Bill Murray's entire career has been unconventional; he is unconventional; therefore, wouldn't you expect his retirement to be a little unconventional? Well, it will be. For the first half of his career he held various positions as an aircraft operator, and during the last half of his career he transitioned to acquisition and program management. Colonel Murray flew two thousand hours in the F-111D/F, F-16B/D, and C-130H. In Renegade Colonel, he recounts his experiences over the thirty years that he served in the United States Air Force. From his early years as an aircraft operator to his later years in director positions, Bill has had the experience of a lifetime. In the years to come, he wants his family to have a glimpse into his life. How many people have lived in Canada, England, and Spain, burned down a barn, burned down two houses, gone to the Air Force Academy, burned up a room at the Air Force Academy, played collegiate football, wrestling and lacrosse, flown supersonic fighters, crashed a plane and survived, had cancer and survived, had children and survived? You get the idea. Renegade Colonel is a book of experiences, but also a book of philosophy and instruction.

In 1937 aged just 19, Edmund Murray left his family and a comfortable job in London, caught the boat train to France and signed up for the minimum of five years' service with the French Foreign Legion. Armed with little more than school-boy French and a desire for a life of adventure, Murray travelled through France and on to the Legion's headquarters in Algeria where he completed a gruelling three-month basic training programme. He went on to serve in Morocco and Indochina (now Vietnam) where towards the end of the War, his regiment were forced to retreat from invading Japanese forces into China where his service ended after eight years as a Legionnaire. Throughout the Second World War, Murray's overwhelming sense of duty compelled him to try to leave the Legion and join the Allied forces, but he was thwarted at every attempt. He was an Englishman, in a French organisation, by definition a home for 'the men with no names', during a time of global conflict where battle lines and countries' boundaries changed almost daily. He was an anomaly, a diplomatic puzzle. But as such, his was an extraordinary war-time experience. This book, which borrows heavily from Murray's earlier book, Churchill's Bodyguard, includes rare personal insights into Legion life from drills and manoeuvres, to feast-days and festivals as well as accounts of friendships forged in exceptional circumstances and which would last a lifetime. It also documents a unique war-time experience of the man whose sense of duty never faltered and led him, in later life, to become bodyguard to Sir Winston Churchill. Edited by his son Bill Murray, this is the story in his own words of Edmund Murray, Churchill's Legionnaire, and his service in the French Foreign Legion from 1937 to 1945.