French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  Still, the episode did not serve to enhance the reputation of the Legion. Even Grisot admitted that the regiment met hostility from the European inhabitants of Oran, normally people who voted for the left, when it disembarked in June 1871.12 For the moment, the right held political power in France for a series of complicated reasons emanating from the war. However, the left-wing republicans under Leon Gambetta were slowly making a comeback, and in 1879 would capture both houses of parliament and force the resignation of the conservative president, ex-Legion colonel Patrice de MacMahon. A thorough reform of the French army based upon republican principles of universal conscription, the duty of every man to fight in defense of his country, was high on their agenda. There was little room in the intensely patriotic ideology of these men for a mercenary corps that appeared to be a dinosaur of a bygone age. Worse, it had participated in the suppression of the Commune, a movement that some on the Left, revivified by the amnesty of the Communards granted in 1880, had already promoted into the pantheon of revolutionary movements, to rank just one step below the storming of the Bastille. By the 1870s, the Legion had acquired a past, even if some of the legionnaires preferred to forget their individual pasts. The question was, did it have a future?

  Chapter 9

  THE INITIATION

  IN 1871, THE Legion may be said to have entered what in retrospect appears to have been its golden age. During the forty-three years between the Treaty of Frankfurt, which ended the Franco-Prussian War, and the assassination at Sarajevo that inaugurated World War I, it was in the forefront of the great burst of imperial expansion that took the French flag deep into Indochina, Africa, Madagascar, and Morocco. The Legion's participation in these expeditions lifted it from relative obscurity to become one of the most celebrated, if most controversial, regiments in the French Army. There were at least two reasons for this: First, the Third Republic proved reluctant to risk its new “metropolitan” army of short-service conscripts in perilous imperial adventures. Therefore, unlike the conquest of Algeria, which had been undertaken in the main by numbered French regiments, imperial expansion in the Third Republic would fall almost exclusively to colonial units raised specifically for that purpose. Therefore, the Legion would form a conspicuous component in many of these well-publicized ventures.

  A second factor that contributed to the Legion's higher profile, if not increase in stature, was the growing national tensions that steadily created the climate in which Europe prepared for war. Hardly had the final shots of the Franco-Prussian War been fired off than the ambiguous attitude of the French government toward the Legion surged to the surface. In July 1871, Paris ordered that the six battalions of the Legion (the 1st, 2nd, and 5th of the régiment de marche in France, the 6th Battalion in formation at Dunkirk, an autonomous company serving with the II Army of the Loire and the 3rd and 4th Battalions in Algeria) be reduced to four. Furthermore, enlistments in the Legion were to be limited to men from the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine—taken from France and integrated into Bismarck's Reich—to Swiss and to Frenchmen with an authorization from the War Ministry. This measure, designed principally to eliminate the large number of Germans who traditionally enlisted in the Legion, was lifted only in 1880. Even so, this directive appears to have been almost totally ignored by recruiting sergeants, for when J. N. Gung'l, a Frenchman of Hungarian extraction, joined the Legion in 1872, he was surrounded by Poles, Belgians, Italians and a large number of German deserters still wearing their old uniforms, all of whom were presumably declared honorary Alsatians for the occasion.1

  IF THE ATTITUDE of the French government toward the Legion was ambiguous, that of the Germans was definitely hostile. The large numbers of Germans serving in the Legion made it a special target of pan-Germanist propaganda as World War I approached. These writings sought to portray the Legion as a quasi-criminal institution, a military underworld of brutalized and desperate men, whose very existence was an affront to modern civilization, not to mention Germany, whose sons sweated and died in the service of the enemy. Such accusations quite naturally tickled many Frenchmen, especially sensitive to any slight on the prestige of the Grand Nation, into frenzies of rebuttal. The end result was that the Legion was increasingly brought to public notice.

  Even before World War I, a popular image of the Legion as a refuge for those in trouble was beginning to take shape—the German-American Erwin Rosen, who enlisted in 1905, was told by a German that every tramp “always talked about the Legion. All the other Germans on the road wanted to enlist in the Legion.”2 After 1918, with the publication of such books as Beau Geste, the Legion suffered a veritable explosion of publicity, to the point that it changed the very character of the corps, according to the French writer Antoine Sylvère, who had served before 1914: “The short term enlistments, bonuses, the publicity brought about by the parades in Paris and the popular songs soon brought in men very different from those I had known,” he wrote, “who were often confused with the joyeux [Bat d'Af], and who one never saw on leave in France where, it must be admitted, they would have been unbearable.”3 But this plethora of publicity did little to settle the basic debate about the character of Legion. On the contrary, it became increasingly difficult to separate the myth of the Legion from the reality, a problem that persists down to our own day.

  So where does the truth lie? The question is not merely an academic one. For the Legion was charged with two separate, perhaps contradictory, tasks by the French government. On one hand, it served as a release valve for social, and even political, tensions, absorbing the unemployed (and the unemployable), the troublemakers and the penniless foreigners who might make mischief. At the same time, it had to be militarily efficient. The question is, how could the Legion remain in the military game after being dealt a hand that can only be described as a busted flush? To answer this question, we must discover first who these men were, how they came to the Legion, their motivations and expectations and, lastly, how the Legion processed and prepared them for service.

  ENLISTMENT OFTEN TOOK place in a dingy room of an official building in Paris, or in one of the French provincial towns, especially those near the German or Belgian frontiers. The Englishman Frederic Martyn, who enlisted in 1889, found the colonel to whom he spoke at the recruiting depot “a peculiar sort of recruiting officer” because “his manner was dissuasive instead of the opposite,”4 an experience shared by many recruits, who were often told to go “reflect” for twenty-four hours. The Irishman John Patrick Le Poer, sixteen, a runaway and utterly broke, had to insist that he be allowed to join to a sergeant who finally relented, muttering “poor devil.”5 An underage Ernst Junger refused to be dissuaded by a recruiting officer who told him that there was much fighting in Africa—“This was naturally pure music for my ears, and I hastened to reply that I was in search of a dangerous life.”6 The French colonel who gave Martyn his contract explained the Legion's caution: “... the life will not appeal to any one who does not love the soldiering trade for its own sake,” he said. “There are many, too many, who join the Legion with no sort of qualification for a soldier's life, and these men do no good to themselves or to France by enlisting.”7

  The army's enlistment priorities may not have been those of the French gendarmes, however. Martyn met two fellow recruits who “told me an extraordinary story of their having been arrested on a trumped-up charge by the French police, and been given the choice between going to prison and joining the Legion. I couldn't reconcile this tale with the recruiting officer trying to dissuade me from joining, and I don't believe it now, but I am bound to say that I heard much the same thing from others later on.”8 Rosen met a black American legionnaire who told him a similar story of his arrest after a fight in a Paris restaurant: “They did done tell me, it was penitentiary or Legion.” Nor was the American consul any help. “Take yer medicine, says he. Which I did—taking the Legion.”9 The French jurist Charles Poimiro challenged German critics in 1913 to prove their charge that French frontier police forced German nati
onals who had wandered over the border to join the Legion, but believed that, in any case, this was better than allowing them to beg and steal in France.10

  After a fairly perfunctory medical examination at the end of which only those obviously agonizing in the final stages of consumption were rejected, the recruits were presented with a contract. Few bothered to read it (perhaps because they could not) before signing. One who did, Erwin Rosen, discovered that it contained “a great many paragraphs and great stress was laid on the fact that the ‘enlisting party’ had no right upon indemnification in case of sickness or disability, and no claim upon pension until after fifteen years of service.”11 He signed nonetheless.

  The recruits were given a third-class ticket to Marseille and a small sum of money for food during the trip before a corporal marched them to the station. Le Poer's corporal amused himself by recounting harrowing stories about the Legion, but the young Irishman chose to believe that he was making them up.12 The newly minted legionnaires traveled unescorted, although Rosen believed that their tickets, stamped “Légion étrangère” in bold red letters, were an invitation to supervision by the conductor.13 When Le Poer's group got down at a stop to buy some food, they were surrounded by a curious crowd who believed that they were criminals, which included a woman “rather pretty, around thirty years old, who seemed to be as frightened as if she were in the presence of cannibals from the Congo.”14

  Fort Saint-Jean, an ancient gray fortress, squats on a rocky promontory at the entrance to Marseille's old port. The recruits were led down from the station in the brilliant Mediterranean sunlight, along the Canebière, Marseille's main thoroughfare, bustling with gesticulating Frenchmen, skirting the western edge of the rectangular harbor basin where elegant yachts were moored alongside tramp steamers, fishing boats and exotic levantine sailing ships. They negotiated their way among barrels, sacks and boxes in the process of being shifted and pulled by perspiring Frenchmen and impassive Arabs. Junger's corporal escort made a brief detour through the narrow back streets populated by drunks and prostitutes to fill his water bottle with dark Algerian wine before leading his charges over a drawbridge and between two sentries to be swallowed up by the sinister fortress. If none had had an inkling during their walk that this would be their last contact with European civilization for some time, perhaps forever, they could be under no illusion once through the gates that they were now on the threshold of Africa—the courtyard was crowded with spahis, zouaves, tirailleurs, legionnaires returning from leave and even some delinquents bound for the Bats d'Af awaiting the next packet to Algeria.

  The stopover at Fort Saint-Jean could last up to ten days, a tedious confinement during which permission to go into town was usually denied, especially to foreigners. The time was spent staring over the battlements to the Château d'If, standing on an island just off the coast, and the blue sea beyond, or gazing for hours at the square yellow buildings of Marseille and the barely controlled chaos of the harbor below, over which presided the bleached promontories of the Chaîne de l'Étoile. Those with money discovered quickly enough that one could drink in the canteen for what on the outside would be considered knockdown prices. Those who had no money had to improvise—one of Rosen's companions swapped his boots for four liters of wine.15 The moment of departure could evoke mixed feelings: Junger and his new friends “spoke a little of Africa and Indochina” before going to sleep on deck.16 Martyn, usually fairly upbeat, felt a sharp pang of regret as their ship sailed past the British Mediterranean fleet festooned with Union Jacks: “I felt that I had wilfully thrown away my birthright,” he remembered. “I was a despicable renegade.”17 Joseph Ehrhart, an orphan who had been disowned by the rest of his family, was acutely aware that in the crowd that had come to see his ship off, “to us legionnaires, no one waved goodbye. The shores of France grew hazy and, in spite of myself, I felt apprehensive. ‘Will you see France again?’ I thought. ‘What is waiting for you out there?’ ”18

  Spirits lifted somewhat at the sight of Africa. In the first light of dawn, Junger could barely make out the “confused silhouettes of mountains emerging from the obscurity.... At last the sun rose from the sea behind us and revealed a range of powerful summits which in the light took on hues of deep red. At their feet, the sea was bordered by the low white houses of a town.”19 Oran appeared quite suddenly between a narrow gap in the cliffs, “as if from a conjurer's box ... a maze of flat-roofed houses on hilly ground,” according to Rosen.20 A sergeant came on board, marched to the bow and shouted, “Légionnaires à moi!” The recruits were led through a city that, to the surprise of some, appeared far more European than African.

  The stay at Fort Sainte-Thérèse, the Legion's uncomfortable depot in Oran, was usually mercifully brief. However, Ehrhart might have made his Legion career in Oran when the commander, discovering his proficiency in French, offered to make him a secretary and see that he was promoted: “I thanked him and refused,” he wrote. “I wanted to travel, really know the Legion, see combat and if possible become an NCO.... I wanted to be a real legionnaire. I was enthusiastic. He let me follow my destiny.”21

  It was at Oran also that recruits were often asked to select their regiment. Flutsch chose the 2e étranger at Saïda because he had been profoundly impressed by a legionnaire from that regiment. “I don't know why,” wrote Ehrhart, “but I had a preference for the 1st Regiment at Bel Abbes,”22 perhaps because he had heard that most of the combat drafts were taken out of the 1er étranger. But the decision was often an arbitrary one, taken by men of the same nationality or by a group who made the voyage from France together, and was often a mere formality as the sergeant's obligation to fill vacancies in both might cause him to ignore preferences.23 The recruits were soon herded aboard the narrow-gauge trains of the West Algerian Company, which chugged south at a pace “which could almost be beaten for speed by a bicycle ridden by a cripple,”24 through a fairly prosperous countryside of isolated farms and small villages nestled among fruit orchards, vineyards and fields of wheat. At the frequent stops in the small red stations, the trains were assaulted by Algerians wearing wide-brimmed straw hats not unlike Mexican sombreros and offering green figs, oranges, dates, melons and tobacco for sale. The corporal in charge of the Italian Aristide Merolli's contingent, absolutely refused to allow his men off the train at these stops for fear they would desert: “You'll do it in your trousers!” he shouted.25

  The tattered, disheveled and sometimes by now half-dressed recruits eventually arrived at their destinations. Sidi-bel-Abbès, home to the 1st Regiment of the Legion since 1875 when the régiment étranger had left Mascara, had added layers of sophistication since its establishment in the 1840s: a public garden, a theater and a tree-lined street whose many bars catered to legionnaires. In the Jewish quarter, merchants did a brisk business changing the banknotes of most of the countries of Europe sent to legionnaires by their families, or dealing in secondhand clothing. Across the parade ground and behind the mosque lay the “village nègre” in whose narrow alleys illuminated by torches black, Arab and even European prostitutes well past their prime called to passing legionnaires from low, darkened doorways. The air was heavy with the smell of Arab cigarettes and of meat grilling on the charcoal braziers set out in the streets.

  “In the midst of these miserable women moved the scum of the population of Sidi-bel-Abbès,” wrote Rosen. “There were negroes in ragged linen coats who in daytime carried heavy burdens on their backs and spent their evenings regularly in the village nègre. Spanish laborers chattered and gesticulated with the Spanish girls. It was the meeting-place of the poor and the wretched, a corso of humanity at its worse.”26 Ehrhart recorded that, for a legionnaire without money (which was most of them), there was nothing to do but attend the twice-weekly concert in the public gardens given by the Legion band: “Every Saturday evening, arm in arm and singing, we followed the band at a quick march.”27

  Saïda was similarly devoid of mystery, hardly more than an overgrown village in the
highlands of the Tell, arranged around a main square that was usually filled with an Arab market, over which presided the town hall, constructed in the incongruous style of a medieval French fortress.

  At either destination, however, the reception was identical. Assembled at the railway depot, they walked through the town behind the immaculately turned out regimental band to the barracks, where they were greeted by shouts of “Les bleus! Les bleus!” (“The recruits! The recruits!”) from legionnaires who spilled into the courtyard. “Anyone from Frankfurt ... from Strasbourg ... from Leipzig?” Sometimes old friends met, especially the “cheval de retour” or “returned horse”—ex-legionnaires who had sampled the delights of civilian life and found them wanting. But usually one was content to find someone from home who could give them news.28 During the decade of the 1870s, the colonel of the regiment, Marquis Amédée de Mallaret, might also inspect the new arrivals. Poorly rated as a disciplinarian, Mallaret nevertheless possessed an elephantine memory. Gung'l saw him squint at a recruit who bore a decorous Polish name, “and tell him in a tone which invited no reply: ‘You served in the regiment in 1866, as a Belgian, under such and such a name.’ Having made this observation, the matter was forgotten. In the Legion, one created no difficulties about papers.”29