Kepi Blanc is the official magazine of the French Foreign Legion. Kepi Blanc (KB) was first published in 1947 and continues to this day after 68 years with over 772 issues. It is somewhat the descendent of two other magazines, La Légion étrangère which began in 1912 and later changed it’s name to Vert et Rouge on July 1945. (Vert et Rouge continued to be published until 1959 with a total of about 115+ issues). There were also several other post-WWII periodicals published by the separate Regiments and it was eventually decided that one “good” magazine could make better use of scarce resources and provide information and boost morale to all legionnaires. So, KB was created in Sidi Bel Abbes by Colonel Gautier, the commandant of the Communal Depot of the Foreign Regiments (DRCE) at the time. KB is very similar to many other current armed forces publications; the U.S. Army has Soldiers Magazine, the UK Army has Soldier Magazine. KB‘s focus is, of course, on the French Foreign Legion and provides news and updates on the events for the various Legion units, current operations and exercises, history articles, book reviews, family events, travel tips, and for a while a cartoon section and regular feature on badges and unit crests. I personally like the historical articles that are often illustrated with rare photographs and illustrations from the Foreign Legion archives.
Over the years I’ve been lucky to find good prices on several small hoards of KB here in the U.S. Acquired bid by bid my collection now numbers over 250 issues. I created a spreadsheet to keep track of them (and so I don’t buy too many duplicates). On the MS Excel document below you can highlight the cells in different colors to indicate what you have in your collection. If you look at the legend at the very bottom you will note that I keep track of the digital copies of the covers, any digital copies/.pdf of KB magazines (which I have never found) and my modest collection of about 251 hard copy magazines. The reference used to create this checklist was KB‘s own cover index. I’m not sure if anyone else who reads this blog collects KB magazines. If you live in the Americas and want to make significant inroads on collecting all 772+ magazines you will have to get used to bidding on Delcampe or eBay.fr. As I slowly improve my French Language skills (a 2015 News Year’s Resolution!) I hope to use KB more often in my future posts.
