If camp as identified by Susan Sontag constitutes “the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve” all seen through “the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalisation of experience”, the modern Foreign Legion as seen in Beau Travail – policing old combat zones, offering up its rigour and grace to indifferent wildernesses, practising permanent priapic readiness for a physical engagement that never comes – is the very quintessence of military camp.