page_title: Honneur et Fidélité
section_title: Adjudant-Chef Mader
hierarchical_section_title: Honneur et Fidélité / French Foreign Legion (1831–present) / Adjudant-Chef Mader
caption_attribution_description: Drapeau du 1er Régiment étranger - recto
context_page_description: Honneur et Fidélité is the motto of the French Foreign Legion. It has been inscribed on Legion flags instead of the Honneur et Patrie inscribed on flags of the regular French Army of the French Republic. Nevertheless, both mottos share a similar past.
context_section_description: Sometimes, it is also tendered that the motto of Legio Patria Nostra (The Legion is our Fatherland) was originally warranted to Sous-Lieutenant Max-Emmanuel Mader, known as Adjudant-chef Mader. Originally German, disappointed by his army, he volunteered in the Foreign Legion in 1908 and fought in Morocco; he was awarded the rank of commander of the Legion of Honour, the Médaille militaire, and was Mentioned in dispatches 9 times during World War I, including 3 times at the level of the entire military forces, before he lost his left arm in July 1918 and was discharged. Returning to Strasbourg as guardian of the Rhin Palace, he witnessed the period of the reoccupation of Alsace-Lorraine while pretending to be a deaf-mute. Mader was the symbol of legionnaires whose fidelity would carry his attachment to his fatherland. The belonging to the fatherland "Legio", does not oblige in any case the repudiation of the original country which the legion respects: the legionnaire is perfectly free of will to keep his nationality, and the legion requests the consent of every legionnaire before sending them to fight in their country of origin.
  Today, the legionnaire remains a "volunteer serving France with Honneur et Fidélité" and the Legion is their fatherland. General Aimable Pélissier, superior commandant of the Province of Oran reminds in June 1854 at the 1st Foreign Regiment which was making way to the Crimean War after having constructed Sidi Bel Abbès: "Remember, while following the road of honour, that there is no more beautiful title in the world than that of French soldier, and that these noble fanions floating at the tip of your bayonettes are unfortunately your fatherland."
caption: Verso Colours of the 1st Foreign Regiment, 1e R.E with "Honneur et Fidélité".
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