Peter Lyderik
6th March 2006, 17:13
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From African rebels to the Government, our finance boss is still taking potshots
06 March 2006
The man holding the purse strings in Bedfordshire was a member of the crack French Foreign Legion for five years
TODAY he has a reputation as a straight-talking councillor. But 21 years ago, county cabinet finance chief Richard Stay was literally shooting from the hip as a soldier in the crack French Foreign Legion. He reminisces to Mark Lewis about his five-year stint in one of the world's toughest fighting forces.
LYING in his bunk one day, minding his own business, the 19-year-old Richard Stay was suddenly attacked by an enraged Italian. The book he had been quietly reading was flung out of the window and he was kicked in a part of the anatomy he delicately described as the "stomach".
It may sound like an outrageous, unprovoked attack, but such incidents were just par for the course for a trainee undergoing four months of basic training in the Foreign Legion, where instructional methods tended towards the muscular.
Coun Stay said: "I suppose I was physically assaulted 15 times in that period to varying degrees. The whole purpose was to break you right down to a gibbering wreck, and then they rebuilt you. Many people couldn't take that and there was a high drop-out rate.
"There were times when I could have quite happily walked away without a second thought, but when you came into the last half of training you realised it had a purpose to it, and I ended up quite enjoying it."
After growing up in Hertford in the strict protestant Plymouth Brethren sect, the young Stay applied for and gained a place at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, to undergo officer training for the British Army.
But forced to wait a year for a vacancy, he went on a round-the-world trip, taking in the Far East and South-East Asia.
He found himself in Pakistan at the time of the Soviet Union's invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan, and with admirable journalistic cheek managed to pass himself off as a reporter to join a column of mujahidin guerillas which travelled into the occupied country.
A visit to the UK was followed by another trip abroad, but he only got as far as Marseilles, where he enjoyed a "good social drink" with some British members of the Foreign Legion which left him both "blotto" and fired up by the thought of enlisting himself.
He said: "I thought it would be a good idea. I suppose I was looking for something to do and I was at a bit of a loose end. You have a three-week cooling off period at the Legion HQ just outside Marseilles, where you are fingerprinted, Interpol-checked, and have medicals, and 40 per cent of applicants are weeded out at that point.
"But I found it quite exciting. It was a new adventure. Then the training starts and you realise that life until that date had been pretty cushy.
"It was fairly brutal. The guards on the gate were there to keep you in, rather than to keep people out."
It was 1981, and Mr Stay was taking the first steps on a hard road.
His passport had been taken from him, he could not phone home and he was allowed no privileges at all.
Language was also a problem as his French was poor at first.
Faced with getting a whack for naming a part of a rifle wrongly, he soon began to cotton on, however.
And his family background proved an advantage, given the privations.
Mr Stay said: "I was doing a period of military service that might be considered extreme, but having grown up in the Plymouth Brethren it wasn't so bad.
"The hardest bit was the mental bit. A few people control every aspect of your life, and you can be pushed out of your bed at 3am, having been up until 10pm or 11pm to do a ten kilometre run in full kit."
The training culminated in a 24-hour endurance test, which finished at night with a firelight banquet at camp for the exhausted trainees and the award of their 'kepis' – the distinctive white-peaked caps of legionnaires.
"It was quite an emotional moment," Mr Stay recalled.
Having finished in the top ten per cent of his intake, he was eligible for two months of extra instruction to earn his wings as a parachutist.
It was then time to go operational, and he was posted to a Legion regiment stationed on Corsica, where things took a marked upward turn.
Treatment was better, the food was good, and wine and beer were even available for breakfast, "if you wanted them – although you would have to have been pretty stupid".
The Legion has a reputation for serving in troublespots, and Mr Stay swapped the pleasures of barracks life for Chad, where the French were protecting a "line in the sand" they had drawn to discourage further encroachment from the north by rebels.
It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit by 10am, his unit was strafed by a helicopter gunship, and the nightlife took a nosedive when a Legion brothel was set on fire by a disgruntled punter.
"I think it was a German who had found his favourite lady of the night with someone else," Mr Stay said.
He added: "It was a good experience because we were constantly training. When we got back to barracks in France the rest of the regiment had gone to Beirut, so I missed going there by the skin of my teeth."
He could not avoid a tour of French-controlled New Caledonia in the Pacific in 1983, however, where the locals were fighting for independence with hunting rifles, shotguns and more primitive weapons.
Coun Stay said he was only a few feet from a legionnaire when a spear went into his comrade's neck during one encounter. He described the time as "sticky", and frankly admitted the legionnaires responded strongly, with bursts of automatic fire rather than the prescribed single shots.
"The gloves were off and we could do as we wanted."
Mr Stay remembered: "We were out on patrol every day and in six weeks out there we must have come into contact (with the enemy) 12 times.
"A lot of people died there. They set mantraps for us and ambushed us.
"But I was in my early 20s and you think you are invincible. And when things happen you are completely overtaken by adrenalin.
"I never lay awake at night worrying about it. We were sent there to do a job. The Foreign Legion is a pretty brutal experience and it trains you to a large degree to forget what you would regard as normal life."
After five years' service, and promotion to corporal, Mr Stay was given a medical discharge.
Firing anti-tank rockets without ear defenders had taken a toll on his hearing, and he was starting to go deaf.
Returning to the UK with just 50 francs in his pocket and a bag of uniforms, he went into marketing and now runs his own consultancy business besides his council work.
He remains proud of his stint in the Legion.
He said: "On the odd occasion I look across the room when one of my council colleagues is being particularly boring and I have a vision of cross-hairs come to mind!
"But I don't regret it for a minute. It was an amazing experience, which I feel privileged to have had and lucky to have survived."
From African rebels to the Government, our finance boss is still taking potshots
06 March 2006
The man holding the purse strings in Bedfordshire was a member of the crack French Foreign Legion for five years
TODAY he has a reputation as a straight-talking councillor. But 21 years ago, county cabinet finance chief Richard Stay was literally shooting from the hip as a soldier in the crack French Foreign Legion. He reminisces to Mark Lewis about his five-year stint in one of the world's toughest fighting forces.
LYING in his bunk one day, minding his own business, the 19-year-old Richard Stay was suddenly attacked by an enraged Italian. The book he had been quietly reading was flung out of the window and he was kicked in a part of the anatomy he delicately described as the "stomach".
It may sound like an outrageous, unprovoked attack, but such incidents were just par for the course for a trainee undergoing four months of basic training in the Foreign Legion, where instructional methods tended towards the muscular.
Coun Stay said: "I suppose I was physically assaulted 15 times in that period to varying degrees. The whole purpose was to break you right down to a gibbering wreck, and then they rebuilt you. Many people couldn't take that and there was a high drop-out rate.
"There were times when I could have quite happily walked away without a second thought, but when you came into the last half of training you realised it had a purpose to it, and I ended up quite enjoying it."
After growing up in Hertford in the strict protestant Plymouth Brethren sect, the young Stay applied for and gained a place at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, to undergo officer training for the British Army.
But forced to wait a year for a vacancy, he went on a round-the-world trip, taking in the Far East and South-East Asia.
He found himself in Pakistan at the time of the Soviet Union's invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan, and with admirable journalistic cheek managed to pass himself off as a reporter to join a column of mujahidin guerillas which travelled into the occupied country.
A visit to the UK was followed by another trip abroad, but he only got as far as Marseilles, where he enjoyed a "good social drink" with some British members of the Foreign Legion which left him both "blotto" and fired up by the thought of enlisting himself.
He said: "I thought it would be a good idea. I suppose I was looking for something to do and I was at a bit of a loose end. You have a three-week cooling off period at the Legion HQ just outside Marseilles, where you are fingerprinted, Interpol-checked, and have medicals, and 40 per cent of applicants are weeded out at that point.
"But I found it quite exciting. It was a new adventure. Then the training starts and you realise that life until that date had been pretty cushy.
"It was fairly brutal. The guards on the gate were there to keep you in, rather than to keep people out."
It was 1981, and Mr Stay was taking the first steps on a hard road.
His passport had been taken from him, he could not phone home and he was allowed no privileges at all.
Language was also a problem as his French was poor at first.
Faced with getting a whack for naming a part of a rifle wrongly, he soon began to cotton on, however.
And his family background proved an advantage, given the privations.
Mr Stay said: "I was doing a period of military service that might be considered extreme, but having grown up in the Plymouth Brethren it wasn't so bad.
"The hardest bit was the mental bit. A few people control every aspect of your life, and you can be pushed out of your bed at 3am, having been up until 10pm or 11pm to do a ten kilometre run in full kit."
The training culminated in a 24-hour endurance test, which finished at night with a firelight banquet at camp for the exhausted trainees and the award of their 'kepis' – the distinctive white-peaked caps of legionnaires.
"It was quite an emotional moment," Mr Stay recalled.
Having finished in the top ten per cent of his intake, he was eligible for two months of extra instruction to earn his wings as a parachutist.
It was then time to go operational, and he was posted to a Legion regiment stationed on Corsica, where things took a marked upward turn.
Treatment was better, the food was good, and wine and beer were even available for breakfast, "if you wanted them – although you would have to have been pretty stupid".
The Legion has a reputation for serving in troublespots, and Mr Stay swapped the pleasures of barracks life for Chad, where the French were protecting a "line in the sand" they had drawn to discourage further encroachment from the north by rebels.
It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit by 10am, his unit was strafed by a helicopter gunship, and the nightlife took a nosedive when a Legion brothel was set on fire by a disgruntled punter.
"I think it was a German who had found his favourite lady of the night with someone else," Mr Stay said.
He added: "It was a good experience because we were constantly training. When we got back to barracks in France the rest of the regiment had gone to Beirut, so I missed going there by the skin of my teeth."
He could not avoid a tour of French-controlled New Caledonia in the Pacific in 1983, however, where the locals were fighting for independence with hunting rifles, shotguns and more primitive weapons.
Coun Stay said he was only a few feet from a legionnaire when a spear went into his comrade's neck during one encounter. He described the time as "sticky", and frankly admitted the legionnaires responded strongly, with bursts of automatic fire rather than the prescribed single shots.
"The gloves were off and we could do as we wanted."
Mr Stay remembered: "We were out on patrol every day and in six weeks out there we must have come into contact (with the enemy) 12 times.
"A lot of people died there. They set mantraps for us and ambushed us.
"But I was in my early 20s and you think you are invincible. And when things happen you are completely overtaken by adrenalin.
"I never lay awake at night worrying about it. We were sent there to do a job. The Foreign Legion is a pretty brutal experience and it trains you to a large degree to forget what you would regard as normal life."
After five years' service, and promotion to corporal, Mr Stay was given a medical discharge.
Firing anti-tank rockets without ear defenders had taken a toll on his hearing, and he was starting to go deaf.
Returning to the UK with just 50 francs in his pocket and a bag of uniforms, he went into marketing and now runs his own consultancy business besides his council work.
He remains proud of his stint in the Legion.
He said: "On the odd occasion I look across the room when one of my council colleagues is being particularly boring and I have a vision of cross-hairs come to mind!
"But I don't regret it for a minute. It was an amazing experience, which I feel privileged to have had and lucky to have survived."