8. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - BLOOD IN FRONT OF THE SUN Caught by the soldiers of the French Foreign Legion, Brigitte Bonnet, the influential leader of the proud Dulac people, must face execution at the French Fort, Dini Salam, in the Sahara Desert. This is the decision of the French Supreme Authority due to her involvement in the deaths of several Legion soldiers. The bitter task of attending the execution falls upon Teuns Stegmann, the blonde South African who played a significant role in her capture. On the morning of the scheduled execution, Captain D’Arlan is distraught to discover that Brigitte Bonnet has vanished without a trace. Following a thorough investigation, a suspect is identified, and Colonel Le Clerq, the commanding officer of Dini Salam, sends Captain D’Arlan, Teuns Stegmann, Jack Ritchie, Fritz Mundt, and Podolski to apprehend and interrogate the suspect. However, things go awry, and they are all abducted and taken into the hot Sahara Desert by the Arab captor, who seeks ransom money upon delivering them to Brigitte Bonnet. He is also after the Sabre of Dutra, a valuable treasure that Teuns and his closest friends in the Legion had hidden in an oasis long ago. En route to the oasis, the caravan is unexpectedly attacked by cruel Tuaregs. With the assistance of Captain D’Arlan and his men, they manage to gain the upper hand, but Teuns Stegmann disappears during the melee. The Arab leader, furious at Teuns’ disappearance and their silence about the Sabre of Dutra’s whereabouts, mercilessly whips Captain D’Arlan until his back is bloody and raw. The group receives no food or water and is forced to walk as punishment. A mysterious rider starts shooting at them regularly, killing one Arab each time. In a fit of rage, Captain D’Arlan and Jack Ritchie are left to die in the desert, spreadeagled on the sand. Fritz Mundt and Podolski are the only ones remaining, and Fritz hatches a brilliant plan to escape and save his comrades. Despite the Arabs hot on his heels, Fritz manages to lose them and finds only the bones of an Arab at the location where Captain D’Arlan and Jack Ritchie were tied up. He is unsure which direction to take when his loyal friend, Teuns Stegmann, appears and shares excellent news. With almost all of them reunited, they head back to the oasis to save Podolski from the cruel Arab. However, they are unexpectedly captured by the Arab and his henchmen again near the oasis where the Sabre of Dutra was hidden. To make matters worse, they discover hundreds of Dulacs at the oasis. The Arab kidnapper decides to decapitate them all and flee before the Dulacs realize their presence. Then, Teuns Stegmann plays his final card, leaving everyone in shock and disbelief.

3. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - THE SCARLET RIDERS Captain D’Arlan of the French Foreign Legion, along with twenty of his handpicked soldiers, sets out on a mission to bestow a medal upon an old Arab residing in the Sahara desert. The reason being that the Arab tribe has been maintaining peaceful relations with the Foreign Legion for over seven decades. However, on their way, they witness a caravan of camels being attacked by a contingent of one hundred and fifty Legion soldiers. As if the mere fact that the assailants were members of the Legion was not enough, Teuns Stegmann, the blond South African serving in the Legion, discovers something from the sand that deepens the mystery even further. Upon reaching the oasis of the Arab tribe they intend to honor, they are confronted by the very Arabs they had hoped to salute, who had been attacked by the peaceful Foreign Legion soldiers, resulting in the abduction of their young men, women, and children. Great confusion and chaos ensued, and D’Arlan decided to spend the night there before attempting to resolve the matter. However, during the night, D’Arlan and his men are overpowered by the same Legion soldiers and taken to a secret tent village in the desert. There, they are hypnotized by a German and coerced into providing the Arabs with training on a clandestine weapon. Shortly thereafter, El Karima, the white princess of the Dulacs, arrives and takes everyone to her capital, Dutra. She is still in love with private Teuns Stegmann, and due to his hypnotic state, she treats him in her palace while his comrades train the Arab soldiers. Following the “treason” of the Legion in attacking Arab tribes and abducting their people, all Arab tribes unite and march towards the Dini Salam fort, surrounding it in their thousands. Colonel Le Clerq, the commanding officer of Dini Salam, receives a perplexing message about his captain’s betrayal from the Arabs, and he hastens to prepare himself and his fort for the impending attack that will annihilate them. Teuns Stegmann is eventually released from his hypnotic state by one of his allies and recognizes that he must hurry to fort Dini Salam to alert the colonel about the situation as soon as possible. With his valor and ingenuity, Teuns ultimately manages to escape with his men from Dutra, but the Legion soldiers who had earlier kidnapped them, along with El Karima’s Dulacs, are hot on their heels. During their pursuit towards Dini Salam, they stumble upon something in a cave that stuns and astonishes everyone. In the interim, Dini Salam is attacked by approximately twenty thousand Arabs, and Colonel Le Clerq and Lieutenant Juin make every effort to prevent one brutal assault after another. However, aid from Headquarters is refused, and it appears that fort Dini Salam is fated to suffer defeat, but then something unusual occurs among the Arab hordes assembled around fort Dini Salam...

4. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - REVENGE OF THE DESERT A patrol of the French Foreign Legion, which had been scheduled to return, remains absent for three days beyond their anticipated arrival date. When they eventually appear at Fort Dini Salam, they are bound on horseback, subjected to brutal torture and mutilation, and quickly succumb to their wounds. One patrol member, a blond South African, is missing, having been captured by El Karima, the princess of the Dulacs, and taken to the capital, Dutra, to be executed on the hill of the mountain eagles. As he faces his impending death, the South African receives a reprieve from an old friend who also holds a grudge against El Karima. Before attempting to escape from Dutra, the South African, named Teuns, decides to steal the Dulac’s sacred “Sword of Dutra” from El Karima’s palace. Meanwhile, the commanding officers at Dini Salam receive orders from the High Command in France to eliminate El Karima, who has too much French blood on her hands. Captain D’Arlan, known as the Houdini of the Sahara, proposes an ingenious plan to Colonel Le Clerq, the commanding officer at Dini Salam. Although it is risky, it is a unique strategy that the French Foreign Legion has never attempted. With only sixty men at his disposal, D’Arlan leads his soldiers into the Sahara desert to execute his plan. Although they are successful in defeating the first Dulac patrol, D’Arlan’s secret plan is so shocking that El Karima sends out five hundred Arabs to confront them. Although the Legion becomes encircled, they are not defeated. In response, El Karima herself leads two thousand Dulacs in an attempt to eliminate D’Arlan and his sixty men in the desert. While this is happening, Teuns manages to steal the Sword of Dutra and escape, but he is subsequently recaptured. However, he escapes once more with the aid of a natural phenomenon, before finally reaching D’Arlan and his soldiers. As they face the attack from El Karima and her army of two thousand Dulacs, the Legion’s water, and ammunition begin to dwindle. In a moment of great desperation, Teuns takes matters into his own hands, doing something so unexpected and beyond belief that causes great chaos in the Sahara desert and takes everybody by surprise…

6. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - DEATH AT SUNRISE Together for the first time, the five comrades of the French Foreign Legion - Teuns Stegmann, Fritz Mundt, Jack Ritchie, Podolski the Pole, and Petacci the Italian - embarked on a patrol mission in the formidable Sahara desert when a lethal sandstorm suddenly engulfed them. Their chances of survival in the barren wasteland seemed bleak until they spotted two camels racing through the sand, which they decided to pursue. Finally, they reached one of the three clay huts in an unknown oasis before the storm unleashed its full fury. However, what they stumbled upon inside the hut shocked them to their core and put their lives in peril. As the sandstorm had deposited tons of sand over the oasis’s water source, the men were stranded without water and facing a slow, agonizing death. Nonetheless, they resolved to remain there until their last breath. Just then, a bomber plane appeared out of nowhere, and the five friends were taken captive by the soldiers aboard and transported to Dutra. There, they were thrown into a dungeon and stumbled upon something extraordinary hidden beneath the hay in their cell that rekindled their hope. But could they make use of it before it was too late? Brigitte Bonnet was still seeking revenge for her sister El Karima’s death, and she and her sheiks had decided on a fitting punishment for the legionnaires. They planned to execute them by beheading them with a ceremonial sword in front of all the tribes that had assembled on that momentous day. Despite the overwhelming odds, the Legion men were determined to devise an escape plan. However, their situation appeared hopeless. Then, as the execution began, a sudden, random shot rang out, causing a commotion in the crowd and temporarily suspending the proceedings. In the dungeon, a man who owed the French Foreign Legion a significant favor in the past arrived and regaled them with an incredible tale that was difficult to fathom. Faced with limited options, the five friends acquiesced and cooperated with him, leading to a fortuitous escape and the acquisition of deadly gas rifles. Nevertheless, the Dulac stronghold in the Atlas Mountains was swarming with hostile Arabs, and the bomber plane still posed a significant threat.

7. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - THUNDERING HOOVES Teuns Stegmann and some of his friends have escaped from the Dulac’s stronghold in the Atlas Mountains by utilizing a bomber plane. They landed with it in Dini Salam and informed Colonel Le Clerq, the commanding officer of Dini Salam, that they had several gas weapons on board. The gas weapons were meant for Brigitte Bonnet and her Dulac army for their attacks on the French forts, and they expected her to start her attacks soon. They received more shocking news when they found out that the holy Sword of Dutra had been stolen from the custody of the French headquarters. This alone was enough to cause a rebellion in the ranks of nearly all the Arabs in the desert, in their final battle in the desert, to end the French hold over them. Captain D’Arlan, known as the “Houdini of the desert,” presents a covert plan to Colonel Le Clerq. Accompanied by two hundred soldiers, D’Arlan departs for the desert to carry out his plan. Brigitte Bonnet, the princess and leader of the Dulacs, sends five hundred riders to the first French fort at Fort Laval, but to their surprise, the fort is empty, except for one drunken soldier who had stayed behind. He tells them a story that is hard to believe. They immediately seized the fort and planned to attack the next fort, Fort Petain. They get the surprise of their lives when they discover that Fort Laval is not quite as empty as they had initially thought. One of the Dulacs manages to escape death and destruction. Teuns, Fritz, and Jack Ritchie, are sent to hunt him down and keep him from raising the alarm with Brigitte’s main army, who are already on their way to attack Dini Salam. Before long, the men are overpowered by six armed renegades of the French Foreign Legion. However, they have something so important and unbelievable in their possession that Teuns knows they should escape as soon as possible to go and convey this momentous news to Colonel Le Clerq. Through a clever move, Teuns manages to free the three of them, but their flight and joy do not last long. A patrol of twenty Arabs tracks them and follows them mercilessly through the desert to retrieve the prize they had found. In the meantime, nobody knows what happened to D’Arlan, because he and his two hundred men have vanished without a trace. Then, thousands of Arab riders appear out of nowhere and surround Dini Salam. It is Brigitte Bonnet with her army, and they prepare for the final attack on Dini Salam in the morning. From the battlement in Dini Salam, Colonel Le Clerq spots a lone rider racing towards the main tent of Brigitte Bonnet. Not long after, she and three thousand riders depart for their fortress at Dutra in a cloud of dust. The nameless rider is escorted by sixty of Brigitte’s guards on pure white horses, and Colonel Le Clerq is none the wiser. He realizes that their position in Dini Salam is quite hopeless, but then he decides to take a considerable risk before the coming of the new dawn. A red ray of light shot up into the air behind the attackers is the sign they have been waiting for.

9. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - THE TRACKS ARE CALLING Sergeant Catroux’s patrol has been enduring the sweltering heat of the Sahara Desert for the past two weeks without any significant developments to report back to their base. However, as they make their way back to Dini Salam, Sergeant Catroux catches sight of a black bundle through his binoculars on one of the high dunes. A large flock of vultures circled above it. They decide to investigate and discover twelve mutilated bodies of Arabs lying on the sand, which confounds them as Arabs typically do not harm their own. The mystery deepens when Teuns Stegmann, a South African patrol member, discovers an item of pure gold in the sand for which there is no explanation. As they track the murderers, they find more clues that keep them on their trail. Not long after, they stumble upon an oasis where they discover a white man tied up in one of the empty huts, nearly devoured by rats. Just before he dies, he mutters something about an automatic rifle. The situation worsens for the patrol when they discover that one of their men has gone missing. They eventually manage to track down the mysterious attackers again, and after a few hours, they come across a lost horse in the desert, which seems out of place. They capture the horse, and Teuns Stegmann is sent on horseback to do reconnaissance in front of them. Shortly after, they find another beautiful black horse that appears to belong to a sheik, but they are unable to capture it. Teuns is hot on the trail of the attackers, but his horse gets shot and killed, and he is forced to fight for his life. He survives the attack but is forced to dress like a Dulac to blend in and wander into the camp of the attackers. By this time, he knows to whom the items belong and tries to solve the mystery of the automatic rifle while also attempting to discover what happened to his missing comrade. Teuns tries to bluff his way in, but his attempt fails, and he gets captured and put before an impossible choice. From there, events rapidly unfold, and an airplane arrives at a critical stage, causing one of the people in the camp to die mysteriously. This allows Teuns to live another day, try to solve the riddles, and free himself from his incarceration. He would never have imagined finding the things he did there, and at the most critical moment, one of those things changed his life forever.

11. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - REVENGE OF THE SABRE During the Second World War, Teuns Stegmann’s brother was shot down over the Sahara Desert by a German fighter plane. This was also the main reason why Teuns joined the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara. To search for his lost brother by temporarily giving up his beautiful wine farm in the Hex Valley. While on a short leave of absence and enjoying a drink with his loyal fellow soldiers in a restaurant in Algiers, a mysterious, short man appears and asks to speak to Teuns alone. However, his friends warn him against it. The man tells Teuns the shocking news that his brother is still alive and that he is willing to escort him to his brother, as his brother had tasked him with finding Teuns. By using the very thing Teuns treasures, the man manages to convince him. Teuns decides to apply for special leave to accompany the man, but Fritz Mundt has other plans, and a deadly fight ensues in the bar between Arabs and Legion men. The men fight for their lives, and when the police arrive, they discover that Teuns has disappeared without a trace. Teuns finds himself in the clutches of a villain and three henchmen, who give him a choice. Deliver the Sabre of Dutra, worth millions of rands, which Teuns had hidden at an oasis long ago, or his brother will die. They shackle his hands and feet and take him to the oasis in the desert, where Teuns must find the sabre for them. He tries to stall them to gain extra time for an escape plan. He cleverly turns the villains on one another, and one after the another, they get eliminated. As Teuns reckons that the time has finally come for him to escape, approximately three hundred Dulacs arrive. The Sword of Dutra belongs to them, and their sheik makes it impossible for Teuns to escape. However, they have not encountered the bravery and resourcefulness of this tall, blonde South African before, and he concocts a brilliant plan. If everything works out exactly as he wants, his plan will give him a slim chance of getting away alive. However, he is desperate, and this might be his last chance. When all seems lost, Teuns executes his extraordinary plan. When the Dulacs finally grasp his clever plan and want to attack him, he plays his last trump card...

5. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - THE FORT IS QUIET Teuns Stegmann, Fritz Mundt, and Jack Ritchie were involved in a bar fight with some Arabs and, as a result, were temporarily transferred to Fort Laval, another French fort located in the Sahara desert, as a form of punishment. When Lieutenant Juin and his relief columns arrived at Fort Laval, they immediately recognized that something was amiss. The fort was empty, and the gates were wide open. While the rest of the men waited outside, Teuns and Fritz joined Lieutenant Juin to investigate the situation inside the fort. However, they were quickly overpowered by Brigitte Bonnet, sister of the previous princess of the Dulacs, who sought revenge for her sister’s death and wanted to destroy the French Foreign Legion. The thirty men, including Teuns and Fritz, were locked up in the sleeping quarters of the fort without food or water. Soon after, they began to hear bloodcurdling screams of pain, and shortly after that, a soldier was carried out by men wearing rubber gloves. Brigitte Bonnet revealed to them that she possessed a highly secret weapon she wanted to test on all the Legion soldiers. Teuns was selected as the next guinea pig for the cruel experiment, and shortly after, his lifeless body was also carried out of the fort. Fritz and Jack were permitted to retrieve water and food one last time before they were shot dead under the pretense of an escape attempt. The remaining Legion men became increasingly desperate from hunger and thirst and began to hear strange noises coming from the floor of their sleeping quarters, sounding like Morse code. Brigitte Bonnet searched the fort twice to locate the culprits responsible for the noises but found nothing. The following day, Professor Benesj arrived with more soldiers in a cargo plane to test the impact of the deadly secret weapon on the Legion men. The despondent men awaited help before they were taken to the desert for experimentation. As the final arrangements were being made, chaos erupted in Fort Laval, and one shocking incident followed another.

10. SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES - MADEMOISELLE JULIE About two thousand Dulacs have surrounded Fort Laval and are demanding that Captain Gaston Lefevre, the commanding officer of the French Foreign Legion, surrender the fort to them without any opposition. This places him in a very delicate situation because the Dulacs allege that they have kidnapped his daughter, Julie Lefevre. They say that they will kill her if he and all his soldiers do not immediately vacate the fort. The Arab sheik promises him that he is only interested in the fort and nothing else. To the utter dismay of his men, Captain Lefevre decides to grant the sheik’s request. He asks for a volunteer to go and fetch his daughter and make the final arrangements. The South African, Teuns Stegmann, is the only man who steps forward and takes the dangerous task upon himself. While Teuns is en route to the Dulac camp just outside the fort, Sergeant Zhakof decides to take over the command of the fort and place Captain Lefevre under arrest. He signals Teuns to return to the fort at once, but before Teuns can reach the fort, he gets captured by the Dulacs. In the main tent of the sheik, he meets Julie Lefevre, one of the most beautiful women he has ever seen. The sheik gives Teuns only fifteen minutes to return to the fort and demands the fort’s surrender. Otherwise, Julie will die. Teuns never returns, but to the amazement of the sheik, Captain Lefevre arrives out of nowhere. He takes him to the fort to demand the surrender of the fort. When they reach the fort, though, they find it empty, to their utter shock and surprise. Not even one soldier is left hiding there. They struggle to unravel this secret. How could all the soldiers have slipped through the Dulac lines positioned around the fort and summarily disappeared without a trace? Sheik Feisan orders Captain Lefevre to accompany him to the armory, as it is the weapons and ammunition he wants to lay his hands on. But once again, the sheik is heavily disappointed because what he finds there is not what he had expected to find. If that is not enough, something happens in the armory that places the Dulacs in a very tight spot. Lead quickly flies in all directions, and one tense situation follows another, causing huge frustration and misery for the sheik and his followers. Standing between the sheik and the things he had come for, one very brave and intelligent person thwarts his plans, one after another...

FOOTSTEPS TO DEATH - SAHARA ADVENTURE SERIES In the second narrative out of the pen of Meiring Fouche, the French Foreign Legion meets up again with El Karima, the white princess of the Dulak nation. She had not forgotten the humiliation she had suffered six months ago, by the hands of the tall, blonde, South African, by the name of Teuns Stegmann. Not only had he betrayed her love for him, but he had also nearly destroyed her whole nation. On one of their routine patrols through the hot Sahara desert, Sergeant Vermeer and his soldiers discover two dead horses that had been ridden by women. To their horror, they find out that one of the women is the wife of Colonel Le Clerq, the commanding officer of Dini Salam. Shortly afterwards, a sheik arrives at the fort and demands that Teuns Stegmann should accompany him to Dutra, the stronghold of El Karima’s Dulaks. In exchange for Teuns, she will release the wife of Colonel Le Clerq. Colonel Le Clerq refuses the demand, so Teuns Stegmann has no choice but to escape out of the fort, with the Arab, against his commanding officer’s wishes. In Dutra, Teuns quickly finds out that El Karima is a woman who breaks all of her promises, when he does not respond to her love for him. Not even when he fights a giant man with his bare hands,would she allow the colonel’s wife to be released. El Karima then decides to have Teuns, and the French wife of Colonel Le Clerq, killed in Dini Salam, by having them torn apart between two horses, but that is a fact not known by the commanders in Dini Salam. Help comes in the form of an unexpected source, when someone tells them about El Karima’s plans. She requests that the whole garrison of Dini Salam should vacate the fort, unarmed, and only then she will release the French wife of Colonel Le Clerq. Captain D’Arlan, the Houdini of the desert, has his hands full to try and rescue the soldiers and the prisoners. As if all of that isn’t enough, Colonel Le Clerq does something that shocks them to the core…

This is the first story in the Sahara Adventure series, in which you will meet, among others, Teuns Stegmann. A South African who joined the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara Desert, to avenge the death of his brother who was killed there. The story begins when a Legionnaire is fortunate enough to survive an attack by the Arabs in the desert. He speaks of a white woman who apparently commanded the attack on the French patrol. Colonel Le Clerq of Fort Dini Salam decides to immediately retaliate. He sends his faithful captain D’Arlan with two hundred men, including Teuns and his companions, to break the so-called "white witch's" power in the Atlas Mountains before she has too much French blood on her hands. Very soon, however, the column ends up in serious trouble. They are trapped by the Doelaks in the desert, without a drop of water to drink. And, as if this is not bad enough, they will later be forced to work in a radioactive Uranium mine with some of them being sent to the “Hill of the Eagles”. Will Teuns’s experience together with D’Arlan’s ingenuity, who is considered “the Houdini of the desert,” be enough to save them from their predicament? Read the exciting story to find out for yourself.