Missing Auckland teen alive and well in the French Foreign Legion

Eamon Tolhurst and mother Marie Devoy. Photo / Supplied

A New Zealand mother has been allowed to see a son who ran away to join the French Foreign Legion - but only after she turned up unannounced on the legion's doorstep.

Marie Devoy had an emotional 30-minute reunion with her youngest son, Eamon Tolhurst, at a training camp in Castelnaudary in Languedoc-Roussillon.

The 19-year-old had been traced by Interpol after his family registered him as a missing person in January, as the Herald on Sunday revealed last month.

Eamon was thinner but in good health, after a tough induction to the Legion in which he was made to march through the night and camp out in the snow.

Marie Devoy and husband Michael Tolhurst, of Auckland, had not heard from their son since the New Year, when Eamon texted them to say he had bought cheap flights to France and was going travelling.

But his family feared he had been hurt after he stopped using his bank account and Facebook for a couple of weeks.

Eventually a friend of Eamon's told them: "I don't know if I should tell you this, but he said he was off to join the French Foreign Legion."

The parents spoke of their shock at discovering their son's whereabouts, and of the journey they went through to confirm he had signed up to the secretive military force for five years.

The legion is notorious for making recruits sever all contact with their families and friends, and the Tolhursts were worried they might not be able to contact him during his service.

But a Christchurch-based couple read the Herald on Sunday article and contacted them to say their son had done the same thing in the 1980s.

They advised Marie to knock on the door of the legion and ask for her son. His superiors would find it hard to refuse after discovering she had travelled all the way from New Zealand.

She went to the legion's training headquarters in Castelnaudary and, to her great joy, the legion's top brass agreed to let her see Eamon for 30 minutes.

"He is looking better then he has ever done," she told her husband. "He's cleaner, tidier and smells better than he ever has."

Tolhurst said Eamon was "very surprised" to see his mum. Eamon apologised for not telling his family before he left for France, but feared they would stop him.

He told of punishment rituals like night marches to toughen the recruits. But he was coping well, thanks to experience doing labouring work and boxing training in Auckland.

rachel.grunwell@hos.co.nz