly dangerous territory. Many were killed in low-intensity combat operations.
They were given suicidal missions, yet none of them deserted or refused to fight. By October 1950, a handful were commissioned as officers, a stage in their gradual rehabilitation. By 1951, the survivors had served several years in combat, and some process of rehabilitation finally began. Many transferred to other parts of the French army and fought in Algeria.
Those who survived Indochina and Algeria returned to France as free men. They had paid their dues to the state by fighting for her. Their wartime crimes were forgiven, and they were released back into society. The story of the Battalion of the Damned is a forgotten chapter in the history of the Vietnam War.
It tells us that the myth of large numbers of former SS soldiers fighting for the French is mostly just that, a myth. But there really was a unit packed with former Waffen SS men and collaborators, history’s forgotten soldiers, fighting and dying in a doomed effort to hold onto a distant colony.
