Deep in the Provençal countryside, veterans of the Foreign Legion are spending their twilight years making wine and olive oil, reports The Sunday Times.
They are France’s answer to the Chelsea pensioners — except that their retirements are spent on a 544-acre estate with a 17th-century chateau, vineyard and olive groves.
The Domaine Capitaine Danjou, close to Aix-en-Provence, was established in 1954 to cope with a flood of legionnaires injured in Indochina and initially had close to 400 residents. Officially known as the Institution des invalides de la Légion étrangère, it is home these days to just 80 veterans, either in need of convalescence or rehabilitation or simply a roof over their heads; the youngest is 36, the oldest 96.
A recent visit to the domaine in Puyloubier, 25 miles north of the legion’s recruiting centre in Aubagne, offered a glimpse into a unique establishment whose residents come from dozens of different countries.
There are no women among them, as still remains the case with the institution in which they served.
“We don’t receive any subsidies, and it is the vines that provide the majority of the money we need to keep everything running,” said the director, Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier Madonna, 54, as we sat in his grand office, its walls covered in legion memorabilia.
This year, the domaine produced 160,000 bottles — down from the usual 200,000 because of frost and hail — about half of which ended up on the tables of legion messes, with the rest bought by the public.