In the Foreign Legion Part 6

From now on I was merely a number, a strict impersonal number.... They number men in penitentiaries. It was just the same in the Legion. I had got what I wanted. The great Legion's impersonality had swallowed me up. What was my name now?... Number 17889....

CHAPTER IV

THE FOREIGN LEGION'S BARRACKS

In the company's storeroom : Mr. Smith--American, legionnaire, philosopher : The Legion's neatness : The favourite substantive of the Foreign Legion : What the commander of the Old Guard said at Waterloo : Old and young legionnaires : The canteen : Madame la Cantiniere : The regimental feast : Strange men and strange things : The skull : The prisoners' march : The wealth of Monsieur Ra.s.sedin, legionnaire : "Rehabilitation" : The Koran chapter of the Stallions

The eleventh company's storeroom was in a state of siege. We besieged the place, pushing and being pushed, hunting for standing room, but everywhere standing in somebody's way. The "non-coms" had very soon exhausted their vocabulary of strong language and could only express their feelings in fervent prayers that fifteen thousand devils might fly away with those thrice confounded recruits--ces malheureux bleus. A corporal, two sergeants, a sergeant-major and half a dozen legionnaires detached for storeroom work continually fell over each other in their haste to get done at last with the trying on of uniforms and with the issue of the kit. Countless jackets and pants were tried on; they put numerous "kepis" upon our sinful heads, and again and again they anathematised our awkwardness in priceless adjectives. In big heaps the property of our future Legion life was dealt out to us; red pants and fatigue uniforms, blue jackets and overcoats, sashes, knapsacks, field-flasks, leather straps and belts, a soldier's kit in a bewildering jumble.

"Ready!" said the sergeant-major at last with a grin of relief. "And that's something to be thankful for. Here, Corporal Wa.s.sermann, take them away. Voila! Off with your mess of recruits. Try and make legionnaires out of the beggars. Yes, you'll find it a big contract. I wish you joy, Corporal Wa.s.sermann."

"En avant, marche!" commanded the corporal. Once more the non-commissioned officers of the storeroom told us exactly what they thought of us and where they wished us to go. Their remarks were extremely pointed and expressive of their disgust.

We mounted three flights of stairs and the pa.s.sing legionnaires of the company stared at us in curiosity.

Through a long corridor we marched, until the corporal kicked a door open and led us into a big room, our future quarters. We looked about our new home. Twenty beds were in the room, ten on one side, ten on the other, perfectly aligned. In the middle of the room stood two big wooden tables and long benches, scoured gleaming white. Everything in the place was scrupulously neat and clean. A rack in the corner held our rifles. Suspended from the ceiling, over the tables, there was a cupboard--the "pantry" of our quarters. It struck me as very practical.

Knives and forks, the men's tin plates and tin cups, our bread rations were kept there. Half a dozen legionnaires were sitting on bunks and benches, cleaning their rifles and polishing their leather belts--our comrades.

Corporal Wa.s.sermann, lying in his bunk puffing a cigarette, took a good long look at us. He was little more than a boy.

"Eh bien," he said, "I am your corporal. You will have to learn French as quickly as possible. That's very important. Keep your ears open and listen to everything that's said. That is the right way to go about it.

We shall begin drilling to-morrow. To-day you will have to arrange your bunks and things. I shall arrange your bunks in such a fashion that each of you shall be placed between two old legionnaires. You've only got to watch how they fix their things and do the same. It is all very simple. When you have finished arranging your stuff, you can do what you please."

Then he a.s.signed a bunk to each of us and went off whistling. To the canteen, of course.

"Hallo!" said Smith. He had just come in. "That's all right. So you've not only been sent to the eleventh, but to my room as well. And that's all right. That's my bunk over there at the window. Take the one next.

It's been given to a recruit already, you say? Oh, kick him out, kick him out. What do you suppose the corporal cares where you bunk. I'll fix it with him. And that's all right. I'm going to call you Dutchy.

Now don't object, because I'm going to call you Dutchy anyhow, see?"

He was evidently pleased. So was I. From the start I had taken a liking to this man with the sharply cut features and the curious air of infinite knowledge. The pasteboard card on his bed said:

"Jonathan Smith, No 10247, soldat 1ere[1] cla.s.se."

[1] The Foreign Legion and the French army in general make a distinction between first-cla.s.s privates and second-cla.s.s privates. The first-cla.s.s private has the grade of a lance-corporal.

He was the company's bugler, and had nine years' service in the Foreign Legion to his credit. Fever and privation and vice had engraved hard lines in his face, and when he rolled his cigarettes in French fashion, his hands trembled just a little. His hair was quite grey. He had fought against Chinese pirates in French Indo-China, he had campaigned in Madagascar and won the French medal for bravery on colonial service.

During this campaign he had been shot in the shoulder and had had a severe attack of jungle fever. There was no garrison in Algeria, be it on the Morocco frontier, be it on the Sahara line, where he had not been stationed once at least. He was a perfect encyclopaedia of all things connected with the Legion. He could swear fluently in English, German, French, and Arabian, and had even acquired a pretty fair knowledge of Chinese expressions of disgust. He was friend and brother to several Arabs with doubtful characters, he could recite whole chapters of the Koran by heart, and knew a great deal about Morocco.

Which will be seen later on.

He was in fact a man well worth knowing.

From the very beginning there was a perfect understanding between us.

He volunteered the information that he was a native of California and had "seen a few things in his life." I answered with the bare statement that I was a German, and had lived in the United States for some years.

Both remarks were the basis for a tacit agreement to keep within the limits of strict impersonality.

He lay on his bunk, and I tried to get some order in my newly issued belongings.

"Your shoulders have been drilled into shape somewhere?" said Smith.

"They were."

"States?"

"No, Germany."

"Oh, I see. Thought you might have been in the U.S. army. Wish I had stuck to it."

"Have you tried the Legion's tobacco yet?" he continued.

We rolled ourselves cigarettes from strong, black Algerian tobacco, and Smith stretched himself comfortably on his bunk with his knees drawn up, his cap pulled down over his eyes. Smoking contentedly, the old soldier preached me the Legion's wisdom:

"There's no money here--the pay is not worth speaking of, I mean.

There's a lot of work. It's a hard life all round. That's the Foreign Legion. There's no earthly reason why any man should be fool enough to serve in this outfit, unless he's specially fond of being underfed and overworked. When I come to think of it--I don't know what the d.i.c.kens made me stay nine years! Because there's something doing once in a while, I suppose. Well, I'll stick it out for the pension now. Anyway, you've joined the Legion--more fool you--you're here and you can make up your mind that you are here to stay. And you must look at things in the right way. Legion life can be stood right enough, if you don't let yourself be worried by anything at all, if you're as ice-cold as Chicago in January, and if you're lucky enough to see something doing.

Whether we march against the Arabs or Chinese (there's a battalion of us in Indo-China, you know) or to 'Maroc' at last, that's all the same, but it's good to be on the move in the Legion. Then a legionnaire's life ain't half bad. Don't ever forget, though, to have your feelings frozen into an iceblock. Don't let anything bother you. No use getting mad about things here. Just say to yourself: 'C'est la Legion.' When you're dead played out, and you think you can't stand it any longer; when the fever's got you by the neck; when you're sitting and fuming in the 'cellule' (that's the prison, Dutchy), or when some sergeant's giving you h.e.l.l--grin, sonny, and say to yourself: 'C'est la Legion!'

That's the Legion. Do your work and don't worry. If any of the fellows get fresh, hit quick and hit hard--c'est la Legion. And don't forget that the main thing in this Foreign Legion business is neatness and cleanliness. You want to have your things in order, you want to be neat. So!"

He rummaged in the bundle of uniform things on my bed, pulling out one by one jackets, pants, shirts, &c., and folding them with astonishing quickness. I watched him in wonder. This old soldier with his big rough hands had fingers as clever as any chambermaid's. Piece after piece he folded rapidly, smoothing every crease with almost ridiculous care.

Each of the folded pieces he measured, giving each the same length, from the tips of his fingers to his elbow. Finally he erected with these bundles, upon the shelf at the wall over my bed, an ingenious structure of uniforms, the "paquetage" of the Legion. The legionnaire has no clothes-chest like the American regular. To get over this difficulty he invented his "paquetage," which is a work of art, solving the military problem of how to stow away several uniforms in a compact s.p.a.ce without crumpling them.

With half-shut eyes the bugler stood in front of my bunk and regarded his handiwork.

"And that's all right," he said. "That's a 'paquetage,' how it should be. It's 'fantasie,' pure 'fantasie,' Dutchy dear. Making 'fantasie'[2]

it is called in the Legion, if one tries to be always 'tres chic' and 'parfaitement propre,' to be a swell. Yes, that's the Legion. We are lazy by preference, but we're always neat. Always!"

[2] This curious expression of the Foreign Legion is, of course, an imitation of the Moorish "fantasia."

The "paquetage" was not the only miracle. I was very much impressed by the way every bit of available s.p.a.ce was put to the utmost use. A legionnaire keeps his linen in his haversack. For his letters, his books, for the few other articles of private property he possesses, he finds room in his knapsack; his brushes and his polishing-rags are carefully stored away in a little sack which hangs on the wall. Even the most trivial of his belongings has its appointed place. A legionnaire keeps his kit in such perfect order that he can find everything in the dark.

While I was making my bed, the bugler looked on for a while, grinning all the time. Finally he couldn't stand it any longer. He pulled the blankets and the sheets I had spread out away again and started showing me how to make a bed "a la Legion." Bed-making was another of the Legion's tricks. In a few seconds Smith had arranged the bed-clothes in wonderful accuracy, blankets drawn tight as a drum, pillows placed in mathematical exactness.

"Merde!" he said, "that's how we legionnaires fix our bunks. It's easy enough."

"Merde?" I asked, "what does 'merde' mean, anyway?"

It was a French word unknown to me. Smith used it continually, underlining his remarks with it, so to speak. He seemed to like it. He p.r.o.nounced it with much care, lovingly. Naturally I thought that it must be some especially forceful invective, the more so as the sergeant-major in the storeroom (who certainly had not been in good humour) had said "merde" about five hundred times in ten minutes. And the other legionnaires in the room liked it apparently no less. The "merdes" were always flying about....

"Well, what is this 'merde'?"

Smith nearly had a fit.

"Merde?" he yelled, laughing as if he had suddenly gone crazy, "what 'merde' means? Why, you owl, 'merde' is ----."

He used a word which certainly does not exist in the vocabulary of polite society, an old Anglo-Saxon substantive, describing a most natural function and expressing huge disgust when used as an invective.