George Pozzoli
Ed. Independently published
pp. 304
Foreign Legion… When you hear this name mentioned, attention and respect arise spontaneously in anyone (civilian or military) who has at least once in their life tried to understand what this means.
A legendary department often inserted in fictional literary and cinematographic contexts, always however full of references to real details of a lifestyle choice that is reductive to define extreme and that has always left no one indifferent.
This beautiful book is an introspective analysis (among other things of high literary value for the fluency and the ability of the author to synthesize "pictorial") of a long period of life spent in that type of environment.
The title already indicates a substantial logical division into two parts:
1) In search of distant horizons,
2) Six years in the Foreign Legion.
However, the author has managed with sincere literary mastery to blend the two things together: to describe experiences, sensations and life opportunities unthinkable for "mere mortals" while, like a precious diary of a unique experience, a military preparation is gained extreme that will lead him to feel at ease in the most desolate and difficult places in the world and in the heart of the battlefields of conflicts that are already in the history books.
The more "militaristic" reader would perhaps want more detail on exquisitely military and technical issues, but who has understood what it means to have been in the Foreign Legion for 6 years, especially in a historical period that saw its presence in the Gulf War and the intervention in Somalia knows that many things must be "read between the lines". Having understood this, even the "militarist reader" will find what he is looking for, just as other readers who have passed through military experiences of other times (including Italians) will see intense and painful memories resurface in their minds.
Even the most sensitive reader to psychological analysis who can keep up with such a choice of life, will perhaps not find all the answers to the questions on the most personal and intimate reasons that can lead a 21-year-old boy to an "atypical" type of enlistment. or questions about how their families could have experienced such a radical choice of vote. But certain issues must remain in the depths of those who made that choice of life and one can only respect the confidentiality of making only a few hints.
What every type of reader will be able to appreciate is the sharing of life experiences that very few people can tell and even less in that way, thanks to a streamlined, elegant and effective dialectic in its need for synthesis.
A truly beautiful book, therefore, which leads you to think about what it means to live your life by immersing yourself body and soul in every kind of out of the ordinary experience, looking for something to enter into your DNA.
And to know that today that Legionnaire who was able to describe his most incredible experiences with such clarity and evident serenity of mind, is commander on airliners, reassures and makes you meditate on how much certain People may still have to tell!
Andrea Troncone
