Dear Editor;

Re “NATO’s cringe reflex.” (Oct. 26):

Seeing that the army has to rent helicopters to ferry our troops safely in Afghanistan, the navy is stuck with secondhand, leaky submarines and the air force is flying planes that are past their due date, I think we should think about initiating a Canadian Foreign Legion to supplement the regular military. . Historically, many countries have used soldiers-of-fortune to fight their battles for them. The British for example used Hessian mercenaries to fight the American colonists, and the French Foreign Legion is the most famous, or infamous, depending on your viewpoint, of all mercenary armies. There are thousands of honourably discharged soldiers around the world who would be more than willing to join a Canadian Foreign Legion, and they would cost far less than regular Canadian troops. Since mercenaries are disliked by the people who hire them, a Canadian Foreign Legion could be stationed in the Arctic region until they were needed for overseas service. Legionnaires who served honourably for a period of ten years would be awarded Canadian citizenship. Such a legion’s officers would of course be commissioned volunteers from the Canadian Army.

William Bedford
Toronto, Ontario

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Canadian Politics, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.