Joining the French Foreign Legion Was One Of The Toughest Things I've Ever Done Says Bear Grylls (Radio Times)

The French Foreign Legion has a mystique about it, as no one knows what it’s really like. Nor did I when I came up with the idea to sign up for a months basic training in the Sahara with 11 other recruits and make a Channel 4 documentary about it. I thought it would be romantic, marching in Kepi Blanc hats across the desert to a fort, singing as the Tricolour French flag went up at dusk. Instead, as I stepped through the wooden gates, a load of unpleasant men in smart uniforms were shouting. Given rock hard leather boots, as we marched, our feet were running with blood and the French flag soon became a symbol of pain..

People join the Legion for a new life - a brutal, unpleasant one I was finding out. People have a reason. Our group included an ex-con, ex-boxer, ex-debt collector and an expelled public schoolboy, but the commonest reason for joining the legion, is to forget. It goes something like this: ‘Why have you joined the legion?’ ‘To forget’, ‘To forget what?’ ‘I’ve forgotten’. In the first month, you’re allowed to quit, but once awarded your Kepi Blanc, you are effectively a prisoner for five years. There is a high death rate in the Legion, which is still today sent to the most troubled areas of the world.

We were given the short, sharp shock treatment. As we walked through the door, we were stripped of all hair and possessions and from then on our every move was controlled by whistles. Everything was timed but we had no watches and if one person was too slow, we’d all be punished. Every meal was fish soup, often eaten standing up. We slept in prison style barracks with minimal bedding with just several hours sleep a night and being kicked around all day. People think of barrack room fights in the Legion, but we were too exhausted to fight. We’d have 10 minutes sleep and the whistle would blow again. Soon, we were all just surviving. It was the image of my wife and little boy that kept me going.

We would be taken to a spot in the desert with stones scattered everywhere, and told to clear the mountainside of rocks - something that would take a million people a thousand years to do.‘Do not think, just do!’ the corporals would bark. It is how the French Foreign Legion maintain their image as one of the world's toughest fighting force.

A typical day would be to go to bed at midnight, get woken up at 1am by whistles and parade in a particular uniform.Then, at 3am, woken to rebuild the barracks. At 5.00am, they’d burst in whistling and we’d have 3 minutes to shower, before having a mug of coffee and going on parade. Then we’d be running up and down sand dunes doing press ups before running back with ten minutes to shave and change before pull ups, then stale bread and more punishments.up.

Then there were lessons: about navigation, weapons or how to iron things. Punishable offences were things like a boot not being polished enough on the sole - in the sand?! We’d have to dig trenches with a tiny shovel, and in the second week, I got a punishment from hell - buried up to my neck in sand and used as a goalpost! it would have taken a sick mind to think of it.‘Gardening’ involved hours of moving heavy rocks and putting them in a pile. Then there was more parading, pull ups, and Camel skin soup....

The Sahara is a baking 50 degrees at midday. While the corporals had a siesta, we were forced out into the baking sun, sometimes being made to wear 2 pairs of trousers, 2 woolly jumpers and a hat, for more purposeless parading and piling of rocks. Many people flaked out with heat exhaustion and it’s no surprise that there is a high desertion rate in the Legion. It’s a hard life. Everyone needs their private reasons to keep going. A Pakistani recruit called Bobby, for instance, felt the punishments were good for his karma.

The Legion batters down your individuality and treats you like an animal in order to build a new identity, and unity and pride. In all the hardship I developed incredible bonds with people, but, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. At first we thought it was just about aiming for the end of the month and going for it, but it became more about getting through the next ten minutes. In that way it’s like climbing mountains. You just needed to focus on doing what you were told, one step at a time, until the end eventually came.

I was the youngest British person to climb Everest and spent three years in the SAS. I’m not a quitter, but joining the French Foreign Legion is in many ways the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. Of the 12 of us who joined, 4 qualified. I’m so glad to be home. I’m telling you, however bad life gets – don’t join the French Foreign Legion!

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