Chapter I: Prologue

Once upon a time there was a young student at a German University who found life too fresh, too joyous, to care very much for professors and college halls. Parental objections he disregarded. Things came to a climax. And the very next "Schnelldampfer" had amongst its passengers a boy in disgrace, bound for the country of unlimited possibilities in search of a fortune....

The boy did not see very much of fortune, but met with a great deal of hard work. His father did not consider New York a suitable place for bad boys, and booked him a through passage to Galveston. There the ex-student contracted hotel-bills, feeling very much out of place, until a man who took a fancy to him gave him a job on a farm in Texas. There the boy learnt a good deal about riding and shooting, but rather less about cotton-raising. This was the beginning. In the course of time he became translator of Associated Press Despatches for a big German paper in St. Louis and started in newspaper life.

From vast New York to the Golden Gate his new profession carried him: he was sent as a war correspondent to Cuba, he learned wisdom from the kings of journalism, he paid flying visits to small Central American republics whenever a new little revolution was in sight. Incidentally he acquired a taste for adventure. Then the boy, a man now, was called back to the Fatherland, to be a journalist, editor and novelist. He was fairly successful. And a woman's love came into his life....

But he lost the jewel happiness. The continual fight for existence and battling for daily bread of his American career, so full of ups and downs, was hardly a good preparation for quiet respectability. Wise men called him a fool, a fool unspeakable, who squandered his talents in light-heartedness. And finally a time came when even his wife to be could no more believe in him. The jewel happiness was lost....

The man at any rate recognised his loss; he recognised that life was no longer worth living. A dull feeling of hopelessness came over him. And in his hour of despair he remembered the blood of adventure in his veins. A wild life he would have: he would forget.

He enlisted as a soldier in the French Foreign Legion.

* * * * *

That man was I. I had burned my boats behind me. Not a soul knew where I was. Those who loved me should think that I was dead. I lived the hard life of a légionnaire; I had no hopes, no aspirations, no thought for the future; I worked and marched, slept, ate, and did what I was ordered; suffered the most awful hardships and bore all kinds of shameful treatment. And during sleepless nights I dreamed of love--love lost for ever....

Some five hundred years I wore the uniform of the Legion. So at least it seemed to me.

Then--the great change came. One day there was a letter for me.

Love had found me out across a continent. I read and read and read again.

That was the turning-point of my life. I broke my fetters, and I fought a hard fight for a new career....

Now the jewel happiness is mine.

ERWIN ROSEN

HAMBURG, 1909

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I

LÉGIONNAIRE!

In Belfort : Sunrays and fear : Madame and the waiter : The French lieutenant : The enlistment office of the Foreign Legion : Naked humanity : A surgeon with a lost sense of smell : "Officier Allemand" : My new comrades : The lieutenant-colonel : A night of tears 1

CHAPTER II

L'AFRIQUE

Transport of recruits on the railway : What our ticket did for us and France : The patriotic conductor : Marseilles : The gate of the French Colonies : The Colonial hotel : A study in blue and yellow : On the Mediterranean : The ship's cook : The story of the Royal Prince of Prussia at Saida : Oran : Wine and légionnaires : How the deserter reached Spain and why he returned 16

CHAPTER III

LÉGIONNAIRE NUMBER 17889

French and American bugle-calls : Southward to the city of the Foreign Legion : Sidi-bel-Abbès : The sergeant is not pleased : A final fight with pride : The jokes of the Legion : The wise negro : Bugler Smith : I help a légionnaire to desert : The Eleventh Company : How clothes are sold in the Legion : Number 17889 35

CHAPTER IV

THE FOREIGN LEGION'S BARRACKS

In the company's storeroom : Mr. Smith--American, légionnaire, 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 légionnaires : The canteen : Madame la Cantinière : The regimental feast : Strange men and strange things : The skull : The prisoners' march : The wealth of Monsieur Rassedin, légionnaire : "Rehabilitation" : The Koran chapter of the Stallions 48

CHAPTER V

THE MILITARY VALUE OF THE FOREIGN REGIMENTS

A day's work as a recruit : Allez, hurry up! : The Legion's etiquette : A morning's run : The "cercle d'enfer" and the lack of soap : The main object of the Legion's training : Splendid marchers : Independent soldiers : Forty kilometres a day : Uniform, accoutrements, baggage, victualling : The training of the légionnaire in detail : The légionnaire as a practical man : Specialties of the Legion : Programme for a week in the Legion : The légionnaire as a labourer 77

CHAPTER VI

"THE LEGION GETS NO PAY"

The money troubles of the Legion : Five centimes wages : The cheapest soldiers of the world : Letters from the Legion : The science of "decorating" : The industries of the légionnaires : What the bugler did for a living : The man with the biscuits : A thief in the night : Summary lynch law : Herr von Rader and la Cantinière : "The Legion works--the Legion gets no pay!" 105

CHAPTER VII

THE CITY OF THE FOREIGN LEGION

The daily exodus to town : Ben Mansur's coffee : The Ghetto : The citizens of Sidi-bel-Abbès and the légionnaires : How the Legion squared accounts with the civilians : A forbidden part of the town : Primitive vice : A dance of a night : The gardens : The last resting-place of the Legion's dead 117

CHAPTER VIII

A HUNDRED THOUSAND HEROES--A HUNDRED THOUSAND VICTIMS

The hall of honour : A collection of ruined talents : The battle of Camaron : A skeleton outline of the Legion's history : A hundred thousand victims : A psychological puzzle : True heroes : How they are rewarded : The chances of promotion : The pension system of the Foreign Legion 135

CHAPTER IX

"MARCH OR DIE!"

The Legion's war-cry : A night alarm : On the march : The counting of the milestones : Under canvas : The brutality of the marches : The légionnaire and the staff doctor : My fight for an opiate : The "marching pig" : The psychology of the marches : Excited nerves : The song of imprecations 155

CHAPTER X

THE MADNESS OF THE FOREIGN LEGION

An unpleasant occurrence : The last three coppers : The Roumanian Jew from Berlin : Monsieur Viaïsse : The Legion's atmosphere : The Cafard demoniacs : Bismarck's double : Krügerle's whim : The madness of Légionnaire Bauer : Brutal humour : A tragedy 176

CHAPTER XI

THE DESERTERS

The Odyssey of going on pump : Death in the desert : The Legion's deserters : A disastrous flight in a motor-car : The tragic fate of an Austrian engineer : In the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès : The business part of desertion : Oran and Algiers : The Consulate as a trap : The financial side of desertion : One hundred kilometres of suffering : Hamburg steamers : Self-mutilation : Shamming : In the Suez Canal : Morocco, the wonder-land 197

CHAPTER XII

A CHAPTER ON PUNISHMENTS

The return of the poumpistes : The scale of punishments in the Legion : Of spiteful non-commissioned officers : The Legion's axiom : Sad history of Little Jean : The punishment machine : Lost years : A légionnaire's earnings in five years--francs, 127.75 : The prisons in the Foreign Legion : Pestilential atmosphere : Human sardines : The general cells : Life in the prison : On sentry duty among the prisoners 226

CHAPTER XIII

SOME TYPES OF VICE

A variety of human vices : The red wine of Algeria : Shum-Shum : If there were no wine 248

CHAPTER XIV

MY ESCAPE

In the Arab prison : The letter : Days of suffering : Flight! : The greedy "Crédit Lyonnais" : Haggling in the Ghetto : The palm grove as a dressing-room : On the railway track : Arab policemen : Horrible minutes : Travelling to Oran : Small preparations : On the steamer _St. Augustine_ : Marseilles : Ventimiglia : Free 255

CHAPTER XV

J'ACCUSE

Two years after : Shadows of the past : My vision : Public opinion and the Foreign Legion : The political aspect of the Foreign Legion : The moralist's point of view : The "Legion question" in a nutshell : A question the civilised world should have answered long ago : Quousque tandem...? 274