The Times
Jerome Starkey in Surobi

When Corporal James walked in on his fiancée sleeping with another man he threw him through a second-storey window and beat him with a wrench until the police arrived.

The former US Navy signalman was facing seven years in jail for what was — by his own account — a frenzied assault. But on March 9, 2007, just three days before he was to stand trial, James, 22, packed a change of clothes and some cigarettes into a small duffle bag, said goodbye to his mother, his stepfather and his sister, and flew to Paris to start a new life.

Today he is on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan — but this time it is with the French Foreign Legion. “The legion was a second chance, an opportunity to reinvent myself,” he said. “It was either here or prison.” (Read original)