Erwin Rosen

“ Then there is joy in the land of Sidi-bel-Abbès. For a day, or a few days, or even a week, the prodigal son with the postal order lives like a king. He has his boots cleaned for him, and would not dream of making his own bed as long as his money lasts. A comrade does that for him, and in reward is graciously permitted to share a drink. C'est la Légion! To play the "grand seigneur," if it is but for a day, is the average légionnaire's dream of happiness. He thinks it the finest thing in all the world to play at having a servant, if it's but for a day.... ”

“ On the same day I witnessed for the first time the prisoners' march of punishment. I stood aghast.
Behind the quarters of the fourth company, in a small square between barrack building and wall, about thirty men were marching in a continuous circle, to the sharp commands of a corporal:
"À droit—droit; à droit—droit; right about, march; right about, march."
The prisoners marched round their narrow circle in fast quick-step, almost at a run, with backs deeply bent. Their knapsacks were filled with sand and stones, every man carrying a burden of from seventy to eighty pounds. ”

“ Plans for flight and their feasibility were ever being discussed in whispers, and this formed a part of the Legion's atmosphere—desertion was always the favourite topic of conversation in quarters and in the canteen. This was only natural. There is not a single man in the Legion who does not sooner or later repent his folly, recognising that it was the maddest thing he ever did in his life when he signed that ominous contract in the enlistment bureau. He has to work as he never worked in his life before, and he has less money in his pocket than in the most needy times of his civil life. ”

“ Death at the hands of Arab women! The légionnaire 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 légionnaire looks as upon a devil. He thinks of the hellish tortures that wounded men have suffered at the hands of Arab women, he remembers the mutilated bodies of légionnaires who had died an awful death after being tortured for many hours. ”

“ Then Viaïsse took a deep breath, and a mad flow of words poured from his vile mouth, while the long arms, with the outspread claw-like fingers, waved frantically in the air.
"... Wie haisst! nom de Dieu, de bon Dieu de la Légion—damn me, why should I work myself to death? I've had to drill the whole forenoon and have got nix to eat but a poor soup. I'm a stricken man and will have to get some extra food if I am not to fall down dead like a dog, you jewel of a sergeant. Wie haisst! I am a ruined man if I don't get some food at once. ”

“ Then comes the command to turn out: there is a prospect of soldiering in earnest: the men are beside themselves with joy—when they have to fight they are relieved from slavery.
This enthusiasm and passion to get at the enemy is the redeeming feature of many a ruined life. It acts as a safety-valve: otherwise the men could never stand the deadly monotony of their lives.
The soldiers of the Legion have never yet fought just because they had to fight, or because their officers urged them on to it or because they had to defend their own wretched lives. ”

“ Their pay was always ridiculously small, their punishments barbarous, and the discipline that they were subject to more than hard. And yet there were always thousands of recruits willing to shed their life's blood, who did not serve under the Legion's flag merely to earn their living, but formed one of the best bodies of troops in the world. What misery and misfortune must there be in Europe to bring thousands and thousands of poor and desperate men flocking to the Legion's standard, whose total in the eighty years of the regiment's existence must add up to an overwhelming figure. ”

“ In general, however, the légionnaire finds going on pump, this flight into the desert, this mad rush for freedom without any real goal and without any sort of preparation, something quite natural that everybody tries once at any rate in the course of his career. In cafard....
As a rule the men desert in little groups, without any equipment but the uniform they wear and the bayonet that clanks at their side. They go forth at night, before nine o'clock, while the barrack gates are still open, and run, under cover of the darkness, madly through the sandy vineyards. ”

“ One quarter of the town was taboo to us légionnaires, strictly forbidden under a penalty of a month's imprisonment: the "village nègre," the negro town, the home of every sort of disease and crime. The beasts in human forms which house there had more than once killed a légionnaire to rob him of his sash or some such trifle.
Forbidden things always have a mysterious power of attraction, and I was burning with curiosity. Slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for patrols, I crossed the big drill-ground one night and turned, close behind the mosque, into the maze of huts. ”

“ It is the pangs of hunger that drives men into the Foreign Legion—French and English, Germans and Italians, Spaniards and Austrians, men of all countries, men of all races. Yes, hunger is a most efficient recruiting sergeant for the Foreign Legion.
The hungry man who seeks a refuge in the Foreign Legion gets, it is true, his daily bread; he is, all the same, disgracefully swindled. It cannot be repeated often enough how hard the légionnaire has to work, how miserable his existence is, how he gives his whole strength for a wage that is not worth mentioning. ”

“ The légionnaire has no business in the main streets—from the honest citizen's point of view.
Between the blocks of the main streets, however, a labyrinth of small courts and alleys is hidden. There the Spanish Jews and Arabs live, there trading and bargaining goes on incessantly.
In this maze of dark alleys the men of the Legion were at home, in the treacherous wineshops which depended on the custom of the soldiers. "Bar de la Légion," or "Bar du Légionnaire," or "Bar de Madagascar" these hovels called themselves. Good wine is ridiculously cheap in Algeria. ”

“ In the daytime the poumpistes hide among the rocks or bury themselves in a deep hole in the sand. When night comes on they start on their way once more, ever southwards, keeping their bearings by the stars as they have learnt to do in the Legion—for a very different purpose it is true. When they hear the sound of horses' hoofs they take cover in deadly terror and lie for hours, still as mice, until the patrol has long passed out of sight below the horizon. ”

“ The system of the marches is brutal; the légionnaire must expend what there is in him of vital energy and human strength, but in the military service he is treated as a soldier, as a valuable soldier, whom one does not worry with pedantic demands and paltry red-tape affairs, but treats him in a sensible, I might say loving, manner, in order to draw from him the utmost he is capable of. ”

“ From a military point of view the marches of the Legion are splendid, a triumph of training and discipline; from a humane standpoint they are the height of unprincipled exploitation. No New York Jewish clothes-dealer, who keeps hundreds of people at starvation wages at the sewing-machines, does such a splendid piece of business as "la Légion," which for a mere nothing saps the life from thousands of human creatures. ”

“ All idiocy in the Legion is called "cafard." A légionnaire is gloomy, sitting sullenly on his bed for hours, speaking to no one. If you ask him what is the matter, he will answer with a gross insult. He sits thinking all the time and does the queerest things. He has the "cafard."...
His madness may turn into a senseless explosion or fit of fury; men suffering from "cafard" will run a bayonet through their comrade's body, without any reason, without any outward cause. ”

“ The history of the regiment can only tell of glorious attacks, of furious charges made with a bravery that absolutely disregards danger and death. These poor adventurers have their own individual ideas of honour for which they are proud to give their lives and which the only French general who ever understood the Legion expressed in a few enthusiastic words. It was General de Négrier who said:
Some soldiers can fight—the légionnaire can die.
That is the légionnaire's idea of honour: his own individual idea. He will never hear the signal for retreat. ”

“ Dubois had not a very strong constitution and it is quite possible that the penal battalion, plus imprisonment, plus starvation, plus despair, quite finished him off. In that case the loss of a blue scarf, a spiteful sergeant and the crass stupidity of a series of officers have been the death of him.
But if Jean Dubois really got over his years of prison—when he returns home (he is a Frenchman!) his strength will not be worth much in the workaday world. ”

“ He can be made use of in the most terrible climates, for the most risky operations, simply because nobody troubles his head about him and because his officers have no account to render for his life or death.
The sum of money which his work with pick and shovel, with mason's trowel and carpenter's axe has saved the French Government in all these years must be enormous. And if a bullet, or sunstroke, or typhoid fever, or dysentery carries away a légionnaire, the only expense he is the cause of is the making of a hole in the sand. ”

“ A few days in a Parisian military prison, a few hours' journey by rail in a prisoners' compartment, the short sea-voyage to Oran, the cruel minutes before the court-martial—and then perpetual, blunting work in an Algerian mine, truly a living death. And thus this man had to live for many a long month, till the horrible climate carried him off....
Flight from the Legion is always a risky and difficult undertaking, risky since there is always the severest punishment waiting for the deserter who gets caught. Even the possession of really plentiful means is no guarantee for a successful flight. ”

“ 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 légionnaire has a hard life, and drunkenness in his case is really almost excusable. I only want to show what a prominent rôle the red wine of Algeria does play in the life of the Legion. ”

“ Every French officer and every French court-martial acts under the time-honoured assumption that the légionnaire makes a brave soldier, but is in all other respects a thoroughbred rogue and knave, and that one cannot go far wrong in assuming the worst about him. The word of a superior is always accepted as proof of guilt. There is no better illustration of this than the everlasting heavy penalties which are meted out for "theft of equipment." This sort of theft exists, of course. Theft is not a thing to be very much wondered at when the men's wages are five centimes a day. ”

“ In the sand of Algeria, in the swamps of Madagascar, in the fever-pested plains of Tonquin, in the valleys of Mexico, there lie these men of every nation, these men who have died in the Foreign Legion, who have sold their lives for their rations and five centimes a day.
If one leaves the dead in peace and only considers the living, one reaches the same conclusion: robbery, and robbery of the destitute at that! A sin against every principle of humanity! ”

“ Have you forgotten our five centimes, légionnaire?
My imagination worried me.
I gave a part of the story of my life price, and after much hesitation wrote this book. I have only described the ordinary routine of life in the regiment of foreigners as I myself experienced it. It is merely a tiny part of what every légionnaire undergoes.
I wanted to show the légionnaire—how he lives, and how he must work. I did not dream of being able to warn foolish young fellows about the Legion. It is impossible to warn a fool. ”

“ Oh, thrice accursed Legion: forcing inexperienced young fellows into its ranks, who would never join did they know what lies before them; absolutely callous as to the value of human life, forcing its soldiers to conditions of life which must ruin their health for ever! ”

“ And, in an age which is ever improving the standard of living, and which has so absolutely changed the ideas of the poorer classes, how is it possible that a business concern like the Foreign Legion—it is really nothing but a business concern, a commercial undertaking—can always get hundreds and thousands of labourer-soldiers, for a wage compared with which the wages of the tiniest village are riches? ”

“ When an old légionnaire says grumpily, "J'ai le cafard," he is just telling his neighbours to keep clear of him, that he has a bad fit of the blues, that it is advisable for his comrades to leave him alone. He has no idea that a hidden power, like unto madness, is making him act in such a manner, he only believes himself to be in a bad humour. But the bad humour rises and increases, often driving him to murder, more often to suicide. The légionnaire cannot foresee the effects of the "cafard." ”

“ The sentry on duty was a man of my own company, whom I bribed with a packet of cigarettes to let me through.
I found myself in a tiny garden. Fantastic figures in mosaic work covered the ground; everywhere were dense groups of palms and laurels, and a broad flight of steps led up to the vestibule in Moorish style. As I entered the hall a flood of colour met my gaze. The walls of the enormous room were covered with pictures. ”

“ Little black boys in white breeches, whose countless folds might have told endless stories of stolen trifles they had concealed, lounged at the street corners and cried the evening paper, the Echo d'Oran; Arabs in white burnouses, carrying in their hands the dangerous Arabian sticks, in which they find a never-failing missile, stood motionless, silently watching with looks of suspicion the "Rumis," the white foreigners who will always remain foreigners to them and whose customs they will never be able to understand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even if he had been a miserable beggar, a wretched copper had not such an enormous value in his eyes nor had it been so hard to earn as in these days of poverty in the Foreign Legion. He is wretchedly poor, living under the strictest military discipline, working hard and getting less than nothing out of his life. At first the strangeness of his surroundings has a certain charm: but the harder he has to work and the oftener he becomes acquainted with the heavy penalties which no légionnaire escapes for long, the quicker comes the lust for freedom. ”

“ The légionnaire's life in the Legion begins with the motto, "Work without pay," and at the end of it he stands in the street like a beggar, and does not know what in the world to do for a living. Even in the rare cases in which the climate and the hardships he has undergone have not ruined his constitution, and his health is still good, he is quite helpless.
I have spoken with hundreds and thousands of these légionnaires who have served their time as they lounged about the courtyard of the barracks in Sidi-bel-Abbès, rejoicing that they had done with the Foreign Legion for ever. ”

“ There is no such thing as an impossible marching performance for the regiment of foreigners. Each individual is inoculated with the one idea, it is hammered into him, that he has to march as long as he can control his legs. And when he can no longer control them, then he must at least try to crawl.
It is a merciless system, which, however, produces wonderful soldiers.
Inseparable from the march of the Legion is the baggage of the légionnaire.
The French foreign soldier marches with an equipment called the "tenue de campagne d'Afrique." ”

“ Besides her and Madame la Cantinière there was no woman in the town of the Foreign Legion who would even in her wildest dreams have deigned a légionnaire worthy of a glance.
Smith would never have patronised this Café de la Légion. He knew something much better. To him I owed my acquaintance with Ben Mansur's coffee. His was a Moorish coffee-house. Finely coloured mosaics formed Arabian proverbs on the floor and against the walls there were long marble benches. Arabs crouched on these benches and smoked comfortably gurgling narghiles—the incarnation of quietude and silence. ”

“ Contrary to most of the légionnaires, 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 légionnaire 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 légionnaire roped to it by the shoulders. ”