A good book to read when you're feeling sorry for yourself, when you're feeling that your life is just too hard. When I read about the hardships, punishment, and outright sadism Simon Murray experienced in his five years in the French Foreign Legion, my life appears to be a mere picnic by comparison!

Simon Murray (Author of Legionnaire) - Goodreads Books by Simon Murray (Author of Legionnaire) - Goodreads

Simon Murray, CBE (born 25 March 1940) is a British Hong Kong-based businessman, adventurer and author. [1]

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Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-09-16 18:10:32 Boxid IA171001 Boxid_2 CH106101 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor Murray's account is a series of diary entries which keeps the narrative fast paced and engaging. The epistolary structure makes every day in Murray's life for five years seem an thrilling day marked by firefights, torture, drunken debauchery and feats of daring adventure. Of course, some days are omitted because they contained nothing of note which consequently makes the narrative a pure, distillation of excitement. The French Foreign Legion–mysterious, romantic, deadly–is filled with men of dubious character, and hardly the place for a proper Englishman just nineteen years of age. Yet in 1960, Simon Murray traveled alone to Paris, Marseilles, and ultimately Algeria to fulfill the toughest contract of his life: a five-year stint in the Legion. Along the way, he kept a diary.

Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion - Goodreads Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion - Goodreads

urn:lcp:legionnaire00simo:epub:7d266736-95cc-4c7e-b170-90c4e722f920 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier legionnaire00simo Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3zs3t32m Isbn 9780307415813 Murray was the chairman of Glencore from 2011 to 2013. [4] He later became chairman of Gulf Keystone Petroleum from 2013 to 2015. [5] He has served on boards and held advisory positions with a number of other large companies, including Vodafone, Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, Vivendi Universal, Usinor SA, Hermes, General Electric (USA), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Macquarie Bank, N.M. Rothschild, and Bain (the consultancy company). [4] He continues to serve on the advisory board of Lightbridge Corporation (USA), and was on the Development Advisory Board of Imperial College, London. I first became aware of Simon Murray when I watched on TV one night a special program about the French Foreign Legion in which he acted as the narrator. I was rather impressed with him, so when I came across this book (after having read the Douglas Porch history of the Legion in the early 1990s), I was eager to read it.

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But the experiences also seem to have resulted in a camaraderie with comrades-in-arms that lasted far beyond the five years the author signed up for. And they appeared to have well-prepared him for life as a businessman in Asia, an adventurer, and an explorer (after 5 years of hell in the Legion, everything else must seem like a piece of cake!). After working a number of years with investment houses, he several times started his own investment companies, in partnership with impressive folks like the Rothschilds and Deutsche Bank, which he then sold for enormous sums of money. He was also instrumental in helping start the British telecom Orange, something he found amusing considering that during his five years in the Legion, he never made or received a single phone call. Murray is currently the Executive Chairman of GEMS, and a board director of Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd, Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, Wing Tai Properties Ltd, Arnhold Holdings Ltd, Richemont SA, Essar Energy plc, Omnicorp Ltd and IRC Ltd.