At Sidi Bel Abbes we were met by a sergeant of the Legion, taken to the barracks and marched in through the great central gate.
On each side of a tree-bordered avenue are the four-storied buildings in which the men live; at the end of the avenue are the offices and beyond (a place very well known to every Légionnaire!) the canteen, also the wash-house, stores and other buildings on the right of the main building is the Salle d'Honneur, where all the trophies and flags of the Legion are kept, and beyond that the prison, all enclosed by a high wall. We arrived at Sidi Bel Abbe's on the fourteenth of October, 1914. Everything was in a state of commotion. The 3rd Battalion had just received orders for active service. We recruits were sent right away to the stores to get our kit, rations, rifles and ammunition and then were told to fall in with the rest. A pretty raw and awkward bunch we must have been.
The kit issued to us in those days consisted of képi, which was red with a blue band, blue tunic, red trousers, and a short vest which we called veste de singe, an overcoat and the blue woollen belt which it is compulsory to wear over our tunics as a precaution against dysentery. The couvre nuque was also issued but, in spite of the fact that in films about the Legion the officers and men are always shown wearing it, day and night, this is not so in reality. It is never worn. The only use to which it is put by Légionnaires is to strain their coffee or even water when it is very muddy! The epaulettes, which are also featured in films and fiction have not been worn since 1907. The only epaulette a Legion soldier wears is a little blue rosette of felt which he sews on his right shoulder in order to hitch his rifle over it. When we were in the Dardanelles in 1915 blue linen trousers called salopettes were issued to us to wear over our red ones. During the war, when the French troops got their bleu horizon, we were given khaki and since then all the French Colonial troops have worn khaki. The French Government bought up all the American uniforms at the end of the war.
Within a few hours of our arrival at Sidi Bel Abbes the battalion was entrained for Perrigaux. As we got there we heard firing and learned that the Arabs had attacked the town and that we had to push them back into the mountains. This attack on Perrigaux was the last Arab revolt in Algeria.
Our forces consisted of one battalion of the Legion, some French Colonial troops and a few Tirailleurs.
We dug a trench. We could see the Arabs only about two hundred yards away and knew that there were a lot more that we could not see, among the rocks at the foot of the hills. The rifle that was issued to us in those days was the fusil gras which had been in use since 1870. It was monstrously heavy and fired great big bullets. I had no idea how to use it but I lay down in the trench next to an old soldier and watched what he did. The first shot I fired there was a terrible kick which made my shoulder sore for days! I opened the bolt very carefully and slowly for fear of what would happen so that the ejector did not work and I had to poke the cartridge case out with a pencil!
The soldier next me laughed and showed me how to use the rifle and after that it was better and I began to enjoy firing it.
After an hour of this we were ordered to fix bayonets and charge. In a charge like this, it is the old soldiers, who have experience of colonial warfare and know how to take cover and watch out for the Arabs, who get through. On that charge nearly all the recruits who came up with me were killed.
I was not at all afraid and to my own surprise I was not even excited. I seemed to feel quite cool ; in those days I was unconscious of danger. I did not know what it meant. Every one was all over the place. I found myself face to face with an Arab and plunged my bayonet into him, but in doing so I turned it so that I could not get it out again and had to leave it in his body. The Arabs do not like facing steel and they began to ran away towards the mountains with our troops after them in any sort of order.
I had already been told that for every enemy killed a Légionnaire cuts a notch in his rifle and as I went on I got out my knife and started to make a notch on mine. It was very hot and I was dead tired with running over the rough ground and carrying the heavy rifle and kit, and so I sat down on a rock to rest. Suddenly I saw a party of Arabs quite near to me on the right. They closed round me and I realised that I was their prisoner but, not really knowing what that meant, I was not frightened and thought it best to be friendly so I offered them cigarettes. They took them and also took my cartridges away from me, but left me to carry the heavy rifle. I could not under-stand what they said but something in their faces and gestures alarmed me in an unexpected way, and when one of them started to put his hands on me in a nauseating, caressing way I upped with the butt of the rifle and smashed his head in. That ended all friendly relationship with my captors
When they got me back to their camp I was handed over to the women. It is the women who do the torturing. On the way up to Perrigaux in the train an old soldier had been telling of his adventures and had talked of having been taken prisoner by the Arabs. I remembered his saying that if this should happen to a man the only thing to do to escape torture was to pretend to be mad as the Arabs think that a madman is "possessed" by a spirit and will not touch him. So I thought I had better do this and I started catching flies where there were none, catching at my own thumb and making any idiotic face and gesture I could think of. When I saw them draw back from me I wanted to laugh, but I managed not to do so.
They put some food near me which I was glad of by then and in the evening they brought me to the Marabou (a sort of holy man or priest) who could speak French and he questioned me about the strength of the battalion. I don't think I even knew, but, anyway, I made up some tremendous number and all the time I was playing the fool to make him believe me mad.
The Arabs evidently did not think much of me as a prisoner for that night they took me down to the plain near where we had been fighting that day and signed to me to go back to our lines. But they had taken my rifle away from me and that bothered me very much. I did not want to go back without it. Already I had been made to understand that it was a terrible offence in the Legion to lose any part of your kit or equipment but also my rifle had that notch in it for my" first man." I went on for a few hundred yards towards Perrigaux and then I hid behind a bush and began wondering how on earth I could get my rifle back. The rest of the night I lay out there between the lines.
Early in the morning the Legion started to attack again and a lot of them came right past me. The Arabs ~ere shooting from behind their boulders and bushes and the Arab marksmen are deadly sure. They have any kind of rifle they can get hold of and they do not use the sights, but put two fingers on the barrel when they aim. A Legion soldier fell dead, shot through the head, within a yard of where I was hiding. Then I came out, made sure he was lifeless, picked up his rifle and joined in the attack.
When it was over I went to my Captain and reported. I told him all that had happened. He seemed to find it amusing, as I did when I started to talk about it, and he laughed and said he was pleased with me, that I was a good soldier. I felt very proud of that.
We quelled the Arab revolt in, I think, four or five days and then we went back to Sidi Bel Abbes.
When we were back in barracks I got in touch with an old soldier who promised to show me the ropes and put me wise to the ways of the Légionnaires. He was a very nice fellow, a bugler from Brittany called Le Gonnec.
When a man joins the French Foreign Legion the first thing he has to learn is the base de la discipline - the Legion's code.
It is : "La disciphne étant la force principale de la Légion il importe que tous superieurs obtiennent de ses subordonn6s une obeissance entiere et une soumission de tous les instants, que les ordres soient execute's instantanément, sans hesitation ni murmure, les autorités qui les donnent en sont responsable et Ia reclamation n'est permise a l'inférieur que lorsque qu'il a obei."*
*Discipline being the principal strength of the Legion it is essential that all superiors receive from their subordinates absolute obedience and submission on all occasions. Orders must be executed instantly without hesitation or complaint. The authorities who give them are responsible for them and an inferior is only permitted to make an objection after he has obeyed.
The second thing a Legionnaire must learn is how to get drunk when he has no money to buy wine!
In I914 there were three battalions and each battalion had four companies.
My company was the 9th of the 3rd battalion of the 1st regiment commanded by Captain Rousseau. He was a splendid officer and understood his men, having been a ranker himself. His old mother used to keep a canteen in Sidi Bel Abbes. Although there were the sergeants and corporals between them and the men, the good officers always studied their men and knew their characters, when to overlook their faults, when to punish, and how to get the best out of them.
A second-class soldier is an ordinary private. First-class soldiers are rare and are not thought anything of as, in order to gain this nebulous distinction, a man must have no punishment, and that is practically impossible for a real Légionnaire. The best soldiers in the fighting line spend a great deal of their time in prison when their battalion is in barracks.
I always hated parades and one morning when the sergeant who was drilling us had made us stand to attention and slope arms several dozen times, I began obeying slackly, just bending my knee and not moving my feet apart at the word repos and, when he went for me, I threw my rifle down on the ground. For this I was tied to a tree for the rest of the morning, with the woollen belt which, as I have said, we all wore, by orders, over our tunice. Afterwards I was reported to the Captain.
When he asked me why I had behaved like that, I said: I am intelligent enough to know how to stand at attention and slope arms after doing it once; I don't need to go on doing it fifty times an hour."
As a matter of fact, I was rather a favourite with Captain Rousseau. He knew my age, as indeed they all did (unofficially, of course) and he chose to overlook both my "crime" and my cheek.
He cautioned me that to refuse to obey a command meant court-martial and prison and told me not to do it again. But by his orders I was given a job in the store-room and so escaped those eternal and infernal parades. .
In February, 1915, it was posted in orders that any man who wished to do so could volunteer for active service. I think nearly the whole battalion wanted to. I was for rushing off to find the Captain to put my name down then and there. Some one tried to stop me and explained that I must go to the Corporal, who would forward my name to the Sergeant and he would give it to the Lieutenant for the Captain.
"Not I!" I called to them, as I went off. "I'm going straight to God, not to all his Saints first."
I found Captain Rousseau in the mess-room, saluted and said: If you please, sir, will you put my name down for active service ?
"That's all right, de Bruin" - he smiled -"You're down already.”
From Tiaret we were sent to Oran where we camped in an old Roman arena which is surrounded by a very high wall, the idea being that this would make it difficult for us to break camp and go into the town to drink. As a matter of fact, the authorities are never very optimistic about the success of their expedients in this direction. They know the Légionnaires too well. Those of us who were determined to get into the town that night fastened our leather belts together and so managed to 8cale those noble Roman walls.
Many are the ways in which a Legion soldier will earn drinks or the money to buy them. I used to go into the café and entertain people by blowing fire out of my mouth (a trick easily done with petrol) eating the red-hot end of my cigarette (the doctors say it is good for the stomach I) and piercing my cheeks with needles or pins. This does not hurt in the least if you do it quickly enough. The price of these edifying exhibitions was enough wine to keep me happy for the evening.
So well do the authorities know what is going on that they send out patrols to bring the truants back under arrest, some-times unconscious. But there is no punishment on the eve of going into action.
The morning after we camped at Oran, half the battalion was missing, but Legionnaires do not desert when they know they are going to fight and gradually they came in. Some turned up even without hats and other parts of their kit when we were on the quay ready to embark, but the battalion left Oran full strength.
We went on La France, which had been a passenger boat plying between Marseilles to Tunis. She had been converted into a troopship. At Malta we had to stay on board and we were disembarked at Alexandria. There we were attached to the Rdgiment de Marche d'Afrique, composed of volunteers from regular French regiments, under General d'Amade. We camped at the back of the Victoria Hospital on English territory. We still did not know our destination.
We had been kept hanging about, on the boat and at Alexandria, for over two months. There was a shortage of cigarettes and wine and there was a faction in the battalion which began to be actively discontented and to discuss whether it would not be a good thing to desert. We were on English territory and the idea was that if we could get away we might join the English forces and see some of the fighting for which we had volunteered. I was young and easily led and anything that sounded like an adventure was in my line so I threw in my lot with about forty men who decided to get away. It was a very abortive effort at desertion and we were caught and brought back to camp under arrest.
Then orders came through that there was to be a review. Whether this was intended to occupy us or impress some one else, I don't know; but on account of it those under arrest were released and put back into the lines. When the review was over we were again put under arrest.
At last we were embarked on the Bien Hoa, one of the ships which had relieved Casablanca when the town was captured by the Arabs in 1907.
It was a relief to know that we were on our way somewhere, presumably to the fighting line and, on board, those under arrest were released.
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