Thomas Gast

Without a doubt, the Foreign Legion is the elite unit of the French armed forces, and the paratroopers of the 2nd REP are part of this men's forge. They undergo the toughest training in the world and are deployed, ahead of all other special forces, in sensitive, extremely dangerous situations. This airborne unit, the Legion's Paras, consists of the same men who, together with the anti-terror unit GIGN, ended the hostage crisis in Loyada and, years later, in a lightning operation following a daring parachute drop, rescued thousands of hostages from the hands of bloodthirsty Katanga rebels. In 1982, soldiers from the 2nd REP, specifically the long-range reconnaissance unit CRAP, escorted Yasser Arafat out of the city of Beirut, which was surrounded by Israelis. Last but not least, in 2013, the paratroopers searched for and found hundreds of Al-Qaeda terrorists in the rugged mountains of northern Mali and took them down. In a unique and captivating book that brings together two protagonists - Africa and the paratroopers of the French Foreign Legion - the author offers readers insights into operations in Africa and Lebanon from 1965 to 2015.