John Patrick Le Poer

“ Moreover, we felt justified in acting as highway robbers, for the Arabs had deliberately halted, and then sallied forth to take our lives, so as to possess themselves of our horses and arms. For me there was another thought: if the fight had gone against us, as it might easily have done if the Arabs had had sense enough to scatter and then to come straight home in a charge, Giulia would have had to die. There was no other resource. We Europeans could not endure the thought that a woman of our own blood, of our own colour, of our own ideas, should become the slave of a Bedouin of the desert. ”

“ Even in a pursuit, when the rations are short, one feels that the enemy is suffering more than himself, and the thought that the battalion is pressing on their rear, giving them no peace or ease or quietness, adds a zest to the bad and scanty food which makes it palatable and satisfying. Let no one run away with the idea that we simple soldiers did not feel the sting of defeat—indeed, we felt it, and sorely too—but while one can forgive himself for a disaster, he finds it very hard to forgive the enemy for following it up. It is bad enough to be driven off a stricken field ”

“ When we met next day at the main-guard Giulia, as she had promised, had a little parcel that made the sergeant of the guard, the sentry on duty, and the other legionaries lounging about, consider me a happy man in spite of all my misfortunes. I could see that, and I own it gave me pleasure. The lowest, as well as the highest, desires to inspire envy in the hearts of others. So long as they think him especially favoured, the sorrows and troubles, which he alone knows of and feels, seem to diminish, even almost to disappear. ”

“ Only once in the Red Sea did we show signs of life. It was when a French troopship passed us on her way home with sick and wounded from the war. The convalescents crowded on her deck and raised a feeble shout. We cheered heartily in reply, and we kept up the cheering until it was impossible for them any longer to hear. We pitied them, poor devils. How they must have in turn pitied us, going as we were to the wretched land where they had left behind health and many good comrades, and where we too should pay our quota of dead and receive our quota of wounds and illness. ”

“ A victory means hard work, and a pursuit harder, but a retreat is the hardest of all. I am not speaking of the glory of victory or the disgrace of defeat. Like most soldiers I think only of my private troubles and the troubles of my comrades, and I can assure the reader that, when a battalion is falling back on the base, supplies are bad and insufficient, anxiety on the part of all is heart-breaking, an attack in force is always to be expected, and no one can safely say that those who have beaten his side once may not do so again and more decisively. ”

“ Luckily, as I was going back, I passed the dead body of a white officer of our opponents; he was dressed in a yellow tunic and trousers, with tan boots; his white helmet lay a foot or so from his head; a heavy, fair moustache curled outwards on both cheeks; his jaw had fallen, and his wide-open blue eyes were staring upwards at the sky; at least a dozen gashes showed red upon the body, and a bloody sword in one hand, an empty revolver in the other, were evidence that his death had been amply paid for. A white man fights well when he knows that there is no quarter for him. ”

“ Oh, but you were once sergeant-major, and why did not you command rather than the corporal? Well, for two good reasons. First, if I had once been sergeant-major, he had once been captain. Second, somebody had to be close to Giulia in every fight, for reasons that may be guessed—and who had a better right to be at her side than I?
There was no time for us to bury poor Mac, even had I pick and shovel for the work. Anyway, no soldier thinks much about where his body will lie after death: no grave at all is as good as a place in a trench where hundreds of others are pressing and crowding around. ”

“ Cecco's comrades seemed almost to believe, but the Italian was too cunning, too experienced in the world—above all, too full of knowledge of his own rascality—to be convinced.
"Well, well, well," he said; "we were insulted, and you best of all know it. Shall we not have even an apology? There cannot," he went on, "be an excuse. No matter about the woman and her fickleness; no matter about the wine and the tobacco; what can be said of the ugly words spoken of us, the comrades of the Portuguese?" ”

“ Often when I was more hungry after a meal than before it, the soup and bread rather exciting my stomach than satisfying it, I have smoked till no sensation of emptiness remained. I don't know what a soldier in a Continental army would do without tobacco. Nearly all our scanty pay went to buy it, and, wretched stuff as it was, I have never enjoyed the best Havana as I used to enjoy the delicious smoke when all work and drill for the day were over and the pipe of comfort and blessed forgetfulness made paradise of a barrack room. ”

“ All arms to be surrendered, a heavy fine to be paid, their villages to be kept in our possession till all the petty fortifications should be dismantled. Yes; my company kept a village and an oasis, and I fancy that the next generation of Arabs was whiter than their forbears. But that is war; and the people—the goody-goodies and the stockbrokers and the foolish women—who believe that honour dwells in the heart of a soldier on active service will lament our wickedness and get ready for the next occasion when they can send off their own soldiers to war, glorious war! ”

“ As soon as they had returned the compliment we fell into marching array in columns of fours, wheeled to the left, passed by the flank of the zephyrs, saluted the Turcos of the main guard at the gate, and stepped out on our first march northward. Truly, we were glad to leave behind the cantonment of Three Fountains and its associations. Always fond of change, we dropped our sadness, the sadness which one cannot choose but feel when leaving behind for ever even one's temporary home. ”

“ War is war, as an Alsatian in my company used to say; but why should a man, or rather men, come into camp for the night after a long march, and perhaps a sharp fight, to be sworn at and abused by the officers who, for their own sakes even, should try to make things cheerful for all? ”

“ He was one of those men found in every army in the world—men who cannot live out of barracks, who feel comfortable only in uniform, who look upon civilians as beings to be pitied for not having the military sense, just as the ordinary man pities the blind, the deaf, or the dumb. Such men's minds receive few, and these transient, impressions from outside their own corps. To hear the regiment rated soundly on inspection day is a greater calamity than the cutting off of a squadron by Berbers or the ambushing of half a battalion by Black Flags ”

“ And when a desperate legionary, his mind full of real—as mine were—or fancied wrongs, does break out, he is more like the Malay who runs amok than the European who strikes a blow or two and then is carried—kicking, striking, biting, and cursing—to the guard-house. ”

“ The young soldier who in his first battle tastes the bitterness of defeat and endures the hardships of the hurried march, the wakeful rest under arms, the wretched food, the dirt and worse than dirt, the continual strain upon the nerves, and all things else which are the portion of the conquered, will see war divested of all its seeming glory ”

“ The sergeant at once grasped the situation.
"What, fighting like wolves with one another already! Very well, my fine fellows, it does not end here; to-day the fight and the arrest, to-morrow the inquiry and the punishment."
Thereupon he ordered the men on each side of us to consider themselves our warders. "If they escape, if they fight again, there will be a more severe punishment for you, whose prisoners they are."
"A beautiful way to begin soldiering," he continued, looking alternately at the Belgian and myself; "go on like this, and life will be most happy for you." ”

“ All the legionaries, from sergeant-major down to simple soldier, feared and hated him; before he had been in the battalion a fortnight we, who had been the most joyous and careless fellows on earth, every man pleased with himself and with his comrades, became the most sullen and dogged lot in the world. ”

“ Take the advice of a friend, always seek the surgeon when you are ill or wounded. The old prejudice was, in its time, a just one; nowadays things are different."
I promised that I would do so. At the same time even to-day I fear the surgeon's knife more than an enemy's bayonet or sword or even lance, and the lance is what the infantry man most dreads—that is, of course, of weapons. However, I have not since the day I left the hospital at Oran ever been the occupant of a bed in one, and I sincerely hope that I may never see, as a patient at least, the whitewashed wall of a hospital again. ”

“ Soldiers are very like schoolboys; the simplest thing said or done by one they know far surpasses anything said, no matter how brilliant, anything done, no matter how renowned, by those they do not know. On active service they are even more easily amused. We often laughed heartily at sayings that, considered calmly by me now, show not the slightest trace of humour.
When the tale of dead and wounded was made up it was seen that our battalion had suffered more than any other corps in the fight, and that of the four companies constituting it mine had the greatest number of losses. ”

“ And remember, armaments are such to-day that no nation is absolutely safe from invasion; social questions, the relations between capital and labour, the currency, slave labour amongst whites, even in the United States—most happily situated of all countries—the eternal feud between whites and blacks in the South—any of these may at any moment cause a war worse than a war of invasion, because more bitter, more relentless, more capable of leaving a heritage of hate. ”

“ Every extra piece of work was passed on to me by the adjutant, and let me say here that the adjutant is the worst enemy a sub-officer can have. It's bad to be disliked by the commandant, because he will block promotion; the captain's enmity is hard to bear, because he can snarl three or four times a day; but the adjutant can play the very devil with a man in a thousand ways. ”

“ Talk of the sword of Damocles, that was nothing;—it simply meant death at some uncertain time—why, we all have such swords over our heads, and yet we eat and drink and sleep, we pray and curse, we laugh and weep, we hurt or help our neighbour, we gain or spend, as if life were the one thing safe and sure, safe and sure for ever. No one thinks much of his future beyond the grave ”

“ But when the men of a squad see that a comrade is in bad temper with his superiors and recognise that he has reason, then they will not mind aloofness or sharp answers or ugly words. On the contrary, they will sympathise, never knowing when their own turns may come for ill-treatment. So the corporal, seeing that the men were quite satisfied that I should live my life to myself and felt sympathy and not anger on account of my conduct, wisely left me alone. ”

“ Truly there is no solace for a troubled spirit like the society of the loving and beloved one; her sweet sympathy more than makes up for all.
The sergeant of No. 2 section of my Company was a German Pole, a good-humoured fellow, ready for any fun, except when the adjutant's eyes were fixed upon him, but withal a good soldier. His time was nearly up, and he meant to go to Paris, and there make a living somehow, when he should be at last done with the Foreign Legion. He and I were on very friendly terms, and, indeed, I was oftener with him than with any other sergeant of the corps. ”

“ Ask that soldier how he feels at the end of a thirty-mile march. If he isn't a liar, he will tell you that the rifle is rather heavy, but he doesn't mind that; that the pack galls a bit, but that's to be expected; and that the pouches weighted with ammunition have given him a dull, heavy pain in each side just above, he imagines, where the kidneys are, and if that pain could be avoided he would think little of all the rest. ”

“ In a retreat, when you are burdened with guns, one or two things must be done—destroy the artillery, and so produce a bad effect on the men; keep it, and by so doing slow down your march in swampy ground. We were all glad that no guns had been sent to us. We were quite confident that we could maintain our ground with the rifle alone; then, if we really had to withdraw, we felt more confident of cutting our way through with steady bayonet fighting than if we had to depend on the spasmodic assistance of artillery in a retreat. ”