French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  Bad soldiers congregate [in the Legion] more than before, punishments are at once more numerous and less effective, and the more or less incorrigible soldiers who encumber this splendid regiment are a constant source of worry for the command and absorb a disproportionate amount of its attention to the detriment of its military mission.”44

  Not only was its military mission at risk, its social mission as an institution of rehabilitation was also placed in jeopardy. This was of more than passing importance, for the rehabilitative mission, together with military efficiency, formed the twin pillars of the Legion's raison d'être. The rehabilitative mission was a necessary myth, at once an institutional justification, a basis for self-confidence and a guarantee of survival. Without it, the Legion was disarmed in the face of charges of exploitation leveled by its many critics. Martin called Legion life “misérable et magnifique.”45 But one depended upon the other—without suffering and sacrifice, there was no redemption. The religious parallels were obvious. Gaston Moch compared the Legion to the crusading orders of the Middle Ages, Knights Templar and Teutonic, an “inviolate asylum ... a moral repose” whose “moral grandeur” resided in the fact that it put men “on the road to salvation.”46 Flutsch, too, found parallels, although more prosaic ones than Moch, between the religious life and that of the Legion. “The Legion is a little like a cloister,” Flutsch wrote. “It's the monastery of the unbelievers. In fact, the rules of silence and chastity are fairly well observed.”47 Some monastery! “The Legion must not become what many mistakenly believe it is, the receptacle of the rabble of the world's races,” Trumelet-Faber continued. “If this conception is realized, it will soon lose its character and its worth.”48 Just before the outbreak of the war, Moch estimated that 48 percent of legionnaires reenlisted. However, from 18 to 36 percent could not reenlist because they had died in service, become infirm, deserted, been punished and “above all” because they had been discharged for disciplinary infractions.49

  But why all the hand-wringing, one may ask? After all, the Legion should have been able to take a few discipline problems in its stride, for this must have been an occupational hazard for a unit that traditionally asked no more searching questions of its recruits than age, nationality and the name one cared to travel under. The Legion's reputation for strict, even ferocious, discipline must eventually tame even the most recalcitrant recruit. For, to the old standbys like le tombeau, le silo, and the crapaudine, which, by the way, were common throughout the Armée d'Afrique, or the exhausting gymnastics with a rock-filled pack in the “pelote” the Legion could add punishments that demonstrated commendable imagination as, in Tonkin, tying a legionnaire found drunk on duty to a tree next to a water hole frequented by a tiger.50

  However, the truth was that the Legion was ill-equipped to deal with its increasing discipline problems. In the first place, it was desperately short of officers and NCOs. The Legion regiments contained twice the number of battalions as a line infantry regiment. While a metropolitan infantry company counted 148 men (and was usually closer to 120), a Legion company almost always numbered over 200 and might even reach 300, yet be restricted to the same maximum complement of three officers, six sergeants and eleven corporals, and was denied the “complementary cadres” of supernumerary officers and NCOs retained in France to staff reservists upon mobilization. Furthermore, while a line regiment would usually share a common garrison, the requirement for the Legion's two regiments to furnish small detachments for posts throughout Algeria, Madagascar, Tonkin and, from 1907, Morocco dispersed its scarce cadres still further, even more so as they were entitled to a six-month convalescent leave at the end of each two-year tour east of Suez. General Dautelle, commander of the 3rd Infantry Brigade at Mascara in Algeria, complained in 1910 that a Legion battalion counted only five or six officers, and each company one or two sergeants.51 General Maurice Bailloud noted that in the 1910 maneuvers, some Legion companies had only one officer and two or three NCOs,52 which probably helps to account for the complaint of some legionnaires that officers were virtually invisible in the life of the regiment.53

  Not only were the numbers of cadres in the Legion insufficient, but also their quality was sometimes suspect. While the Legion certainly attracted some good officers in this period, its eccentric reputation, the remoteness of its garrisons and the lack of career advantages meant that the officer corps was uneven. “GM” complained in 1903 that Legion officers had the worst of both worlds, denied the career advantages of marine officers and the comfortable garrisons of the metropolitan corps.54 In 1896, Legion Colonel de Villebois-Mareuil had lamented the fact that foreign officers with inadequate military knowledge, and French reserve officers seeking to be reintegrated into the regular army “à titre étranger” were dumped into the Legion,55 a complaint echoed by General Bailloud in 1910: “Sometimes the officer is a foreigner who does not have the knowledge, nor the authority, required to hold such a command,” he reported after watching the Legion in autumn maneuvers.56

  General Trumelet-Faber repeated the litany that the Legion required a special type of officer, “a bachelor with the temperament of a condottiere, dreaming of action, whose only possessions are his African footlocker and who is only happy on bivouac.”57 The quality of the officer corps was especially important in the Legion, according to the colonel of the 2e étranger, because

  depending upon the direction which he is given, the legionnaire can be the best soldier in the world or the worst of brutes, which makes him capable of the most heroic and even the most noble actions, or the most degrading. Officers who are badly prepared for this mission will only obtain bad results. And all the rigors of disciplinary or judicial action will be without effect when a word going right to their hearts will transform them into soldiers who are disciplined and devoted till death.58

  While there were certainly a number of officers who spent most of their careers in the Legion, Trumelet-Faber complained that there were also a number who were merely passing through, especially those who “to be able to say they are legionnaires ... come for a few months,” an indication that the Legion's outlaw reputation was even beginning to work its magic on the French officer corps—up to a point.59 The most difficult task of any new officer was to establish his authority over legionnaires who were naturally skeptical. While legionnaires seldom engaged in open revolt, they were quite capable of practicing what a British trade unionist would call a “go slow”: “If you only knew how they are distant and cool, how their looks are hard,” laments a young Legion lieutenant in André Raulet's novel on Legion life in the interwar years. “Never do they take the slightest initiative. I find no devotion in them, no good will, and I am obliged to explain exactly what I want from A to Z. If not, they stop in their tracks.”60 Good officers who were able to demonstrate that they were prepared to command could overcome this initial opposition. However, temporary Legion officers were almost never able to establish their authority. They not only destroyed any attempt at creating an atmosphere of trust in their unit, but also they were openly scorned by the troops because they were not true “legionnaires.”61

  The problems of the officers were compounded by those of Legion NCOs. “The task of Legion officers is complicated,” de Villebois-Mareuil believed, “not only by the nature and the number of men under their orders, but also by the numerical, military and moral poverty of the NCOs at his command.”62 The problems with finding good NCOs have already been discussed. No doubt some of them depended upon brutality to enforce their authority, a brutality that caused discipline problems. But the view of the Legion NCO as the half-mad sadist of anti-Legion lore needs to be rectified. Frederic Martyn admitted that there was a “certain amount of petty tyranny” from NCOs who could push men whose nerves were on edge too far.63 Rosen claimed that a favorite trick of NCOs was to give orders to drunken legionnaires and punish them severely if they disobeyed. He also noted that it was useless to appeal to an officer, for the NCOs kept them in ignorance of what was going on in
the company.64

  Certainly it would have been the height of folly to put oneself on the wrong side of a Legion sergeant. Yet Flutsch claimed that this was seldom the case: “In the Legion, the NCOs are tough but they don't bother you,” he was told.

  If there were one who was a nuisance, we would make him suffer, we would play games with him, we would make a fool of him. And if the captain tried anything, he would be fed up quick enough when his entire company is in prison, all for different reasons: There would be one who would black his face with boot polish for the morning inspection, another would run away when he shouted “Attention!” You know, ideas are never lacking in the Legion when one needs to play the fool. You will see. It's better than on civvy street.65

  But this was seldom necessary: “In fact, the NCOs almost never intervened,” Flutsch wrote. “The officers were invisible and the NCOs appeared only to give out general orders without making individual observations unless it was a serious case, to limit damage which would have caused a death or led to a loss of equipment.”66 Le Poer reported that his NCOs were strict, “but the punishments were not too severe. The favorite one was to keep you altogether in the barrack and compel you to sleep during the night in your ordinary uniform on a plank bed in the guard room. That was the worst of it.”67

  According to Le Poer, the retribution reserved for overly unpopular superiors might not stop at harmless barrack antics, and a corporal in his company was killed because he persisted in harassing his men after duty hours. This might be an extreme case, but Le Poer claimed that on the first exercise in which live ammunition was issued, the captain cautioned them against “accidents.... He quoted a passage from the Bible, for God's sake, which speaks of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! The old soldiers understood immediately, and by the time we arrived at the first stop, we new troops understood as well as they.” While such things were possible in any army, Le Poer believed that the intense personal enmities that could build up in the Legion, especially against unpopular officers and NCOs, might lead to murder: “During combat this sort of thing happens more often than most people would believe,” he wrote. “Even after combat when all the rifles are dirty and a cartridge casing can be ejected, without danger, immediately after the shot is fired, a stray bullet can pierce a tent and strike the detested man who believes he is safe.”68 Pfirmann also saw a sergeant who was badly wounded by legionnaires in a discipline company after he had treated them badly.69

  While Legion officers and NCOs would have been fools to ignore the fact that excesses of discipline might bring on unwanted health problems, there is no evidence to suggest that this intimidated or deterred them from imposing an iron rule when necessary—or even when it was not necessary. Jacques Weygand recorded that the only thing worse than overzealousness in the eyes of legionnaires was to be considered a soft touch, so that “mieux vache que con”—better a swine than a fool—was the law that guided officer conduct in matters of discipline.70 But generally the scale of punishments—“le tarif”—was clearly spelled out and had only to be applied automatically to a fairly predictable list of Legion misdemeanors. Flutsch claimed that this led to a Legion society in which “the definition of individual liberty corresponded to an exact reality: do what you like so long as you do not infringe the liberty of others.” And while he felt that some of the punishments exceeded the severity of the crime, they were applied without favoritism and therefore aroused few feelings of resentment.71 Silbermann heard legionnaires who claimed that the severity of Legion discipline paled in comparison to that of the German army.72 Even some of the critics of the Legion agreed that many small infractions that would have invoked punishment in fussy line units were winked at in the Legion.73 Influential officers might also impose “moral sanctions,” like refusing to use the familiar “tu” when addressing legionnaires, or making them guard the mules on a march.74 Merolli observed officers reduce Legion delinquents, sentimental men all, to tears by scolding them that their mothers would be ashamed of their misconduct.75

  Does this mean that the Legion's reputation for strict, even brutal, discipline was totally without foundation? Not exactly. The problem, at least in the pre-1914 era, came not so much from brutal NCOs as from brutal legionnaires who were overly represented. Merolli complained that the rejects from other corps who enlisted under false names to escape detection caused a constant headache, always talking back, frequently drunk and “capable of a thousand stupidities.” An NCO who did not dominate them lost all authority.76 Flutsch, too, noted that there was a class of legionnaire who was simply not amenable to discipline, who regarded with “indifference” the prospect of spending sixty days in a pestilential cell without wine, coffee or tobacco, days spent in aimless exercises and nights sleeping on boards or floors of beaten earth.77 “Most of the soldiers did not mind prison,” Maurice Magnus reported. “On the contrary, they were rather proud of it and it was proverbial that a man who had not been in prison often was not a good soldier.78

  These men simply ignored the consequences of their actions, especially when drink was involved. On the contrary, they regarded drunkenness as a way to make a personal statement whose significance was underlined by the fact that they were punished for it. “I was possessed by this stupid rage of a melancholy legionnaire who wants to be punished at any price,” Martin remembered of his mental state after a drinking bout, “as if this should be something very significant, and particularly hurtful toward the object of his melancholy.”79 The fact that these men were treated in a manner that might not match the guidelines laid down by Amnesty International would not demoralize a unit, however. On the contrary, strict discipline was welcomed because it gave men without a strong sense of limits certain guidelines of behavior (even if they took it as a challenge to overstep them), while it also protected the good soldiers from the thugs and those who preferred to take the law into their own hands.”80

  The problem of the Legion was what to do with these men. Grouping them in discipline sections had led to “scandalous scenes” and even collective rebellion.81 The obvious course of action was simply to throw them out of the Legion. Incredibly, until 1906 there was no legal way to do this. On the contrary, days spent in prison were not counted against the five-year enlistment, so that bad soldiers actually served longer than good ones. Three decrees of 1906, 1908 and 1912 gave the Legion the right to nullify the enlistment contracts of chronic discipline problems. But the procedure was fairly bureaucratic even by the baroque standards of French administration.82 Besides, the expelled soldier would simply reenlist under a false name, or have someone else enlist for him and substitute himself at the last minute: “As candidates for the Legion need no identity papers, they can always bluff their way in,” Trumelet-Faber complained, adding that the Legion needed to shed five hundred bad elements, “and we would have excellent regiments.”83

  The last recourse, especially in the field, was to utilize punishments outlawed by the French army, the most notorious being the crapaudine, allegedly introduced into the Legion by Négrier in 1881: “This is how it was done,” Le Poer reported of a soldier who had got into an argument with his corporal during a route march.

  First his hands were pinioned behind his back, then his ankles were shackled tightly to each other, afterwards the fastenings of his wrists were bound closely to the ankle bonds, so that he was compelled to remain in a kneeling posture with his head and body drawn back. After some time pains began to be felt in the arms, across the abdomen, and at the knees and ankles. These pains increased rapidly, and at last became intolerable.... This poor devil did not get much punishment. I think he was en crapaudine for only an hour or so, but, take my word for it, if you place a man in that position for four, five, or six hours, he will be in no hurry to get himself into trouble again.84

  Although the crapaudine caused great pain, in many respects it demonstrated the Legion's preference for short, sharp punishments which, once accomplished, wiped the slate clean. Martyn saw this “barbarous�
� punishment applied only once during his Legion career to a legionnaire who had struck an NCO. And although he disapproved of it, “It must be remembered that in most armies he would have been tried by drumhead court-martial and shot.”85 Dr. Alcide Casset, who shared a garrison with the Legion in the Sud Oranais at the century's end, reported that the crapaudine was in fairly common use in the remote garrisons of southern Algeria, especially with men for whom “violence is part of their temperament; they have nothing to fear and nothing to lose.”86

  Flutsch saw the crapaudine as indicative of the Legion's rather indulgent attitude toward the misdemeanors of legionnaires, one of whom appeared drunk before the tent of his lieutenant and insulted him “with an accent of profound conviction and in a high voice.... When the lieutenant judged that the number had lasted long enough, he designated, according to the size and strength of the actor, two, three, or four spectators—‘OK, knock him down and put on the crapaudine.‘ “ The braying legionnaire was tied up “like a sack of potatoes and left on his stomach until the officer, judging that the man had calmed down, ordered him untied and allowed him to go to his tent. Of course, that was the end of it and nothing more was said.”87

  Therefore, the Legion certainly had a discipline problem before 1914, but it was probably less severe than statistics might suggest. In the first place, the serious discipline problems could be sent to discipline sections, or left behind in the depots. This is not to argue that they ceased to cause disruption in both places, especially in the depots, where they threatened to corrupt the new recruits. But at least they could be fairly well contained. Second, even those who complained that the Legion was perhaps not altogether a credit to France, that it was sinking to the level of the Bats d'Af, also were quick to point out that the Legion's problems had not affected its combat efficiency: “... its worth under fire has remained intact, as we have seen in Morocco,” wrote Clément-Grandcourt.88