Remy Baudouin

Remy Baudouin was a Belgian soldier and friend of Indiana Jones during World War I.

First encounters
Remy Baudouin worked as cook on a ship out of Belgium in the early years of the 20th century. While docked at a Mexican port one day the young Remy met Lupe, the two fell in love, and married, opening a cantina together. For a few years they were happy, until the Federales came and killed Lupe. After that Remy took up with the revolutionaries under Pancho Villa, as he not only desired revenge but had nowhere else to go in life. It was with the revolution in 1916 that Remy met the 16-year-old Indiana Jones. The two developed a fast friendship. When Remy witnessed in a newsreel the devastation wrought on his home country of Belgium and decided to head to Europe to defend his home, Indy chose to go with him. And so the two set off together for Veracruz, and the War.



The war years
After a brief stop over in Ireland, Remy and Indy arrived in London to enlist in the Belgian army. Celebrating their enlistment in the Café Belge afterwards, Remy met the war widow Suzette. After getting rid of Indy&mdash;encouraging him to find his own war widow&mdash;Remy engaged in a flirtation with the mother of four. By the time he met Indy again at the train station where they were to be shipped out, he was married.



Remy and Indy saw their first action in Flanders when a disastrous attack killed all their commanding officers in their unit. The surviving Belgians were assigned to a French unit in the Somme. Here, after a successful attack, followed by a routing German counterattack, Remy was injured, and lost sight of Indy. Somehow he made it back to Allied lines where, some weeks later, he was reunited with Indy who had meanwhile escaped from an enemy prison camp.

Indy was assigned as a motorcycle courier, while Remy was sent to Verdun. At this point, Remy was severely injured, and spent some weeks in an army field hospital before being sent back out, yet again to Verdun. Marching into an attack in which he knew he would surely die, his life was spared at the last moment thanks to a desperate decision by Indy, who destroyed the orders that would send Remy and his unit to their deaths.

Reunited in the trenches, Indy got himself and Remy a much needed break by arranging for a leave in Paris. During leave in Paris, Remy indulged himself with the local prostitutes. He emerged from a heady week of debauchery to find Indy arrested, prompting their superiors to send back to the front; however, Indy arranged through his contacts for a transfer to Africa. Remy was thrilled, as Africa was one place he'd always wanted to visit.

African turnaround
In October 1916, Remy had gotten used to following the talented, energetic, younger Indiana, so he reacted with much annoyance when Indy managed to get them totally lost on their way to Beligan forces at Lake Victoria. Meeting up with British troops, Remy ended up serving in the beachfront trenches in German East Africa, while Indy went on a mission with some crazy old British men to blow up a German artillery train. After completing that mission, the old men decided to help 'escort' Indy and Remy back to Belgian forces, but were actually on a mission to capture German field marshal Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. In their plan, they masqueraded as European settlers, and Remy was forced to dress as a woman. The disguises failed and the entire force was captured by von Lettow-Vorbeck. After a jailbreak, Remy and Indy managed to capture von Lettow-Vorbeck and escape in a hot air observation balloon. After Indy shot down their balloon, Remy and Indy escorted their prisoner on foot, using him to also provide local survival knowledge. Eventually, German agents recovered von Lettow-Vorbeck but allowed Remy and Indy to escape, and the duo finally made it to their unit on Lake Victoria.

There, under the command of Major Boucher, Remy, a lieutenant, watched as Indy started to become a mature if slightly vicious officer. While crossing the Congo, Remy participated in the mutiny against his commanding officer over the treatment of an orphan, and managed to survive the illness that killed half of his unit as they crossed from the east to the west coast of the African continent. Once they reached their destination at Port-Gentil to pick up artillery and machine guns needed to take Tabora, they were denied troops to make the return trip. At this point in January 1917, with only twelve men, and no hope of making it back to Lake Victoria, Remy gave into despair and hopelessness. Indy too was unhappy. Their friendship was severely tested, with Remy delivering a right hook to his superior officer's jaw after Indy tried to pull rank on him.



Nevertheless they went on. With jiggers burrowing under Remy's skin and the whole group feverish, they didn't get far. Luckily, they were rescued by German humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, who had a field hospital where it was most needed, in equatorial Africa. Jiggers had lain eggs in Remy's feet, and he lost two of his toes. Jones realized the foolhardiness of the mission and apologized to his bed-ridden friend. Schweitzer turned Indy around, back into being a humanitarian rather then an officer, but was tragically evicted from from his hospital by the French authorities who couldn't see past his nationality. As Indy and Remy watched, Schweitzer's patients stumbled out of the wards, and back into the jungle to die while Schweitzer and his wife were arrested and sent back to Port-Gentil to be deported. With their guns no longer needed at Tabora, Indy and Remy received orders in Port-Gentil to escort the heavy weapons back to Europe. They bid farewell to the Schweitzers, and Remy convinced a French soldier to carry Mrs. Schweitzer's luggage.

Secret service
Remy and Indy, after Schwietzer's lessons, decided to do all they could to end the war by enlisting in the secret service: first the Belgian, and then the far more efficient French. Because he was a good cook, Remy was assigned to his hometown of Brussels, where he was to become the main French contact with the Belgian Resistance, known as "the White Lady". He was given a new identity, and he and Indy were forced to part company. As Remy was shipped away, Indy's words of advice were simply, "Stay alive."



Remy's important duties in Brussels lasted for two years, until the end of the war. In a final mission in the last days of the war, he was reunited with Indy on a mission to arrest an Indian officer in the trenches on the front line. This assignment led to a postwar adventure, a search for Alexander the Great's lost diamond: the Peacock's Eye.

One final adventure
Indy and Remy returned to London, where Remy was reunited with Suzette, whom he had seen for only one week in the past three years. After a week home, Remy convinced Suzette to fund a scheme to track down the Peacock's Eye. He dragged along Indy, who proved to be far more proficient at treasure hunting than Remy.



Their adventure took them to Alexandria, the jungles of India, and finally an island in the South China Sea. Frustrated at every turn, yet always with one more tantalizing clue at arm's length, Remy became obsessed; meanwhile, all Indy wanted was to finally go home and start studying archaeology. Indiana is finally persuaded by Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski to forsake the quest, which could easily have lasted years, and follow his heart, which was leading him to higher education. With that, Indy and Remy parted company; while Indy returned home to Princeton, Remy continued on to a Buddhist temple in Nepal.



Indy eventually found the Peacock's Eye, though whether Remy was involved is unknown. In a night club in 1935 Shanghai, Indy traded the ashes of Nurhachi for the diamond, which had been in the ownership of the Chinese gangster Lao Che. However, after obtaining the diamond, Indy learned that Che had poisoned his drink. The diamond was lost somewhere in the club due to Indy's mad dash to get the antidote. After briefly seeing the diamond, Jones began writing a letter to his old friend, but never sent it, keeping it in his journal.

Personality and traits
Although Remy married Suzette in May of 1916, he didn't see her again until the end of the war. During wartime, Remy was unfaithful to his wife, as he saw many other women.

Behind the scenes
Belgian actor Ronny Coutteure portrayed Remy in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.

Appearances

 * Spring Break Adventure
 * South of the Border
 * Mid-Atlantic, April 1916
 * Love's Sweet Song
 * Love's Sweet Song
 * Trenches of Hell
 * Demons of Deception
 * Demons of Deception
 * Phantom Train of Doom
 * Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life
 * Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life
 * Attack of the Hawkmen
 * Treasure of the Peacock's Eye

Notes and references
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