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Bennett J. Doty
Bennett Jeffries Doty (1900-1939) was a young American adventurer and writer.
He was born in 1900 on a plantation in Faunsdale, Alabama, near the town of Demopolis, to Lemuel Humphries Doty and Me...ver másBennett Jeffries Doty (1900-1939) was a young American adventurer and writer.
He was born in 1900 on a plantation in Faunsdale, Alabama, near the town of Demopolis, to Lemuel Humphries Doty and Melvina Jeffries. By April 1917, he was living in Memphis and attending high school. Aged sixteen years old, he enlisted in the First Tennessee Regiment of the National Guard (which later became the 55th Artillery Brigade, in the Thirtieth Division)—having ‘tweaked’ his age on paper—and fought with this unit at St. Mihiel and the Argonne.
Upon his return home in April 1919, he attended Vanderbilt University for one year, followed by the University of Virginia for almost three years, studying literature and economics. He left university and began working in an office in 1923. However, finding the work too monotonous, he set off on a road trip with a friend a year later, toured Kentucky, and eventually landed in New York. He then went off to sea, first as deck boy, then as an ordinary seaman, aboard coast schooners, Shipping Board vessels and United States Fruit liners, travelling to South America and Europe.
In April 1925, whilst on a fruit boat in New Orleans, he learnt of the fighting in Morocco and, having missed the excitement of war, decided to join the Foreign Legion and, on his return to New York, boarded a boat leaving for Bordeaux.
He enlisted in the French Foreign Legion on 12 June 1925—one day after his arrival in Bordeaux—and went on to fight for France in Syria that year. He later deserted from the Legion, but was caught and condemned to death. American public outcry and diplomatic intervention succeeded in getting his execution commuted to a life sentence and then ultimately secured his freedom from both the Legion and French prison.
In 1928, a liberated Bennett Doty wrote a book about his Foreign Legion experiences called Legion of the Damned, which went on to become a bestseller.
He passed away in 1939.ver menos
Libros de Bennett J. Doty
The Legion of the Damned: The Adventures of Bennett J. Doty as Told by Himself