In the Foreign Legion Part 25

In its place all the vices of almost every nation in the world can be found in the Foreign Legion. This is not saying too much; I've looked on.

Vicious influences are, however, much stronger in Indo-China and in French Tonquin, where the garrisons of the various stations are all drawn from the Legion. Veterans like Smith used to tell me things about the life in Tonquin that almost made my hair stand on end. In the inland districts the stations are quite small, and a few legionnaires have to look after a large number of natives. The entire system of justice on such a station, including the power of life and death, lies in the hands of a couple of young officers and a few sergeants and corporals. Surrounded by all possible human vices in their very worst forms, to whose influence the deadly monotony inevitable on one of these stations is added, the men live exposed to constant danger occasioned both by the intrigues among the natives and the murderous climate. The one seeks relief in spirits, the other swears by opium.

The fact that opium-smoking plays an important part in the life of the French Navy and among the French Army officers in the Colonies has been made public often enough already: every veteran in the Legion knows well enough that in Toulon and Ma.r.s.eilles there are countless opium dens which depend solely on the custom of French officers. These opium dens were thoroughly discussed in the French press during the trial of the mids.h.i.+pman Ullmo.

The habit of opium-smoking has, in nearly all cases, been acquired in Indo-China. Spirits, opium, and loneliness form the fruitful soil in which the Legion's vice takes root. In solitary cases even the officers come under its influence. When this happens the results are sometimes very terrible....

Among the garrisons of Indo-China the most notorious used to be those of Sui-can and Bac-le. A certain Lieutenant d.u.c.h.esne, who was later killed in battle, many say by his own men, and the fact that the bullet hit him in the back goes to prove the truth of this statement, has made his name immortal in the Legion in this connection. Though he has been dead several years, one still hears of his cruelty. His legionnaires were all forced to submit themselves to his vicious freaks, resistance being punished with the penal section, which is ten times worse in Tonquin than those in Algeria. The obedient, however, were promoted.

Even to-day the same sort of thing can be found here and there in Indo-China. There are always stories like this to be heard in the Legion, adjutants and sous-officiers being freely named who are said to owe their promotion to the vicious preference of some officer or other.

A good deal is perhaps spiteful gossip, but the stories are so frequent, and the details given are so minute, that there must be a certain amount of truth in them.

In addition to these outside influences, a further cause of depravity is the involuntary celibacy to which the legionnaire is subjected. And this celibacy has its origin in a financial consideration: the five centimes per day.

... One always comes back again to the same point from which one started.

Whoever really knows the Foreign Legion, whoever takes the trouble to probe the depths of its misery and sin, of its brutality and vice, always comes back, like a man walking in a circle, to the same source of all its ills: the pitiful wage that's not worth calling a wage which this business enterprise pays: this infamous business enterprise that a chivalrous nation has so long tolerated and tolerates still.

All human vices are to be found in the Legion. And first among the minor ones comes drunkenness. This takes the first place, occurring most frequently and being the most characteristic and easily indulged, in a country where the price of a litre of heavy wine varies between ten and twenty centimes.

Das ist ja eben das Malheur: Wer Sorgen hat, trinkt auch Likor.

"The man who has troubles, drinks"--Algerian wine, or in Indo-China a horrible spirit, which is distilled, I believe, from rice and which rejoices in the name of "Shum-Shum," and has the advantage of an uncommonly high percentage of alcohol. It has only one drawback, and that is its infernal smell, which delicate European noses cannot stand.

The legionnaire, however, drinks it: while drinking he holds his nose, since he hardly values its aroma as he does its alcohol. I have often heard old legionnaires singing the praises of Shum-Shum. One could get accustomed to its smell, they said, and it made one very, very drunk.

The droll verses of the old German humourist, Wilhelm Busch, with their subtle point, might have been written for the Legion. How they drank in the canteen of the Foreign Legion in Sidi-bel-Abbes. The litre--a litre of wine--took the place of the current coinage. Thus it was nothing unusual for a legionnaire, when asked to wash for a comrade well endowed with this world's goods, to raise one finger: that meant, of course, a litre.

"If we hadn't wine...." I shall never forget Smith's pet expression.

There are no statistics on this point. I am, however, quite certain that a good half of the miserable wages paid to the Foreign Legion are spent in purchasing the red wine of Algiers. In addition to this, nine-tenths, nay ninety-nine-hundredths of the notes and postal orders which the legionnaires are continuously sent by anxious parents and relations in Europe go to swell the coffers of Madame la Cantiniere.

This is in no sense an accusation. When one considers the life of the soldier of the Legion with understanding, one recognises that no one in the world has more cares than he, no one a better right to his few hours of oblivion. Yes, the African legionnaire has a hard life, and drunkenness in his case is really almost excusable. I only want to show what a prominent role the red wine of Algeria does play in the life of the Legion. It is, it is true, the most general vice, but it is the only means of obtaining a few moments of bliss, and the sole source of pleasure.

Wine is the cause of a great many punishments. Drunkenness is a "sale offense," to use the soldier's expression, a dishonourable offence that is severely punished, and which continually furnishes the penal section with new material.

As an instance of this I will give you the story of a man in my company, a Belgian named Lascelles. At regular intervals he got a postal order for a small sum sent him from some relative in Europe. On receiving his money, he vanished as soon as he came off duty and did not come back to the barracks again for at least twenty-four hours. As long as his coppers lasted, he used to go from wine-shop to wine-shop and empty bottle after bottle. On his return he would be immediately locked up for overstaying his leave of absence; generally, however, to celebrate the event he had made a great disturbance, and committed a series of more or less grave offences, for each of which he was punished singly. Every month the time he spent in prison grew longer and longer, beginning with a trifling eight days and increasing to a month's solitary confinement. In between whiles, Lascelles was a capital soldier, who did his work willingly enough. When, however, his name was read out at roll-call--a postal order for Lascelles--one could be sure that a day later would find him in prison once more. In a few months he had worked his way up the regimental scale of punishments, and then came the inevitable end and he was sent off to the penal section.

Lascelles' misfortunes were at any rate his own fault. It often happens, however, that spiteful sergeants in the Legion take advantage of a man's love of drink to work his ruin.

A sergeant has a spite against a man and waits patiently for the day when he comes into the barracks in a state of intoxication. He then follows him to his quarters and gives him some order or other. The man feels how needless and spiteful this is, and, being hardly in a condition to think of danger, answers with a curse. This is just what is wanted. Even when the man is sober enough to do what he has been ordered, he is severely punished for his curse. Should he continue to be "insubordinate" he comes before the court-martial.

This is a very old trick in the Legion, and only recruits or very old legionnaires under the influence of drink and suffering at the same time from the cafard are caught by it. The average legionnaire is careful, and, drunk or sober, obeys every order no matter how furious he may be. "Nix Zephyrs pour moi," he says.

"Ah yes, there is another side to the proverb, 'If there were no wine....'"

Every vice was represented there. The most brutal egotism and boundless avarice ruled that hard life. One grudged one's comrade a crust of bread, a sip of wine, or a piece of meat. The man who had a few s.h.i.+llings sent him was an object of hate and envy.

Intrigue--slander--lying--theft--the Legion brings all the bad points in a man's character to full development.

Whose fault is it?

CHAPTER XIV

MY ESCAPE

In the Arab prison : The letter : Days of suffering : Flight! : The greedy "Credit Lyonnais" : Haggling in the Ghetto : The palm grove as a dressing-room : On the railway track : Arab policemen : Horrible minutes : Travelling to Oran : Small preparations : On the steamer _St. Augustine_ : Ma.r.s.eilles-Ventimiglia : Free

The days came and the days went, and with every day I understood more what it meant to be a legionnaire in Africa.

The knowledge so gained was not pleasant.

One day I was on guard in the Arab prison of Sidi-bel-Abbes, an ugly, gloomy building in the middle of the town. An old retired sergeant of the Legion was overseer of the Arab prison, and with the help of two gendarmes kept the Arab prisoners in strictest order. The prison was always crowded with native sinners, for the petty thefts in the market-place and the constant fights in the negro quarter kept the cells of that grey building near the Place Sadi Carnot always full. The native prisoners had often made trouble, and mutinies had been quite frequent. The last outbreak had been very serious, so since that time the Legion had sent a guard every day to the Arab prison consisting of a corporal and six men.

My rifle with fixed bayonet over my shoulder, I kept pacing slowly on the top of the broad wall surrounding the prison in an enormous square.

The sun burned down pitilessly. In the tiny courtyard small groups of Arab prisoners cowered in the sulky silence of inactivity. All talking was forbidden in the prison. The overseer's sharp words of command now and then, and the ring of my steps on the stones of the wall, sounded into the silence. Mechanically I followed the path prescribed for "sentry-go," marching round and round the prison square.

From the high wall I had a view of all Sidi-bel-Abbes. The town was like a city of the dead in this frightful heat. The blinds in all the houses were pulled down and there was not a soul to be seen in the streets. In the hot, trembling air the faint outlines of the mountains of Thessala glittered in the far distance. There was not a breath of wind.

Two legionnaires in white fatigue uniforms turned into the street leading to the prison. They were men from our company, bringing us our evening soup. They called out something to me that I could not understand and I acknowledged it with an indifferent nod. Then they knocked at the gate of the prison and had to wait an age till the overseer opened it with his jingling bunch of keys and they could carry their soup-pail into the guard-room. Some minutes later one of them came into the yard by the guard-room and beckoned to me to come nearer to him. As I approached, I saw that he held a white something in his hand.

"Eh, une lettre pour toi!" he cried. "Here's a letter for you."

Very much annoyed I called down to him to hurry up and get out of this.

It was too hot for practical jokes. I never got letters....

"But here is one," said the man. "Your name, your company, your number--everything all right! La la--I'm off--I'll give your letter to the corporal. May Allah better your bad temper! Sapristi, how hot it is!"

I had to wait half an hour until I was relieved. Those were terrible minutes. A letter--a letter for me? It seemed almost impossible. There was n.o.body in the world who could or should know where I was or what I was doing. The blood rose in hot waves to my head--and all at once I recognised that there was only one human being who could have written to me--that her love was not dead.

Slowly the seconds, the minutes went by. I waited in indescribable suspense. The sun was sinking. The houses of Sidi-bel-Abbes were bathed in its ruddy glow. Below me in the prison yard I heard a noisy chattering in guttural Arabic. The prisoners were being given their food and were then allowed to speak. The poor devils' chatter seemed to pierce my brain; that buzzing noise down below hurt me, until I could not stand it any longer.

"Be quiet there!" I cried.

There was immediate silence. A gendarme called out to me that I had made a mistake and that talking was allowed. "Pas defendu de parler,"

he said to the prisoners, and the Arabs looked up at me with angry eyes.

And I had to go on waiting, waiting....

This awful suspense seemed to have lasted for hours when the corporal at last came to relieve me. The conventionality of pa.s.sing orders and sentry instructions was being gone through; we were on service and it was contrary to all discipline--but I could not wait any longer.

"You've a letter for me, corporal?" I asked.