P. C. Wren - Wren As Legionnaire

Wren As Legionnaire

Wren was a highly secretive man, and his membership of the Legion has never been confirmed. When his novels became famous, there was a mysterious absence of authenticating photographs of him as a legionnaire or of the usual press-articles by old comrades wanting to cash in on their memories of a celebrated figure. It is now thought more likely that he encountered legionnaires during his extensive travels in Algeria and Morocco, and skillfully blended their stories with his own memories of a short spell as a cavalry trooper in England. While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticised, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate. This may however simply reflect careful research on his part—the descriptions of Legion garrison life given in his work The Wages of Virtue written in 1914 closely match those contained in the autobiographical In the Foreign Legion by ex-legionnaire Edwin Rosen, published Duckworth London 1910. The Historical and Information Service of the Foreign Legion hold no record of service by anyone of Wren's name and have stated their belief that he obtained his information from a legionnaire discharged in 1922. In a recently published history (2010) the military writer Martin Windrow examines in detail the evidence for and against Wren's service with the Foreign Legion before concluding that in the absence of some further documentary discovery the question is an insoluble one.