Legión Flamenca

The Legión Flamenca is a pro-Nazi Flemish volunteer formation whose place in the story is defined by Jan Schmitt’s service and by its contrast with the Spanish volunteers sent to fight in the east. Jan’s enlistment gives him a route into the war; later, when Adrián Gallardo feels trapped by the fate closing around him, the Legion becomes the means by which Jan offers him escape. Their transfer does not end the fighting: it carries them into a wider multinational force in which the men’s political commitments and exhaustion become increasingly visible.

Formation and political setting

The Legion appears against the growth of Flemish ultranationalist politics. In May 1936, the pro-Nazi Flemish National Union won sixteen seats in Belgium’s general election, while the still more powerful Walloon Rexist Party won twenty-one. Jan, newly arrived in Europe from Buenos Aires, took those results as a promise of future glory and as a sign that he might finally belong. He was drawn to a political landscape that seemed to affirm his loyalties, even as his family’s move to Belgium divided them: his brother Martin laughed at the prospect, while their mother Marijke feared losing Jan, her remaining companion after Josefine’s departure.

Jan’s enlistment and transfer

An officer’s completion of Jan’s enlistment form makes his affiliation official: he is declared a soldier of the Legión Flamenca under both his surnames. Jan responds with a fascist salute and remembers his father, saying that he would have been glad to see him there. The moment joins family inheritance to political commitment; for Jan, enlistment is not merely a military assignment but a claim to a place among the Flemish movement.

The Legion’s role changes when a stray bullet kills the interpreter of Adrián’s company near Kolpino. After several days without effective communication with the Wehrmacht command or other foreign volunteer divisions, Jan arrives as a replacement interpreter. His Spanish is the Spanish of Buenos Aires, and his German is colored by a Flemish accent and Dutch words; his speech satisfies neither Spanish nor German nationalists. But no other available soldier speaks Spanish, so Jan is provisionally transferred from the Legion to the Spanish Blue Division. His service thus brings the two formations into direct contact through the practical need to communicate.

Adrián’s move to the Legion

Jan’s connection to Adrián deepens beyond interpretation. When Adrián no longer wants to encounter the man he associates with his pursuit, Jan offers to take him with him to the Legión Flamenca and onward to Ukraine. Adrián accepts because he believes the move offers a chance to escape the fate pursuing him. The offer is an act of friendship, but not a route out of war: it redirects Adrián toward another front and another set of military obligations.

The Legion’s later movements carry Jan and Adrián from Ukraine to Estonia. Jan remains Adrián’s closest companion and, at first, the only person with whom he can communicate. He presses Adrián to improve his German so that he can manage if Jan is killed. Adrián resists the language’s grammar and jokes about its genders, yet gradually discovers that his rough German is enough to make himself understood. The friendship built through translation becomes less dependent on Jan’s mediation, even as the danger of losing that mediator remains part of their circumstances.

From volunteer formation to a multinational front

The Legion is also part of the path by which Adrián enters the SS Third Panzer Corps, a force assembled from scattered European volunteers and depleted German replacements. By the time he serves there, Adrián is no longer the only former member of the Spanish contingent, but he has no other Spaniards in his company. Germans, Flemings, Walloons, Finns, Hungarians, and Balts surround him; German is essential for orders, though many of the foreign volunteers speak it imperfectly.

The novel distinguishes these men’s ideological commitments. Many of the foreigners who remain on the Narva front are convinced SS volunteers fighting for Aryan supremacy and a racially homogeneous Europe under Hitler, while many Spaniards had gone to Russia chiefly to fight communists while invoking Catholic and Spanish causes. Jan mocks the Spaniards as fascists and recalls the absurdity of a priest interrupting a boxing match to make thousands of men sing Christmas carols at gunpoint. Adrián and the others laugh, but their amusement also marks the gap between the Spaniards’ declared motives and the racial project embraced by their new military surroundings. The Legion’s significance lies in this passage between forces: it provides a channel for movement, friendship, and survival, while revealing that service in the same war does not mean sharing the same political purpose.