In the Foreign Legion Part 4

He was at least loyal to his Legion, the old grey-haired sergeant, even if he did tell so many lies....

The batteries were at any rate excellently masked. It was quite impossible to detect their positions. Even when the old sergeant showed me where they were mounted, I could see nothing. High up on the crags the heavy cannon had been built in, behind little sandhills, flanked by large rocks, the whole arrangement looking so very much like nature that none could have suspected that it was artificial. The positions of the guns were perfect.

We gained the harbour. Suddenly the cliffs opened out East and West, leaving an enormous gap. Out jumped, as from a conjurer's box, the fortress of Oran, a maze of flat-roofed houses on hilly ground. The inner harbour was ridiculously small, just a little square, its room quite taken up by twelve torpedo-boats, two small cruisers and half a dozen merchant s.h.i.+ps. We had hardly touched the pier when a corporal jumped on board. The famous corporal of the French army, the maid-of-all-work, the busy French corporal who attends to everything and has more real work to do than all the officers of a company together. He read off our names from a list and marched us off to quarters.

It was a novel scene that met our gaze. Negroes, sparingly attired in loin-cloth and red fez, hurried past in a strange shuffling quickstep, carrying enormous loads on their heads; taciturn Arabs stood around, wrapped from head to foot in white burnous-cloth; officers promenaded with their women-folk and occasionally some fine lady would give us a look of curiosity and compa.s.sion. A Spahi orderly galloped by on a foaming horse and yelled in high amus.e.m.e.nt:

"Bonjour, les bleus!"

We were marched across the city square. The surroundings and houses had nothing typical about them until we began to pa.s.s through little alleys and byways, where naked black children were playing and rolling in the dirt and filth.

Then the sand came. The fine African sand that plays such a role in a legionnaire's life. But the road was an ideal road, hard as stone under its sandy covering. A generation of legionnaires, now long dead, had built this road leading to the barracks high up in the hills. The road swept in mighty curves along the cliffs. After an hour of marching we came to some very antiquated barracks. They were a counterpart of Fort St. Jean in Ma.r.s.eilles, one of the military hostelries for the many men needed to feed France's colonial stomach. In the courtyard a lieutenant called the roll and seemed very much amused when the new French soldiers answered to their names with a stentorian German: "Hier!"

We were a.s.signed a nasty little hole of a room. A long wooden bench ran along one side. The bare boards, fifteen feet long and six feet broad, were to form our bed. There was a pitcher of water in one corner and a pile of thin brown blankets lay in another. The earthen floor was covered with half-smoked cigarettes and rubbish.

After dark I slipped out, glad indeed to leave the wooden bench. The unventilated little hole was not good enough for a dog! I found a snug, quiet little corner in the courtyard and lay down, wrapped in my overcoat--for about five minutes. Then shadowy figures in the uniform of the Legion paid me a visit.

Yes, a fine evening. Brilliant idea of mine, to sleep in the open air.

Filthy place, those quarters for recruits! Yes, nom d'un petard! The shadowy figures were old legionnaires, on special duty to keep the barracks in order. Did I like the Algerian wine? They wanted to know. I did not know anything about it? Impossible! Did I know that the price of a "litre," of a full quart, was but four sous even up here on the hills? Remarkably fine wine!

"It's a pity [described with a variety of choice epithets] that we haven't the [here followed a similar ornate flow of oaths] four sous.

And the canteen isn't closed yet!"

Small wonder that then I made my first purchase in Africa. Several bottles of wine.

... Somebody knocked at a door hard by, attracted by the jingling of bottles presumably. The knocking was quite modest at first. Then it became imperious.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Oh, that's Reddy. He's thirsty, I suppose," said one of the legionnaires. "He's in the lock-up."

My new friends seemed to regard "being in the lock-up" as the most natural thing that could happen to a legionnaire. We all went to the door of the cell. There was a small air-hole high up in the wall and presently a hand holding a tin cup appeared.

"Fill up!" a gruff voice demanded.

One of the legionnaires climbed on another's shoulders and emptied the contents of half a bottle into the tin cup.

"That's all right!" said the poor prisoner.

"What is he locked up for?" I wanted to know.

This the story.

In the Legion he was nicknamed Reddy, being the happy possessor of a flaming head of red hair. Reddy was a veteran who had ten years of service to his credit and knew well enough that he was no good for anything in all the world except soldiering in the Legion. Ten years is a long time. But, when he was sent to the lonely old barracks on the Oran cliffs to play at housekeeping for recruits, a great desire for liberty came upon him. For hours together he would stare at the ocean.

Finally he walked quietly down to the harbour on a fine evening and took his pick amongst the fishermen's boats. He did not waste time in considering whether or not the Arab proprietor of the chosen boat would like his proceedings. Such things as boats' chains did not worry Reddy.

A large stone did the business. Reddy gave the boat a shove, hoisted sail, and sailed joyfully away. Spain was not far, and luck was with the deserter. In exactly seventeen hours the legionnaire reached the Spanish coast. He had landed at a very desolate spot, but after hunting about he managed to find fishermen's huts. Presently he was the guest of rough coast Spaniards, who did not quite know what to make of the man in red breeches. He got dried fish and nice clear water to live on.

Reddy had forgotten all about civilian life, but in his dreams of freedom dried fish and water had not cut a special figure. He did not like it. He changed his mind, however, when a pretty Spanish girl appeared. The girl happened to be the wife of the man who had fed Reddy. The legionnaire neither knew nor cared. He chatted with the girl for an hour or so in a mixture of French and bits of Spanish and sign-talk, enjoying himself well enough until the husband joined in the conversation with a big knife. A gorgeous fight ensued. The other fishermen a.s.sisted their friend and Reddy had a hard run for it. But he reached his boat and got safely away, cursing freedom, Spain, and dried fish. For some time he cruised about and finally decided definitely that freedom was no good. In twenty-five hours he was back in Oran. The Arabian fisherman (who had seen the boat coming and wanted to talk things over) received a series of mighty kicks from Reddy in lieu of payment. Then the disgusted deserter reported to his commanding officer. He explained that he had jumped into the boat just for fun, that a big wind--a horrible storm, sir--had torn the boat from its chain and carried it out to sea. "Yes, sir, I nearly starved...."

The captain happened to be a man with a sense of humour and Reddy got off with twenty days' imprisonment.

"d.a.m.ned lucky fellow, that! It's a wonder that he was not sent to the penal battalion. That means dying by inches, you know," said the legionnaires, and uncorked the last bottle.

I stared at them. They laughed about Reddy's luck. They thought his adventure very funny, this tragical adventure of a man who knew how to fight for the freedom he desired and then did not know what to do with liberty when he had gained it.

My G.o.d, ten years in the Foreign Legion!...

CHAPTER III

LeGIONNAIRE NUMBER 17889

French and American bugle-calls : Southward to the city of the Foreign Legion : Sidi-bel-Abbes : The sergeant is not pleased : A final fight with pride : The jokes of the Legion : The wise negro : Bugler Smith : I help a legionnaire to desert : The Eleventh Company : How clothes are sold in the Legion : Number 17889

A bugle sounded. I was lying on the bare ground in a corner of the courtyard, dozing in that strange borderland between sleeping and waking. The bugle bothered me. The sounds were familiar, but my sleepy brain could not place them. Again and again the calls sounded and half dreaming I searched my memory.

Now I remembered. It was the reveille, the morning call of the American army. No, there could be no mistake--one never forgets the quick nervous air of the American regular's morning call, nor its impressive text:

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up in the morning!

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up at all!

The old familiar sounds very naturally suggested old remembrances. I dreamt of a misty morning and a hammock slung between two mango-trees, somewhere in the valley of Santiago de Cuba, and a very tired war correspondent listening sleepily to the morning call floating over from the tents of the Sixth Cavalry hard by. A hazy recollection of fantastical foreign legions and broken fortunes crept into the dream.

But surely there were no such things. Little Smiley, trumpeter of "B"

troop of the Sixth, was sounding the morning call in his funny, drawn-out fas.h.i.+on--of course it was Smiley:

I can't get 'em up at all....

It was but a dream. Awakening, I sat up and stared about me. Where was I, anyway? No mango-trees here, no tents, no Sixth Cavalry. And very slowly I realised that Cuba and war corresponding were things of the past, that the pebble-stones of the courtyard were part and parcel of a French barrack and the soldiers in flaming red trousers running about in the courtyard had a perfect right to call me their comrade. There had been no mistake however about the morning call. There it sounded for the third time: "I can't get 'em up"--the reveille of the U.S.

regulars!

The riddle's solution was rather simple: The "get 'em up" signals of the French and the American army are exactly the same.

For three days we stayed at the old barracks high up on the cliffs near Oran. On the third day the packet brought a new batch of recruits for the Foreign Legion, twenty men, most of them Germans. We were all bundled into a rickety little railway train and, at an average speed of about fifteen miles an hour, we raced towards the South, to Sidi-bel-Abbes, the recruiting depot of the Foreign Legion, and headquarters of the Legion's first regiment, the "Premier Etranger."

It took us six hours to reach Sidi-bel-Abbes. As the distance was about eighty miles, I considered this a very poor performance and felt personally aggrieved by the train's slowness. I had yet to learn that from now on time would be no object to me. After leaving Oran our train crawled through beautiful gardens and pretty little villas. The gardens were followed by long stretches of fields and farmhouses, and then at last civilisation vanished. The desert sands of Africa claimed their right. The burning sun shone upon wavy lines of endless sandhills, upon naked sand.

After six hours' ride we arrived in Sidi-bel-Abbes. The little station was swarming with men in the uniform of the Foreign Legion. At the primitive little platform gate stood a guard of non-commissioned officers, carefully watching for would-be deserters.

A corporal took charge of us and we fell in line to march to the Legion's barracks.

This first march through the streets and byways of Sidi-bel-Abbes was a strange experience. The city of the Foreign Legion seemed to be composed of peculiar odours and yellow colours in many varieties. I tried to cla.s.sify the Sidi-bel-Abbes smell, but the attempt was a miserable failure. The strangely sweet scents coming from everywhere and nowhere, which apparently had a very composite composition, defied a white man's nose. They were heavy, dull, oppressive; now reminding one of jasmine blossoms, now of mould and decay. In an atmosphere of yellow floated these scents. The atmosphere was yellow; yellow were the old-fas.h.i.+oned ramparts of Sidi-bel-Abbes, built by soldiers of the Legion many years ago; yellow was the fine sandy dust on the streets; glaring yellow everywhere. The green gardens on the town's outskirts seemed but animated little spots in a great compact ma.s.s of yellow. Far away in the background the colossal ridges of the Thessala mountains towered in gigantic shadows of pale yellow. Even the town's buildings flared up in bright yellow. The people of Sidi-bel-Abbes, adapting themselves to nature in mimicry, must needs paint their houses yellow!

There were a few other colours, but the universal yellow swallowed them up without mercy.

Between long rows of stately palms and through shady olive groves we marched. An omnibus rattled past. All the seats were occupied by Arabs.

The white splendour of a mosque shone from afar. On the balcony of its high minaret a Mohammedan priest in flowing white robes slowly walked to and fro, sharply outlined against the sky. The mosque was far away, but I could hear the priest's sonorous voice calling to prayer: