French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  The first problem faced by every recruit was the growing realization, perhaps not entirely apparent at the moment of enlistment, that five years of one's life had been signed away. Gung'l was struck by a wave of melancholy a few days after his enlistment: “The novelty had worn off,” he wrote. “The fatigues of the job began to weigh.”64 Those who joined on a lark like Frederic Martyn or in a moment of despair like Rosen realized soon enough that they had made a mistake: “I stared at the immense gravel-covered barrack yard and its scrupulous cleanliness, at the immense buildings and their naked fronts, at the bare windows,” Rosen remembered. “Why, this must be a madhouse and I—surely I must be a madman, who had to live for five years (five years said the contract) in a place like this.”65

  Nor was this despair alleviated by the realities of a military existence, which required the recruit to forfeit autonomy, individual pride and class status to a collective esprit de corps. Rosen was warned “... to have your feelings frozen into an icebox. Don't let anything bother you. No use getting mad about things here. Just say to yourself: ‘C'est la légion.’ ”66 “To be a good soldier,” wrote Charles des Ecorres, who joined the Legion in 1872

  one has to leave his personality at the barracks gates, become wax which receives all impressions, put his tongue in his pocket, hide the resentment in his eyes, have legs of steel to run like a deer when summoned by the sergeant, take without wincing all the snubs, and despite all that display everywhere a finesse and a superior intelligence.67

  Middle-class recruits were not the only ones to feel that life in the Legion fell short of their expectations. Foreigners who joined for patriotic reasons, especially those from Alsace-Lorraine, the French provinces amputated by Bismarck in 1871, also felt their moral commitment to France scorned by a regiment that failed to live up to their ideal, a problem that was to recur in both world wars. For the idealistic Francophile Lionel Hart, born on the He Maurice of British parents, who joined the Legion in 1883, a service in which rough discipline substituted for moral incentives was one long torment.68

  Patriotism was not high in the legionnaire's system of values to say the least. When Private Silbermann arrived at the 2e étranger at Saïda in 1891, he was told that while legionnaires would die to the last man to defend the regimental standard, “... you mustn't speak to them of patriotism; they wouldn't understand.”69 Dangy agreed that patriotism was not fashionable in the Legion: Legionnaires were soldiers, “and only that. They don't give a damn about anything which doesn't concern their bellies or their pockets. When they are no longer happy with the grub or the pay, you'll see them make a scene. Then they will go see if the food is better with Menelik or in the Spanish Legion.”70 Flutsch's corporal explained that the Legion's banner bore the inscription “Valeur et Discipline” rather than “Honneur et Patrie” which decorated regimental flags in the regular army, “so as not to exclude a certain number of men who have led an irregular life” but who, “despite their past mistakes remained worthy of bearing arms.”71 But “Valeur et Discipline” once the device of Napoleon's Grande Armée as well as that of the Second Empire, was also calculated not to offend men, many of whom were, after all, foreign mercenaries, by asking them to fight in the name of a “Fatherland” that was not their own.

  The nationality of the legionnaire had always been as much subject to fantasy as his name. Between 1831 and 1881, Frenchmen were allowed to enlist in the Legion with special authorization of the war ministry. After 1881, they might enlist in the Legion if they had satisfied their service obligations in the regular army and in the reserves. All this did, however, was to drive those Frenchmen who wished to enlist but who could not produce the necessary papers to claim foreign nationality. Flutsch, to give but one example, enlisted as a Luxemburger although he was a native of Auvergne. Charles des Ecorres, who joined in a spasm of patriotic enthusiasm after watching the famous Longchamps review of 1871, which announced the rebirth of the French army, was of the opinion that “... it is raining Parisians in the Legion,” many of whom were ex-Communards who had fought against the French army, and the Legion, in 1871.72 “GM” noted that from 1881 it had become possible for Frenchmen to enlist legally,73 a situation that had been regularized and facilitated in 1892 when, to increase recruitment, Frenchmen who had completed their military service were allowed to join “à tître étranger”74 In 1897, Frenchmen formed the largest single national contingent in the 1er étranger if Germans and Alsace-Lorrainers “or those claiming to be such” were counted separately.75 And there were probably a substantial number of French to be found among the 1,007 Belgians, 573 Swiss and 106 Luxemburgers.

  All of this would seem to suggest that the Legion faced an uphill struggle in its attempt to meld this jumble of nationalities, disenfranchised workmen, love-shocked bourgeois, men who fled into the Legion one step ahead of the law, the romantically naive whose illusions would puncture with the first week of basic training and those who had simply lost all hope into something resembling a military unit. And with some they no doubt did—Rosen, for instance, was obviously a lost cause from day one and would eventually desert, for the Legion had nothing to offer him but a constant reminder of his own stupidity. And, as has been seen, the middle class and the patriotic might also be in for a letdown, unless they could adjust their expectations. To this one might add some of the rejects from other corps, or even those refused reenlistment in the Legion but who, upon their return to France, had joined under a false name and who obviously could not adjust to military life.

  But the situation was not as hopeless as all that: “The Legion was not a dung heap,” Flutsch wrote, with a peasant's sense of nuance.

  It was a compost heap in which one found all sorts of human specimens— inveterate drunkards, delinquents who could not feel free for a day without doing something to be returned to prison, old soldiers who, kicked out of la Coloniale [the French marines] after numerous punishments for drunkenness and despite their ten or twelve years of service, come to complete the years which would give them the right to a pension of forty sous [8 francs] a day. On top of these were a number of serious men of incontestable human worth. This milieu obviously had nothing in common with an educational institution. For me, it was salvation, and I would be the last one to slander it.76

  To critics like Leon Randin who charged that the Legion was “a speculation in human misery,” preying upon workers thrown out by unfair employers and army deserters, victims of European militarism,77 the Legion countered that they offered rehabilitation to those like Flutsch for whom enlistment was “a total renaissance: the complete effacement of the past and entry into a new life.”78 Five years in the Legion allowed a man to think through his problems, get back on his feet, and reconquer his self-esteem, often in battle. Legion service may have been purgatory, but it was a purifying one that saved the sinful, reformed the fallen and made honest men of vagabonds and bandits—“a physical hell,” the saying went, “but a moral paradise.”

  Therefore, it is quite clear that the redemptive qualities of Legion service were established in the popular mind well before World War I. It was also well established in the official mind: “... The Legion must offer to men of white race the delicacies of adventure,” wrote General Trumelet-Faber in 1912.

  To those who have the vocation of reiter or landskneckts [mercenary formations in early modern Europe] which they cannot realize in their countries; to those who hide a heavy past and who, struck with remorse, want to follow an esteemed and useful profession; to foreign deserters who we must get away from the frontiers and even to French deserters who under a false name want to prepare their rehabilitation; to the vanquished of life who have failed in unfortunate enterprises and who no longer have the courage to confront the problems of existence. To all of these categories, the Legion can offer, with an honorable asylum, the possibility of satisfying either their tastes or their needs, and finally, while serving the cause of-civilization, the promise of a modest future with a pension.79

>   But not all came to the Legion in search of asylum or redemption. On the contrary, there were those perfectly capable of holding down good jobs in civilian life. “I couldn't get used to stupid civilian life again,” Dangy was told by a recruit. “I need to be here. So, one day when I was fed up, I signed on for five more.”80 One of the men who accompanied Flutsch on the ride from Oran to Saïda insisted that “I got good wages ... I knew my trade” in civilian life. But he found it impossible to save money and was constantly in trouble for unpaid bills. “So I said to myself, ‘Shit, I'm tired of living like this. You can't take care of yourself, Lécrivain. You've got to enlist in the Legion. That way you'll walk a straight line.” 81 Two of Flutsch's friends, the obviously well-educated Baudry and Noblet, confessed that, in civilian life, they “always had the impression of being outside humanity.... In the Legion, we have been manual laborers without qualifying as déclassés, as failures.”82

  All of this might mean not only that the level of recruitment was not entirely hopeless from a military point of view. Even men who came into the Legion after having made a mess of things in another regiment, like Ehrhart and Flutsch's acquaintance Vittini, often did so resolved to make a better job of it the second time.83 But more important, it suggests that most Legion recruits shared at least one common trait—they had failed to discover real satisfaction outside the Legion. Therefore, they might be inclined to seek a niche within a group that offered them increased self-esteem, or one that allowed them to submerge their self-doubts and failures beneath a general devotion to the corps. Ehrhart, for instance, encountered a legionnaire in the 2e étranger, an ex-convict, across whose forehead was tattooed “Je t'emmerde” (roughly translated, “F—Off!”) and “Ni Dieu Ni Maître” (“Neither God Nor Master”). “What do you expect me to do on civvy street with a mug like mine?” he asked Ehrhart.84 The task of the Legion was to discover ways to integrate and socialize its recruits, as well as to train them to respectable levels of military efficiency.

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  “Au jus! Au jus!” The “juice” in this case was coffee black enough to stand a spoon in. The legionnaires rolled over and reached for the tin mugs that hung on hooks at the head of the bed, which the duty soldier filled from a large jug. The first rays of the Algerian sun filtered through the barracks windows—“Le-e-vez-vous done!” (“Get up!”) the corporal, sitting up sleepily in his bunk, shouted. Anyone desiring to visit the eight taps that lined the entrance hall on the ground floor rushed to stake his claim on the limited facilities. The thirty minutes of pandemonium preceding the morning muster had begun—soldiers swept under their beds with brooms made from palm leaves, rolled and folded their blankets and mattress, dusted and dressed. The sergeant passed through the room to check the order. At 6:00 A.M., the barracks square was crowded with ranks of legionnaires in their white linen suits, blue sashes, knapsacks, cartridge-belts buffed to brilliance and rifles. The morning formalities completed, the recruits were marched to the drill field.

  In Sidi-bel-Abbès, the training ground was known as the “plateau,” an open space surrounded by olive trees and red African oaks near the village nègre. The legionnaires filed down the street between the barracks and the training field, past donkeys laden with goods, veiled women and half-naked children who imitated the steps of the marching soldiers while shouting things in Arabic, possibly insults, which usually provoked a volley of stones from the squad corporal. The first week was spent largely in introducing soldiers to the basics of the trade, a task complicated by the fact that many recruits spoke no French, so that some basic terms—general orders, guard regulations, rifle parts—were repeated until mastered, or possibly even explained in German. Martyn believed that the language problem was not critical in the training phase because the Legion contained a number of good linguists.85 Merolli's instructor also periodically stopped to allow those who spoke “German, Italian, Sanskrit and Chinese” to explain what he had said.86 But off the drill field, the Legion was largely a mosaic of self-contained linguistic enclaves. For instance, Flutsch discovered that one of his first fatigue parties was composed mainly of Germans who spoke no French—“A Belgian and three Alsatians were the only ones with whom I could have a conversation”—and called the Legion a silent world punctuated by periodic binges of drunkenness.87 As no formal instruction in French was given, legionnaires developed their own basic vocabulary for international communication. Anton Premschwitz was of the opinion that the French of the Legion would be “incomprehensible” to anyone schooled in the language of Molière and Racine.88 Roger de Beau voir found that legionnaires “managed to make themselves understood by speaking I don't know what sort of salami which conforms to their own idiom, which would make the Arabs laugh if Arabs ever laughed. Very few legionnaires ever bother to learn French, which makes leadership rather difficult.”89 Le Poer noted that while French was the language of command, “every battalion, every company, I might almost say every squad, had its own peculiar idiom,” adding that “Goddam” [sic] was the only English word included in the Legion lexicon.90 One Legion expression, “Allez, schieb’ los!” which loosely translated means “Get a move on!,” had passed into the vocabulary of Algeria to the point that even the Arabs used it.91

  THIS LACK OF language ability was to be important. For not only did it mean that Legion training was essentially practical, thereby often causing veterans to contrast it to what many believed to be the excessively theoretical training they had received in the metropolitan army, but it also required officers to lead by example. Merolli's lieutenant earned enormous respect by demonstrating every movement of drill, boxing, gymnastics, and so on, punctuated by the phrase “Faites comme moi”—“Do as I do.” “We wanted to do as well as he, so that our troop would become the image of its leader.”92 So, in this relatively silent world, gesture, example, even imagery and symbolism took on enormous importance.93 It required Legion officers to be men of physical presence, theatrical inspiration, and prepared to lead from the front.

  As in most armies, drill occupied much of the first days: “Formation of a line, a column, going from column to line, from line to column, etc.,” wrote Flutsch of these exercises. “Of course, the novices could not follow the movements, but there were always enough old soldiers so that one pulled by the arm and the other pushed from behind, and they were shoved into the place where they should be.”94 The second week emphasized physical training—gymnastics, boxing and running—as well as visits to the rifle range. “In the form of a wide square, we went round the drill-ground, five minutes, ten minutes—un, deux, un, deux—always in sharp time,” wrote Rosen. “The corporal, a splendid runner, ran at the head....” Breath came in short fast gasps, eyes burned, hearts pounded until the corporal shouted “A volonté!” the signal for a final sprint.95 In the pauses between exercises, the soldiers, their uniforms soaked with perspiration, stood around in the hot sun smoking until the corporal finished his cigarette, walked two hundred yards and shouted, “A moi!,” initiating another cycle of sprints. The soldiers were marched back to the barracks for the eleven o'clock “soupe”—a monotonous stew of macaroni, potatoes or whatever garden vegetables were in season, served with gray French army bread. The old legionnaires occupied the limited seating in the barracks room, while the recruits ate standing up or sitting on their beds. In the summer months, training was usually suspended in the hot hours of the day, when men lay on their bunks in the suffocating barracks in fitful sleep. The afternoons might be filled with instruction in hygiene and basic first aid, or preparation for inspection. However, much of it was occupied by fatigue duties, the hated corvée.

  As in most armies, the corvée ran the gamut from peeling potatoes to general duties around the barracks. However, unlike other regiments (or so Rosen claimed), the Legion often offered its soldiers to the municipality, individual farmers or even other regiments as cheap labor. Rosen condemned this practice, not because the work was difficult, but because he found it demeaning to perform low-order m
anual tasks while “the loafing Arab rabble prowled around and made jokes at our expense.”96 However, it is more likely that other legionnaires with less pride were more willing to undertake such work, for the simple reason that the regimental fund only retained half the wage, the legionnaire receiving the other half. Flutsch worked all day digging up roots only to earn “four or five sous” (about one franc).97

  Legionnaires were willing to undertake such unrewarding work for the simple reason that they were so badly paid. Legion pay was low—indeed, scandalously low, about five centimes (one cent or a halfpenny) per day in an era when an American private was paid twenty-five cents a day and a British soldier at least a shilling, which was about the same. Rosen believed that he had been “disgracefully swindled.” He claimed to have encountered all vices in the Legion save one—gambling, for the simple reason that legionnaires had nothing to wager.98 Of course, poverty is in many respects a relative concept. But a daily pay that bought nothing more than a box of matches, and which even the Arabs scorned, was clearly inadequate, as even many officers conceded. In 1905, the Infantry Director wrote that “the pay of the legionnaire, when he is a young soldier, is so low that he hesitates to buy a stamp to send a letter.”99