French Legion

“ All agreed that it had been worse than they had expected, and that the enemy had fought with great bravery.
"They are sturdy fellows and not to be despised," a captain said. "I certainly did not think they would fight so well. If they had fought like that against the French there would have been no occasion for us to send an army to help them. However, we have a right to be proud of the Legion; they have done gallantly. It is a pity that we have lost something like three thousand men by sickness. ”

“ Advancing steadily, fighting side by side with the magnificent French Regiments who regard the Legion with respect, almost with jealousy,—the Legionnaire feels himself a personage. His comrades have suffered and died by thousands to gain the position the Regiment holds. Each living member must now maintain that enviable record.
35July 14, 1917, anniversary of the fall of the Bastile, Independence Day of France, the Foreign Legion was decorated with the braided cord, the Fouragere, the color of the Medaille Militaire, by President Poincare. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are plenty of fine speeches made about the glorious Foreign Legion in the French Republic, but there is a prejudice against having anything to do with a légionnaire in the flesh there. Everywhere he is shown the door, and the poor devil begins a terrible course of starvation.
How often have I seen these men come back again with a batch of recruits to Sidi-bel-Abbès, and their old comrades mockingly asking them why they were in Africa once more. ”

“ It is their only chance of avoiding service under the hated German. They fight for France, and by their five years' Legion-service earn the right to naturalisation also. There are a good many French, too, who are 'rehabilitating' themselves. Men who have come to grief at home and prefer the Legion to prison. Then there is undoubtedly a wanted-by-the-police class of men who have bolted from all parts of Europe and taken sanctuary here. Yes, I should say the out-of-works, deserters, runaways and Alsatians make up three parts of the Legion. ”

“ He drew them up beside him on the reviewing-stand and turned their astonished faces toward the regiment.
"Men of the Foreign Legion," he said, "these are the children who discovered two spies, and by reporting them saved our camp from probable destruction." Then, turning again to the children, he said: "By your prompt and intelligent action you have prevented a terrible catastrophe. In recognition of your services the Foreign Legion desires to make you honorary members of the regiment, and France is proud to claim you as her children!" ”

“ Innumerable instances of their stubbornness can be given, and it is the quality which has made them, time after time, invaluable as a "stiffening" whenever it has been considered necessary to draft a number of soldiers of the Legion into a regiment of less experienced troops. "The most pusillanimous of them," said an old French officer, who had seen much service in Africa, to us, "will hold out to the death when side by side with a legionary and inspired by his superb courage." ”

“ I admit, willingly enough, that a large percentage of the men in the Foreign Legion really deserve the callous summing up that one is wont to apply to the whole regiment. All that I have seen and heard in Africa, however, has convinced me that the other and greater part of the men in the Foreign Legion are anything but the lost souls one imagines them to be. They come into the Legion as poor workmen. Their story is the sad one of the vagabond workman who had to starve on the French high road, because he could not speak the language. ”

“ However, at the depot, which we reached in good time, doing a fair day's march every day, we received additions to our numbers—self-styled recruits, really men who had learned more than a little of soldiering in other armies, and whom ill-luck or bad character or desire of French citizenship had driven or induced into the Foreign Legion. ”

“ The first Foreign Legion employed by the French in Africa was transferred to Spain in 1835, and there used up, almost to a man. Another has since been raised, composed of men of all countries—Poles, Belgians, Germans of every denomination, a few Spanish Carlists, and even two or three Englishmen; the legion, like most corps of the same kind, is remarkable for the reckless valour and bad moral character of its members. The Polish battalion is the best and most distinguished. The others are not to be trusted ”

“ So, today, 142 years later, American soldiers in khaki cross leagues of ocean, fight, suffer and die to save France from invasion even as France saved us.
27 CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF THE LEGION The Foreign Legion has a notable record, which extends back to the Crusades. Then, French and Anglo-Saxon marched together, and fought to save the world for Christianity. History, repeating itself, after centuries, today, we see the same forces, side by side, fighting, dying, not only for Christianity, but for civilization. ”

“ It is probably the most cosmopolitan body of men in any part of the world, and the formation of such a body, in which the distinctions of nationality are abolished, is peculiar to the French nation. The Legion includes natives of every country populated by the Caucasian races, and especially of Italian, German, English, and French citizens. It is an agglomeration of adventurers, of whom the largest proportion desire only obscurity ”

“ In the 163rd I saw a French regiment at its best. The Legion is composed of men from all countries. The 170th are from many French regiments and sections. The 163rd all came from southern France. They saw alike, understood one another and worked together. Kind and considerate, they were a band of ideal brothers. They took pleasure in having an American feel at home. They made sure that 167he got his share of clothing, rations and duty. He, noticing those little courtesies, in his appreciation, became a better soldier. ”

“ To outward seeming the soldiers of the Foreign Legion are average men, engaged in average military duties, and it is not until definite contact with them has been established that any realisation of their exceptional qualities and curious defects can be obtained. As is well known, the Legion includes every class of adventurers from men of royal blood and noblemen of the highest rank downward, and many an assumed name conceals a story which would be worth untold gold in Fleet Street, or in the journalistic equivalent of Fleet Street in some other European capital. ”

“ As a set-off against this miserable payment the French books on the subject draw attention to the chance of quick advancement. This, however, is a trifle contradictory to the actual facts of the case. In the Foreign Legion at present among a round three hundred officers there is only one who is not a Frenchman, a quondam officer in the Austrian army, who worked his way up from the ranks. ”

“ The Red Indian sign is still on the machines. The old boys from the Legion are in the seats, and we hope to see every man an officer, dressed in the uniform of his own country.
About the time the United States entered the war, the Americans of the Legion offered their services to the American Government at home and were not then accepted and the following letter, among others, was sent to the New York Herald by a French lady:—
”American Veterans in France. ”

“ Is a sentinel attacked, then he must defend himself with his bayonet until he can alarm the guard and bring the officer on duty to the rescue with cartridges. Such things are significant. But they do not prevent the légionnaire from being a splendid soldier.
Individual training—Boer tactics—practical instruction ... that is the Legion. And it marches. Now and then its marching powers are increased artificially. The "compagnies montées" one with each regiment, companies mounted on mules, have even done seventy kilometres a day. Every two men have a mule. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a hundred rounds of ammunition in our pouches, joy in our hearts, and a terrific load upon our backs, we swung out of the gates to the music of our magnificent band, playing the March of the Legion, never heard save when the Legion goes on active service. ”

“ The adjutant was just as tyrannical as ever to the men of the battalion; he distributed his curses and abuse with perfect impartiality, but no one minded now. The officers were the only ones who did not understand, though they, doubtless, had heard of many tragedies in the Legion, yet they seemed to have forgotten all: officers really care only for their own pleasure and comfort, and every one of them, from commandant down to sub-lieutenant, felt quite satisfied so long as there was an appearance of good order and discipline. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The non-coms. are all-powerful and tyrannical; the officers are utterly uninterested in the men as individuals, and do not even know their names.
And I was not one of their own officers of the Legion. I was a Spahi officer, superintending the organising of mule-cavalry out of infantry; or rather, making ordinary infantry into mounted infantry, that the Legion might hope to compete with the Touaregs in mobility. We wanted mounted riflemen down there just as you did in the Boer War, or else the Arabs served us as the Boers did you at first. ”

“ SCHNEIDER I
Stories about the Foreign Legion have, nearly all, the same centre idea and motive—escape or attempted escape.
It is the one thing the légionnaires think of. They grumble about their food; they grumble about their chief officers and their subordinate officers; they grumble about the hot days and cold nights of Algeria; they grumble about the scarcity of cigarettes, the price of wine, the scarcity of soap, the hardness of their work, the smallness of their pay, but they never grumble about their loss of liberty. ”

“ This language of restraint in the mouths of organized civilian youth may prove to be a natural companion to the famous battle slogan of the A.E.F.: "Let's go!"
New York Evening Post, May 3, 1919.—... The true usefulness of a veterans' organization is not far to seek. Like the G.A.R., the Legion should maintain and develop the comradeship bred by the war. It can assist the unfortunate in its ranks; it can take care of the widows and orphans of soldiers, in so far as any inadequacy of public provision seems to make care necessary. ”

“ It is always so with the Legion, and that is what makes the Legion so terrible in battle—They are not so much fighting with the enemy, monsieur, they are bayoneting the Past, and what the Past has done to them. ”

“ Philadelphia Press, April 10, 1919.—The organization of the soldiers of the late war into a permanent body is inevitable and entirely proper.
Capper's Weekly, May 24, 1919.—The American Legion organized at St. Louis is the new G.A.R. and through its platforms the views of the soldiers who fought in France will be heard. It is already apparent what the trend of that sentiment is. Whatever military system this nation sets up, if it meets the approval of the two million men who served the nation in the Great War, it will be democratic in spirit and as far as possible in form. ”