Noms de Guerre - A Historical/Psychological Thriller.

[Heyseuss]

A pair of Foreign Legionnaires fighting Viet Minh in an ambush, 1952

TL;DR Summary:

• French Indochina, 1949-1950
  
• Historical/Psychological Thriller
  
• I have two characters; the Pole and the German.
  
• The French Nurse married to the German; the German is trying to escape his past and the Pole wants to kill the German for it; the Pole will find himself in the same hospital, unbeknowst to either party, that the French Nurse works at.
  
• Advanced Standards; in-depth plot, complex setting.
  
• Posting schedule of once a week or so.
  
• Based on a true story; I badly want to do this plot.
  

In Character Info:

Noms de guerre (French phrase meaning "names of war" or "war names") were frequently adopted by recruits in the French Foreign Legion as part of the break with their past lives.

The tale starts in Poland, where two very different men, a Silesian German man and a Chassidic Jewish boy both hail from. The German is a grown man with a university education and a commission in the Schutzstaffel (SS), the police-military arm of the Nazi party. He oversees the transportation of many Jews into the ghettos and then also serves in various concentration camps.

The boy manages to escape the fate of many Polish Jews; perhaps it is will or survival instinct, but he manages to flee to Gdansk, stow away on a Swedish freighter and make his way into the UK. He lies about his age and joins the war fighting for a King and Country that are not his.

When the war is over, the two men go their separate ways; many Germans join the Foreign Legion. The French gladly take in these men, even though many of them are wanted war criminals and the invaders and occupiers of la France, yet their need for troops in far-flung corners of their failing empire, in places like Indochina and Algeria, outweigh such considerations. These men are given new names and are hidden. The German man signs his name and joins his kameraden in la Légion étrangère.

The boy, now a man, leaves Europe behind for Palestine, joining the camp survivors and many other refugees to build the new Jewish homeland. There is little peace to be found, and he fights a second war as part of the newly-founded Israeli Defense Forces. Eventually, he locates people, camp survivors, that he once knew as a child, people who knew his family, and he finds out the bitter details; where and when it happened and who did it. He even manages to find reliable information that the man joined the Foreign Legion.

While he is a serving soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces, he requests transfer to the Navy. When his ship pulls into Genoa, he jumps ship and makes for Marseilles, France, the home of the Legion, at least in France. The Polish man signs his name and takes on a nom de guerre in la Légion étrangère.

The German man is sent to to fight the Communists, the Viet Minh, in Indochine (Vietnam) where he meets and secretly marries a French nurse; she doesn't care about his past, and he doesn't go into details -- the past is done. Together, they plan for a bright and happy future with each other; she with the sort of charming man she always dreamed of, and he putting his own black deeds well behind him by adopting a new name in the Legion and obtaining French citizenship.

Meanwhile, the young Pole is wounded in battle, and he winds up in the same hospital, in Hanoi, where the French nurse works. The past isn't as done as she thinks it is.

Out of Character Info:
The plot is simple; the Pole is going to kill the German, but he's going to have to wrangle information out of the French woman to do it. He has to track the German down somehow, and doesn't have much information to work with. It may well be that they become friends and he tells her why he's there. Sympathy turns to shock as the tale unfolds and he describes the killer of his family, a callous, amoral monster...and her husband. There's a lot of psychological, emotional and moral choices involved. How you'd care to play it is up to you, I'm down with whatever the outcome.

This is actually based on a true case; there was no woman involved, but an Israeli man did kill the man who had his family massacred in Indochina, while both were serving as legionnaires. When he came back after his time in the legion, he was tried for desertion in Israel but was acquitted. He was even praised -- one less Nazi in the world. That's just a cool postscript, something I read in Bernard Fall's "Street Without Joy" a while ago. But it makes for a heck of a 1x1 idea.

This is without a doubt an advanced RP. As this is far and away one of my favorite 1x1's ever, I'm hoping to find someone who is enthusiastic and will stick around.