Garrison Tales From Tonquin

Enlisting in the French Foreign Legion has long held a tantalizing allure for Americans, especially for young men in search of adventure. Outside their fantasies, though, few Americans ever joined the legion. It is, therefore, a surprise to discover these extraordinary short stories, written by a legionnaire who was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. James O'Neill enlisted in the legion in 1887, at the age of twenty-seven. He found himself, in 1890, deployed to Tonquin in French Indochina, more familiar today as Tonkin, Vietnam. O'Neill faced tropical heat, infectious disease, and sudden death, but, like his contemporary Stephen Crane, he was blessed with a reporter's sense of the telling detail and a novelist's ability to tell an engaging story. In these thirteen "tales," O'Neill shows?with surprising subtlety?that France's efforts to conquer and govern Indochina were foolhardy. Although the only American in his stories is the narrator, it is clear that the tales are aimed at readers in