French marines and Foreign Legionnaires monitor checkpoints through the city.

They love to play at being cowboys or Foreign Legionnaires or other human adventure heroes to the endless frustration of the human diplomat stationed on their planet.

At the same time, 350 French Foreign Legionnaires and 150 marines under French command are to drive north, planning to reach Hoddur by Dec. 25.

Police patrols in the Paris rapid transit tunnels were stepped up in 1995 after a series of terrorist bombings, and for a while juvenile delinquency decreased as antiriot specialists and Foreign Legionnaires prowled the platforms.

Just as French Foreign Legionnaires must speak French, the Rhodesian Army required its foreigners to be anglophone.

The French upcountry garrisons fared better, however, and, under the leadership of Major-General Marcel Alessandri, a column of 5,700 French troops, including many Foreign Legionnaires fought its way through to Nationalist China.

The Nationalists had roughly 25,000 infantry, mostly regulares and Spanish Foreign Legionnaires.

In the local church there is a secret passageway, now blocked up, that was once used by disenchanted Foreign Legionnaires fleeing toward Sardinia, a few miles to the south.

France, which has 350 Foreign Legionnaires stationed on the nearby French island of Mayotte, is monitoring the situation but officials in Paris have up till now said no military intervention is planned.

Colonel Dodds arrived with a force of 2,164 men including Foreign Legionnaires, marines, engineers, artillery and Senegalese cavalry known as spahis plus the trusted tirailleurs.