In the Foreign Legion Part 17

It was a miracle. We were so well drilled and each individual knew his part so well that it only took a few seconds to pitch a tent. With surprising quickness the long rows of soldiers were turned into a tent encampment and five minutes afterwards the officers' tents were pitched in a final row. In the meantime Madame la Cantiniere had hauled out of her sutler's cart folding tables and benches, ready to do a roaring trade with the tired-out legionnaires. The heavy Algerian wine was indeed a blessing after such a march and the poor devil who in these marching days did not possess a few coppers felt poor indeed.

In ten minutes the narrow trenches for cooking were dug out and in twenty places camp fires flared up simultaneously. The patrol marched round and round the white "soldiers' city." The food, consisting of macaroni and tinned meat, was greedily devoured.

After this the quiet of utter exhaustion reigned in the camp. The legionnaires lay huddled together in the tiny tents, on blankets spread out on the ground, covered with their cloaks, while the knapsacks served for a pillow. The rifles were brought into the tents and tied firmly together with a long chain by the corporal of each squad, who fastened the end of the chain to his wrist as a further precaution, for the Arabs had a habit of creeping through the lines on a dark night and stealing the much-coveted weapons from the tents. The patrols of the Legion have standing orders to challenge an Arab only once at night and then to fire. Even in this first night the watch caught a thief. The Arab was badly treated and he was delivered up to the civil authorities in the village the next morning in a horrible condition.

By seven o'clock in the evening the whole camp was fast asleep, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

An hour after midnight, in the flittering light of a magnificent starry sky, the companies formed up and continued the route to the South. This march lasted eight days. On one day the troops covered forty kilometres, making up the average again the next day with fifty kilometres. The monotony of this march and the physical strength and endurance it claimed of each of us cannot be described. At last, at the beginning of the real desert, we depended on the oasis-wells with their poor supply of water to quench our thirst, and the want of water was added to our sufferings. At night, when starting on the march, the field-flasks were filled. The distribution of water was conducted under sharp supervision. Every man got two litres of dirty, muddy water.

Company orders warned us to save up half a litre for the morrow's "soupe." On camping next day every legionnaire had to give up half a litre of water to the mess of his company for cooking purposes. Whoever had emptied his field-flask during the heat and weariness of the march and was unable to deliver any water only got a handful of raw rice given him; he had to get it cooked as best he could.

This is one of the many brutal rules in force on these marches and there is method in it. Contrary to most of the legionnaires, I have always seen the necessity for the hard marching discipline. Troops that have to march in such droughty country must be able to economise their water rations. This is simply a law of necessity. There is another brutal feature of the Legion's marches: cruel at first sight but it is really kindness to the men. A legionnaire who faints on the march is tied to the baggage-cart. A pole is pushed through the sides of the cart at about the height of a man's arms and the legionnaire roped to it by the shoulders. The pole keeps him in a standing position--the cart rolls on. He either has to march or he is dragged along the uneven ground. Seeing the thing done for the first time, I was filled with indignation at the apparent brutality of this torture. But afterwards I understood. In the wars in the South the fighting value of the Foreign Legion depends solely on its marching capability. Very often the ambulance is not able to follow. If the legionnaire remains behind the company in the desert, if only a kilometre, he is irretrievably lost.

Hundreds and hundreds of men incapable of marching have found a terrible end in this way. The Arab women, who are far more cruel than the men, soon surround the helpless man, who suffers a painful death, after being horribly mutilated and disfigured.

Separation from the troops means death. This was not only the case at the time of the great Arab mutiny, which affected the whole of Algeria, but is the same to-day. Peace between the French and the Arabs down in the far south of Algeria is a myth. At the small military stations on the borders of the Sahara little skirmishes are a daily occurrence.

When the station is alarmed and the thirty or forty men garrisoned there set out to pursue the pillaging Bedouin tribes, every legionnaire knows well that now he must march, or if he cannot march any more, he must die. March or die!

Death at the hands of Arab women! The legionnaire does not count the Bedouin or the Arab as a personal enemy; he is rather grateful to the robber of the desert for being the cause of a little change and excitement in the terribly monotonous life on the border stations. But upon the Arab woman the old legionnaire looks as upon a devil. He thinks of the h.e.l.lish tortures that wounded men have suffered at the hands of Arab women, he remembers the mutilated bodies of legionnaires who had died an awful death after being tortured for many hours.

In the fourth year of his service, Ra.s.sedin had been ordered to one of the little Sahara stations, where he had seen much of the cruelty of the Arab women. Once a scouting party of his detachment found a skeleton in the sand of the desert. Shreds of a uniform showed that the skeleton had once been a soldier of the Legion. The skeleton's head was lying between the legs.... Another time the corporal of Ra.s.sedin's squad was missed at the morning call. In the evening he had taken a walk just in the neighbourhood of the station and had not returned.

After a short search they found him.

"He was dead. But even in death I could see the frightful agony in his wide-open eyes," Ra.s.sedin declared. "Both legs were broken and bent backwards. The lower part of his body was slashed to pieces, but none of his wounds was deadly. They must have tormented him for hours. From that time we made no difference between men and women in fighting, but shot down every one. How did we know that it had really been women who had tortured the corporal? The dead man clutched a piece of a gla.s.s bracelet in his hand, which he must have torn off the arm of his tormentor in the struggle. Such bangles are only worn by the Bedouin women."

That is the reason why the legionnaire has come to look upon the Arab woman as the incarnation of the Devil. I have already recorded the story of the soldier with the skull tattooed on his forehead, who showed me a tobacco-pouch made out of a woman's breast....

As an example of unnecessary, quite unjustifiable brutality I will tell you what I had to suffer personally during the manoeuvre march.

Whether freezing under the thin blanket in the cold icy nights in that climate of quickly changing temperatures was the cause, or the bad water, or the physical over-exertion of the marches, at any rate I suffered from tormenting pains in the stomach. Every few minutes during the march I got cramps and could only painfully drag myself along, doubled up like a worm. When we got to camp my strength was done. I went to the doctor's tent accompanied by the "caporal du jour" with the sick list. The doctor, an army surgeon, whose name I unfortunately have forgotten, pulled the book angrily out of the corporal's hand, and roared at him:

"On the march there are no sick men. Your company ought to know that."

The corporal shrugged his shoulders. "By order of the captain!" he said laconically.

Now the doctor turned to me.

"What's wrong?"

I briefly described the cramps in my stomach, and emphasised that I only wished to ask for something to relieve the pain, an opiate, perhaps, and that I intended to continue my duties.

He looked at me for a moment, and then said contemptuously:

"What do you know about opiates? To judge from your accent you are an Englishman."

"No, monsieur le docteur, a German."

"Well, I will tell you something. We know these little tricks. All the same if you're English, German or Hottentot, I take you to be quite a common simulator. I shall give you a certificate of being 'non-malade'--not sick. Non-malade, corporal."

I was crushed. Astonishment fought with anger. At the very moment when the doctor was speaking to me I was almost doubled up with pain. "Not sick!" That meant not only the loss of an opiate, but also heavy punishment. Any one who is declared by the doctor as "not sick" is at once held guilty of simulation, and punished with the usual four days'

imprisonment.

I saluted and said:

"Non-malade, monsieur le docteur? Without any examination?"

"Va-t-en!" roared the surgeon. "Get out of this."

The corporal shook his head as we went through the camp, and advised me to be patient. He believed that I was in pain, and he knew that that "pig of a doctor" had already sent many a man to his doom. But a complaint would only make matters worse, he said. I did not answer and thought of the coming night. I should be tied to a peg in front of the watch-tent, and would be obliged to lie on the bare ground in the icy cold without any covering because I had been imprudent enough to ask for a little medicine. Maddening anger arose within me. When the corporal had made his report, my captain sent for me:

"You have not been punished so far?"

"No."

"What is the reason of your simulating?"

Then I lost control over myself, and in a fit of excitement hurled reproaches and accusations at the officer. The doctor was a fool and a disgrace to his profession. His diagnosis was an infamous and deliberate lie, and it was a disgrace that such people held authority.

I do not remember everything I yelled out then, but it was a nice collection of the choicest epithets--rank insubordination! At length my attack of mad fury ended with my demanding to be taken before the commander of the regiment, and I threatened (this must have been very ridiculous) to complain to the French Minister of War.

The captain listened to me quietly and said:

"I believe that you have been badly treated. I will write a letter for you to the a.s.sistant surgeon, who will give you medicine. I should not advise you to send in a complaint to the regiment."

Then after a pause:

"What do you really expect? What do you want? We are in the Legion. You are a legionnaire--don't forget that again, legionnaire!"

If I had not in my complete loss of self-control ventured to air my opinions in language unheard of in the Legion, I should very likely have left the ominous peg in front of the guard-tent as a dead man.

Thanks to the opium pills of the a.s.sistant surgeon I was able, however, to march the next day with the others, but not without exerting every spark of my will-power. The time from one milestone to the other seemed endless. The expectation of the five minutes' rest at the fifth milestone was the power that drove me forward. I counted my steps in order to make me forget the pain in the mechanical occupation of counting. One hundred and twenty steps represented one hundred metres; when I had counted ten times one hundred and twenty, we had covered a kilometre, the fifth part of the road to rest....

At last we reached our paradise, the few minutes of exhausted rest. And then the torment began afresh....

The manoeuvres in a desert covered with peculiarly sharp stones, three hundred kilometres south of Sidi-bel-Abbes, occupied exactly eight hours, and from the standpoint of the Legion they were superfluous and consequently useless. The development of the firing-line, the skilled search for cover, the rush of the bayonet attack, the understanding of all the orders, the complete discipline under fire, are things which, in the never-ending practical military training of this fighting regiment, become part and parcel of the legionnaire's flesh and blood. The closing manoeuvre was (I heard our captain discussing these matters with Lieutenant Garde) nothing more than a small private entertainment on the part of our colonel, who wished to show off with his regiment; a military amateur dramatic performance. On the other hand, the commander-general had said to his adjutant that it was a great pleasure to him to give his legionnaires an "airing." The regiment had already idled about barracks for six months, and might in the end forget that its real home was amongst the sand of the desert, and that it had no other object in life than to march, march a lot, to go on marching.

The legionnaires knew this fad of the general's well enough, and never called him anything else but the "marching pig." The fat sergeant of our first "peloton" used to say, with great lack of respect:

"As soon as I see the fellow I feel tired...."

When the general was still colonel and in command of the first regiment, he once met a drunken legionnaire in one of the side streets of Sidi-bel-Abbes. The man, only just capable of saluting, got the mad idea to address his colonel.

"Eh, mon colonel," he stammered, "I am still very thirsty. Ten sous, mon colonel."

The colonel treated him to a stony stare.

This look out of the hard eyes turned the legionnaire sober in a moment, and a brilliant idea struck him.

"You know I am the best marcher in my company, mon colonel."

At this the colonel smiled and gave him a five-franc piece.