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Angels Sing Thee to thy Rest

Christopher Whittaker - Author

Male LeadMilitaryPolitical IntrigueSurvival

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Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest: A Legionnaire’s Tale follows Thomas York, an Englishman who leaves behind a life he would rather forget and enlists in the French Foreign Legion in the 1880s. From the brutal training grounds of North Africa to the long voyage east, Thomas is thrown together with men who have also chosen anonymity over the lives they once knew. Among them are Marcel, an enormous Russian with a hidden past, and Bartoli, a volatile Sardinian whose humour, temper and skill with a knife make him as dangerous to his comrades as he is to the enemy. Their destination is Tonkin. France is expanding its influence in northern Vietnam, but the campaign is far from a simple colonial conquest. Chinese forces, Black Flag fighters and local resistance confront the French as armies struggle through flooded rice fields, jungle, fortified towns and river valleys. At Sơn Tây, Bắc Ninh and across the Tonkin countryside, Thomas discovers that courage has little to do with glory and everything to do with the man standing beside you when the shooting starts. As comrades fall and the Legion strips away what remains of the man he once was, Thomas must decide whether the Legion has given him somewhere to hide—or somewhere finally to belong. A story of friendship, loss, loyalty and survival amid one of France’s forgotten colonial wars.