In the Foreign Legion Part 22

These Ghetto transactions have an underlying principle of their own: furnish as poor goods as possible at as high a price as you can get!

The buyer is already nervous at the prospect of his flight, so, in spite of all, he pays an absolutely fabulous price. Fifty francs is usually the price of an old suit, of which the trousers come, perhaps, from Germany, the waistcoat from France, and the coat from Italy, and which would be very dear at ten francs. The "business friend" next claims a gold piece for allowing the legionnaire to change his clothes in his house; a further gold piece arranges for the care of his uniform, which a legionnaire who is at all careful will not be persuaded so easily to leave in the lurch. For the deserter captured without his uniform is tried for theft by court-martial, and the military tribunal in Oran always pa.s.ses sentence of a long term of penal servitude. But the man of Israel is willing enough--provided he gets a gold piece for it--to take care that the uniform and entire equipment of his customer is safely preserved for the poor regiment.

Neatly bound together the uniform lies idle for a few days. Then, one dark night, a youth from the Ghetto throws the parcel over the wall of the barracks. A ticket has been pinned on beforehand, on which the name and number of the owner has been written so that the gentlemen in the quarter-master's office needn't cudgel their brains wondering how to register this parcel from heaven.

All so considerate!

The runaway, however, wanders through the alleys of the Jewish quarter and the streets of Sidi-bel-Abbes, taking great care to avoid instinctively saluting the officers and non-coms he meets. His money, with which he bought his civilian clothes, and of which there is still enough for his railway journey and pa.s.sage, is a mighty help to him.

He must not attract notice anywhere; he must bridle his tongue, lest the curious French which is individual to the Legion betray him, and he must act the role of the harmless traveller to a nicety. He naturally cannot begin his journey from the station of Sidi-bel-Abbes, which is watched by a commando of the Legion's non-commissioned officers day and night. No, he must go on foot to one of the stations on the way to his destination; the farther from Sidi-bel-Abbes he is, the less likely he is to attract attention. So he makes a long night march, keeping a sharp look-out for the patrols of Arab police. Then comes the railway journey to a coast town. The only two towns that come in question are Oran and the town of Algiers, since regular lines of steamers only run from these two ports. Oran is mostly avoided, because it is so near to Sidi-bel-Abbes, and because there are so many of the Legion's officers to be met with there. The journey to Algiers, on the other hand, is very expensive, and it often happens that the truant's money is exhausted, and he lands there penniless. In this case German legionnaires usually go to the German Consulate, but only receive the stereotyped reply that there is no money at the Consul's disposal "for purposes like this."

The Consulate is not only powerless to help them, but, into the bargain, is one of the best and most efficient mouse-traps a French gendarme could want. Old legionnaires always give you the same warning: "For the Lord's sake don't go to the Consul in Algiers." If, in spite of this, a deserter does go to the Consul, he is merely told that he cannot possibly gain a.s.sistance there.

And now the trap begins to do its work. The police in Algiers know well enough that there are a great many escaped legionnaires among the men who come to the Consulate. When any one comes out looking in the least bit suspicious, they receive him tenderly and inquire lovingly about his papers. The deserter is then done for....

I should like to know whether the German Consul in Algiers has the slightest idea that, in all innocence, he has been the ruin of so many German legionnaires.

The runaway whose money has been swallowed up by the railway journey and who cannot pay his pa.s.sage over sea, must in most cases give himself up for lost. It is generally only a question of a few days till he is arrested. A careless word in a wine-shop, a lame excuse when he seeks work and can show no papers--in short, the whole system of denunciation which is so flouris.h.i.+ng in Algiers very soon hands him over to the police.

And even when he has money enough to pay his pa.s.sage on one of the Mediterranean lines, and has his ticket safe in his pocket, he is not yet in safety. Most of the runaways who have succeeded in reaching Algiers make the mistake of taking a pa.s.sage on one of the German or English lines of steamers, and is arrested at the eleventh hour as he goes on board. It is on the foreign s.h.i.+ps that they keep a specially sharp eye. On the French boats, on the other hand, which ply between Algiers and Oran, you don't need any papers or even a pa.s.sport, because the authorities look upon these boats as an internal French means of communication.

The route from Algiers to Tunis is absolutely safe for the deserter.

There, n.o.body notices him in the enormous rush of the Levantine traffic, and he needs no pa.s.sport to cross to an Italian port. But the expense is enormous.

Among the legionnaires who desert, the number of those who can escape in civilian clothes by the comparatively safe way of the railway and the Mediterranean boats is very small. Travelling costs money.... A flight over the town of Algiers needs really quite a little capital--150 francs at least. This is a very low estimate, for the purchase of clothes alone takes about seventy francs. How few of the men in the Legion can raise such a sum like this!

In most cases they are poor devils who have no one in the wide world who could or would send them a sum of this sort; most of them never had a franc to their name while they were in the Legion, to say nothing of a gold coin. Men like this are seldom successful in their flight, even when they spend months and months in preparation and discuss their route a hundred times over with the veterans of the Legion. They don't run blindly into the desert like the poumpistes, who don't really want more than a few days of runaway freedom. Their way is also to the coast. In uniform! On foot!

In these two expressions there is expressed the deserter's whole difficulty. Although the distance from Sidi-bel-Abbes to the coast is only about one hundred kilometres, not a very great stretch for a legionnaire who is accustomed to long marches, it is beset with danger for every yard of the way. The runaway can be recognised a long way off by his uniform. True, he only marches by night. But the starlit nights of Algeria are very bright, and he has to creep from rock to rock and from hollow to hollow, to avoid being seen by the patrols. By day he lies motionless in the sand. He suffers hunger and thirst for days on end, and lives on fruits, which he steals when hunger drives him to risk discovery.

When he has reached the coast in safety, the game of hide-and-seek begins anew. He often lies for days in some little coast town, where the Mediterranean tramp-steamers touch, concealed in a shed or in some old boat on the sh.o.r.e, till a s.h.i.+p carrying the German or English flag comes into port. He swims out to this s.h.i.+p in the middle of the night, climbs on board, and hides in one of the s.h.i.+p's boats, or in the coal-bunker. He first makes his appearance when the s.h.i.+p is on the high seas as a more or less pleasant surprise for the captain. He is now safe--they can hardly throw him overboard. There are, moreover, a great many captains who shut their eyes when a runaway of this sort is discovered, and even if the s.h.i.+p is still lying in port do not give him up. There are some even who carry their humanity so far as to stand a certain amount of unpleasantness with the authorities for his sake.

These are mostly German s.h.i.+ps, and above all, s.h.i.+ps from Hamburg.

Deserters from the Legion land over and over again in the old Hansa town, and again and again you may read in the Hamburg daily papers that deserters have arrived with such and such a s.h.i.+p, and have been taken charge of by the police authorities. Now and then they go just as they stand, in their uniform, with bayonet and all the rest of it, to the paper's offices and tell the worried editor about their life and sorrows in the Legion....

These are those who have had luck; the tiny proportion of penniless deserters who are successful in their flight. Not freedom but prison awaits the large majority at the finish of their attempt. The Arab gendarmes are paid a bonus on the deserters they arrest, which amounts to many thousand francs a year!

The regiment is acquainted with many other means of desertion, if by "desertion" you understand every means by which the deserter can free himself from work in the Legion. In the terrible heat of summer, when the difference in temperature between day and night is simply enormous, sickness, in many a grim form, stalks through Algeria. The drinking water becomes infected, and typhoid sets in: the legionnaire who is tired of active service can be pretty sure of a long spell of illness.

But to make quite certain he helps matters artificially--with an extraordinary measure in vogue in the Legion: he drinks a mixture of absinthe and milk. Every veteran in the Legion swears this h.e.l.lish drink never fails to bring on an attack of fever! The object of this suicidal method of desertion is naturally to avoid work in the Legion by a long spell of sickness--its object is always attained; mostly so effectively that the man never takes his place on parade again, but rests for ever in the Legion's cemetery!

In the same way self-mutilation may be met with: the chopping off of a finger which renders the legionnaire unfit for active service. Others simulate illness or madness. This the suspiciousness and brutality of the doctors in the Legion renders very difficult. Now and then a legionnaire with a will of iron manages to play the comedy of madness successfully.

The means employed are sometimes rather drastic. Some years before I entered the Legion, a Belgian served in my company who shammed for a whole year. He dirtied the men's quarters in such a fas.h.i.+on that his comrades fell upon him and ill-treated him in every possible way, but he merely answered their curses and reprisals with an inane laugh.

Neither curses nor blows seemed to make the least difference to him.

This fellow had grit. He played his part as a lunatic, as unpleasant for himself as well as for others, without ever wavering. They shut him up, they compelled him to do the hardest work, they brought him into hospital and wellnigh starved him or tortured him with drugs; he was confined for weeks in the dark, he was sent to the hospital at Daya and treated with cold water--all in vain! His method and his smile remained unchanged! After thirteen months the doctors felt themselves checkmated, gave up the job as hopeless and certified him mad. The colonel, purely out of curiosity, sent for the lunatic, who must needs have an attack of his particular malady in the regimental bureau itself.

As soon, however, as he was home again in Belgium, he wrote postcards to the officers and to several members of his company.... He had foiled them all and they were the idiots! The most unmitigated a.s.s of them in his humble opinion was the regimental doctor! If possible the surgeon-major in the Algerian corps was a bigger fool still!

Tremendous energy is, however, necessary to bring a sham of this sort to a successful issue, and cases like this const.i.tute a tiny minority.

The doctors in the Foreign Legion are both clever and suspicious and the result is that there is always a good dose of Legion's brutality included in their treatment. All those who reported themselves sick, and hadn't some outward and visible sign of their ailment to show, were treated from beginning to end as shams.

Our medecin-major was an especial terror to the legionnaires. I only came into personal contact with him twice; the first time was on a manoeuvre march when he refused me the medicine I wanted, and the other time was when I was vaccinated. There was an epidemic of small-pox in Sidi-bel-Abbes, and the whole of the Legion had to be vaccinated as quickly as possible. We were marched by companies into the great drill-hall where Monsieur le Major and his a.s.sistants were at work. Such a method of vaccination as this man employed I have never seen in my life and I have been vaccinated at least a dozen times. I am acquainted with every method of vaccination, from the gentle lancet-p.r.i.c.k employed in Germany to the method in use in America, where they pare away the skin with a piece of ivory. As our company marched past the a.s.sembled doctors in Indian file I saw to my astonishment that the men were bleeding severely. When my turn came I flinched involuntarily--the doctor drove the lancet three times so forcibly into my upper arm that a regular fountain of blood spurted out.

It was pure brutality. Nothing more or less. This was typical of the man. It was his custom, the first time a man reported himself ill, to send him back to his company and give him three days' arrest for shamming. If the fellow appeared again he tried the effect of emetics followed by a long period of starvation. The only time he was supposed to be reasonable was when he saw symptoms of typhoid, which was his special hobby.

The Legion was thoroughly afraid of the hospital! They were desperate fellows indeed who tried shamming!

The topic of desertion from the Foreign Legion is wellnigh inexhaustible. When the transports sail from Oran or Ma.r.s.eilles to Indo-China with relief companies of the Legion on board, the Suez Ca.n.a.l is a favourite means of deserting. According to the Ca.n.a.l regulations the steamers must slacken speed in the narrow straits of Suez, and the legionnaire takes the opportunity to jump overboard. He swims the short stretch to land and is then safe. The sentries on the transports may not use firearms in the international waters of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, and therefore cannot fire on the deserter as he swims. Neither is extradition from the English or Egyptian authorities to be feared.

Several of these transports from the Foreign Legion pa.s.s through the Suez Ca.n.a.l every year, and these desertions are so frequent that the Ghetto of Port Said pays a fixed price of ten s.h.i.+llings for the capital service boots of the Legion!

Desertions _en ma.s.se_ occur now and then, but these may be cla.s.sed as mutinies rather than as desertions. In Southern Algeria, in the loneliness of the desert, the garrison of some small fort occasionally breaks out, marching for the Morocco frontier. The next bevy of troops soon brings the runaways back again, and even if it comes to a shot or two the superiority of the numbers against them soon brings the mutineers to reason. A mutiny like this generally ends in the mutineers being shot. An act of this sort is nothing else than an outbreak of madness caused by the dreadful monotony of service on the lonely stations in the desert. It is an outbreak of the cafard! The poor devils should be treated by a doctor instead of being sentenced by a court-martial.

The Foreign Legion is a fruitful field for hypnotic suggestion. In my time a number of legionnaires deserted from Sidi-bel-Abbes, with the intention of fighting their way through to Morocco. Morocco was just then talked about till the idea became surrounded with a sort of halo.

The attempt itself was pretty hopeless--the men were driven to it by the suggestive power of the words, "le Maroc."

Morocco was the Legion's fairyland, the land the soldier longed for.

Not a single day went by without a rumour of fighting in Morocco raising excitement in the Foreign Legion to fever pitch. Dark war-clouds were gathering on the horizon. From the frontier there came continual reports of the intrigues of the pretender, and in the inland of Morocco mighty battles were fought at short intervals. Among the watchful officers of French Africa every one was certain that the internal troubles in Morocco were not merely the petty splutterings of the usual native fireworks, but the first sparks of a mighty bonfire.

The Foreign Legion knew of this; then all that was discussed in the officers' mess filtered through to the regiment through its own various private channels.

Orderlies came rus.h.i.+ng into the barracks in a fever of excitement as soon as they came off duty in the mess and told their friends in the Legion all about the heated debates that had taken place and which all revolved around Morocco. The servants of the staff officers brought news of Moroccan visitors closeted with their masters; Spahis who had served their time in the Morocco frontier garrisons and who were quartered on the regiment on their way through to Oran, told how sharp duty on the frontier now was, and how the garrisons were perpetually being strengthened.

The veterans put their heads together and discussed the prospects of a b.l.o.o.d.y war! They had wonderful stories to tell of the golden treasures of Morocco, of the jewels that the better cla.s.ses wore, and in their fancy they pictured an Eldorado of plundered wealth and booty. These mysterious rumours grew from day to day. More than half of the regiment's officers were ordered to the little frontier towns, and it was not unnatural when the Legion found in this a sure sign of fighting to come. With a broad smirk, an orderly brought the news that the colonel had engaged two masters to teach him Arabic, and it was easy to see how proud he was of the enormous supply of ammunition which was sent out from France. Recruiting began with zeal in the Spahi barracks opposite. Arab recruits with their splendid horses joined daily.

Sections for telegraph duty went off to the frontier to see to the old wires and to lay new ones; volunteers were called for to form a corps for the heliographs, and veterans whose time was up got the tip from one or other of the officers that it would be very much to their advantage to stay on and not to take their dismissal just then....

In this roundabout way, through non-coms, orderlies, and soldier servants, everything was perhaps very much distorted, but it all sounded very probable and typical. The Legion is like a mighty ear-trumpet--through its countless channels it gathers up the officers'

gossip and intrigues for its own uses, and really knows a good deal about the state of affairs in Northern Africa; it knows that the military circles at the head of affairs in Algeria have their own axe to grind, and that the clever catch-phrase "penetration pacifique" was formed in an officers' club, and that greedy squinting at Morocco is as old as the occupation of Algeria!

It was as if every one stood under the ban of a mesmerist. The longing for "le Maroc" spread to the legionnaires, who gave practical evidence of their longing for change and excitement, deserting in crowds. Most of them met their deaths. The border tribes cut their throats.

Others had more luck. In the army of the pretender, the present Sultan, Mulai Hafid, there used to be several officers who were once soldiers of the Foreign Legion!

CHAPTER XII

A CHAPTER ON PUNISHMENTS

The return of the poumpistes : The scale of punishments in the Legion : Of spiteful non-commissioned officers : The Legion's axiom : Sad history of Little Jean : The punishment machine : Lost years : A legionnaire's earnings in five years--francs 127.75 : The prisons in the Foreign Legion : Pestilential atmosphere : Human sardines : The general cells : Life in the prison : On sentry duty among the prisoners

"Nom de Dieu!--voila les poumpistes!" cried the sergeant of the guard at the barrack gates. Every one sprang up. We of the guard (my company was on guard that day) crowded round the gate; the adjutant vaguemestre, the regimental postmaster, ran out of his little office opposite the guard-room; a couple of officers came up, and legionnaires streamed out from everywhere in a wild rush for the entrance to the barracks.

"The poumpistes have come back!" they cried to each other.