The opening of the book describes an extremely mysterious situation at the Legion fort at Zinderneuf. In this sense it was very reminiscent of Conan Doyle - the story opened with a conundrum, and then subsequently set about unravelling the series of strange events which led to that point. It does this very well - presenting a confusing picture and then retrospectively building up the circumstances which created that picture - and resolving the mystery with a very satisfying twist which it was just possible to infer yourself from the clues given - like I say, it could have been a Holmes case.

The next phase of the story takes place at Brandon Abbas, the country residence of an upper class English family. A famous precious stone called the 'Blue Water' goes missing, and three brothers from the family are implicated. To uphold chivalry and family honour, all three separately go off to join the Legion in the hope that in doing so, suspicion will fall on them and absolve their brothers. This part of the story is pure Boys' Own meets P.G.Wodehouse, it is written in a very light-hearted and stylised way, very tongue in cheek and farcical.

But then when the three enlist in the Legion and are reunited, we follow them through grim hardships which were much more realistic and almost non-fictional, very obviously based on Wren's own experiences in the regiment in north Africa - during this phase it reads more like T.E.Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', or F.Spencer Chapman's 'The Jungle is Neutral'...with a hint of 'The Alamo' thrown in. I don't wish to give anything away but the story latterly turns into nothing short of tragedy before the original mystery is solved and Beay gets the girl.

It's not what I was expecting, but it's a great yarn of fascinatingly mixed styles.

But there is much more to these three boys. After the slightly confusing opening chapter which is in fact a sort of prologue from a different perspective, we meet the family and then we follow their lives in the foreign legion. One come to realise that they are in fact character s of immense courage, love and warmth. They are ready to die for each other, in fact almost vying for the opportunity to do so. They are gallant beyond compare, fair and scrupulous. They refuse to disobey orders or entertain mutinous thoughts in the legion and can see the positive attributes of everyone, even their hitherto detested sergeant Lejaune.

They are prepared to leave behind everything they cherish to protect innocent brothers and sisters from being unjustly accused of a crime. They join a nomadic people, rootless and without loyalty or affiliation to anything or anyone. A gang of hopless desperadoes who, in contrast, think nothing of perpetrating crimes against brothers in arms.

It is an exciting book, the battle scenes set the heart racing and the thought of what these talented boys have left behind and what they will now never achieve brings tears to the eyes. I think this book still has a lot to say to those who believe in values such as loyalty and friendship. Theirs is a triumph of self-sacrifice over personal greed and ambition.

It is also a very realistic book and does not glamourise the legion at all. In fact the descriptions of life ther are remarkably similar to Simon Murray's much more recent, "Legionnaire".