THROUGH THE ARCHIVES: Youths’ daring fight for freedom from Foreign Legion

From the News Letter, September 22, 1932
A regiment of French Foreign Legion parade down the Champs Elysees in Paris Tuesday July 14 1998 for the traditional Bastille Day military parade. (AP PHOTO/Michel Euler)A regiment of French Foreign Legion parade down the Champs Elysees in Paris Tuesday July 14 1998 for the traditional Bastille Day military parade. (AP PHOTO/Michel Euler)
A regiment of French Foreign Legion parade down the Champs Elysees in Paris Tuesday July 14 1998 for the traditional Bastille Day military parade. (AP PHOTO/Michel Euler)

Two English youths, William Cochrane Crooks, a nephew of the Mayor of Hartlepool, and Stanley Flannagan, of Manchester, who had escaped from the French Foreign Legion in North Africa, had arrived at Rotterdam on board the British steamer the Glenshane, reported the News Letter on this day in 1932.

The two boys, both of whom had left home in search of adventure, had displayed remarkable grit and endurance during their escape.

Fearing that they would handed over again to the Legion authorities when the vessel they had stowed away in called at Casablanca, they seized couple of lifebelts and jumped overboard into the Mediterranean.

Crooks could not swim and Flanagan only a little, and for hour and a half they drifted about at the mercy of the waves in a rough sea only supported by the lifebelts and rope which joined them together.

It was the evening of the moon’s eclipse and the darkness only added to their danger.

They were only saved by a miracle, the passing of the Glenshane and great was experienced in getting them aboard owing to the rough sea.

Before arriving in Rotterdam the Gleashahe has been boarded police, who questioned the two boys, and conducted them to the police station as they were without passports, but the British Consul-General on hearing the news at once came to the station and supplied them provisional passports, with which they were expected to travel to Brussels the following morning.

Crooks, who was only 17 years age, ran away from his home in Newcastle-on-Tyne at the beginning of August, and after adventurous trips through England, arrived at Folkestone, where stowed away board a channel steamer for Boulogne. From there he had walked to Paris, and, being completely without money, signed on for the Foreign Legion, and was then taken first to Marseilles and afterwards to Oran and Sidi Bel Abbes, the legions headquarters Algeria.

Stanley Flanagan, who was just a year older than his companion, left his home Manchester in January 1932. Unable to get a job, he made his way to London where he worked the markets for some time, and then bought a ticket for Dunkirk.

In France he had also joined the Foreign Legion and was also sent to Sidi Bel Abbes.

Crooks and Flannagan quickly became friends, and, driven desperate the bad food and hard work on the roads which they had to perform, they made joint plan of escape.