This paper explores the participation of the French Foreign Legion in national conflicts (from colonial conquest to peace-keeping) and its impact on the imagined community constituted by the unit. Implicit to the notion of the Legion as refuge and fellow legionnaires as a band of brothers are narratives of identity and difference grounded in mutual or asymmetrical attributions of inside versus outside, familiarity versus alienness, self versus other. The intention is to show how the external forces of nationalism and ethnicity during conflicts impact upon the internalised nationalism and ethnicity of the Legion's peacetime communal balance. This dialectical tension can lead to a band of brothers composed of Cains and Abels. (Contains 4 notes.)