Regret the Error

Erwin James is the name used by a convicted murder murderer who writes regularly for the Guardian. (That name is somewhat different from the one he grew up with.) Back in 2006, he wrote an article about his time spent in the French Foreign Legion. Now, three years later, he has admitted to fabricating parts of that story. The Guardian published this correction:

A feature, published in 2006, in which the writer, Erwin James, recounted his experiences in the Foreign Legion contained information that was untrue. James was in the Foreign Legion for a time but his claim to have served with one of its regiments in Beirut in the summer of 1982 was false and a paragraph, which purported to describe his experiences there, was fiction. He did not join the Foreign Legion until the end of 1982, by which time his regiment had returned from Beirut. The article also suggested that James accompanied his regiment on missions to Djibouti and the Central African Republic. While these were regular regiment duties, James did not go there. He did, as he said in the piece, go to Chad. In a more recent article James said he joined the Foreign Legion in 1981. That was also untrue. In both articles, we should have made clear that names and/or nationalities of some individuals had been changed so that they could not be identified (Legion of honour, 13 January 2006, page 8, G2, and ‘God help anyone who weakened’: my life in the French Foreign Legion, 25 February 2009, page 2, G2). The readers’ editor will write about this in her weekly column on 27 April). Link

Erwin James, born Erwin James Monahan, also wrote a lenghty lengthy article to admit his fabrications and offer more details about his life before and after his prison sentence. An excerpt:

…I made a supremely stupid error of judgment. A report appeared in the news to the effect that the French Foreign Legion was reluctant to take men from Britain, as the British who had been volunteering were “too flabby”. I was asked to write a long piece about my experience in the legion and comment on the revelations in the news for G2, which I did. Irrationally now looking back and much to my mortification, I placed information in the piece which was blatantly untrue.

In order to camouflage my whereabouts in 1982 and create a fog around the facts of my crimes, I wrote the piece as if I was in the legion from the beginning of that year, when in fact I did not join up until the end of the year. In particular, I made reference to “we”, meaning my regiment, undertaking tours in various African countries in 1982. The regiment did indeed undertake those tours; only I was not with them. Neither could I have been in Beirut in September of that year, as I said I was in the piece. I knew all the details of that operation, as the 1st combat company had not long returned from Beirut when I joined them in Calvi in Corsica at the end of my basic training. On 25 February this year, in response to another news story relating to the legion, I wrote another vignette of legion life for G2. The anecdote – about a young German recruit getting bashed by an adjutant for picking the wrong time to say he wanted to leave the Legion – was true. But the date I said I had joined, 1981, was not.

I was prompted to come clean and alert the Guardian about this ridiculous deceit when my “true” identity was revealed on the web some weeks ago and the bloggers involved noted my prevarications about the length of time I had actually spent in legion. The deceit has left me embarrassed and sad for letting down not only the people at the Guardian who trusted me, but Guardian readers who have been so accepting of me and my prison-issue writing over the past 10 years. It is clear to me now that the only person I was really deceiving was myself. The fallout from my identification on that message board, and the lies I told, has led to this piece; to me feeling that I now have to be completely honest about both my time in the legion and to stop hiding from who I really am. I am aware that these revelations may prove painful for people to whom my past actions have caused immeasurable pain and distress. For that I am truly, truly sorry…