by M. Ben Yanay
“It’s healthy but gross,” Ina said. “I’ll pass.”
Bob handed her a box of cheese. She pulled out a yellow chunk and removed it from its yellow paper peel. “It’s actually quite reasonable,” she said, as she cut it in thirds.
The texture of the margarine looked inviting. Bob spread a thick layer over a slice of bread, then poured honey right out of the box. “What a treat,” he said. “You gotta try it.”
The brown jam looked less than inviting, but its sweet and sour taste appealed to them. The biscuits turned out to be a nice, crunchy and delicious surprise. Janos piled them up into a tower and dipped each in the jam. Ina pinched the cheese into small chunks with her bread. Bob opened another can of liver pâté. Once again, he spread a thick layer of margarine before applying it on his slice of bread.
“Please be careful you don’t bend the knife,” Ina asked him with a smile. “I’ll need it to peel the potatoes.” She smiled at him lovingly and winked. “This isn’t the meal I had in mind, but I’m not complaining.”
“Let’s boil some water in the empty can,” Janos suggested. “I found a full jug of water in the driver’s cabin.”
“What else did you find there?” Bob asked.
“Two rifles, and this pouch, which I haven’t opened yet.”
Ina moved her legs about. “Did you perhaps see a blanket there? My legs are cold.”
Bob got up. “I think I saw a blanket in the truck’s box. I’ll go fetch it. Give Janos your matches. I’ll bring some tea and sugar.”
Bob returned with two gray wool blankets, folded under his arm. He dropped them both over Ina as he raised his arms. They fell at her feet. He held a few tea leaves in one hand and some sugar in the other. Ina wrapped herself in the blankets while he spread the tea leaves in the water as he tore them and added the sugar slowly. Janos examined the leather pouch. It contained a cigarette, squeezed between two pieces of cardboard. One piece was a faded photograph of a boy and a girl holding each other against a background of houses. “That’s the dead soldier. I saw his face. This must have been his girlfriend. Interestingly, he was Hungarian, too. Here’s his ID. His name was Alexander Hostag. The address is blurry, but it clearly says Budapest.”
The water began to boil. They shared Bob’s furry gloves. Each held the boiling can of water and sipped the hot tea. The small fire went out all by itself.
“Are you from Budapest, too?” Ina asked him. “Wait a moment. You said you also drove a TATRA truck like this one. So how come you got to drive the Germans?”
Janos laughed. “That’s fate for you. I came from Debrecen. The Hungarians planned to send me to a labor camp, but there was this officer who took an interest in the people they had arrested and asked questions. I told him I served in the French Foreign Legion, where I drove a truck, so he sent me over to enlist right on the spot. I was a supply driver for the Hungarian forces, moving between the rear camps until they sent us to bring supplies to the front at Leningrad. When the Germans began to retreat, I was caught in the ‘pocket’ along with the supply convoy.
“An SS unit took control of our convoy and changed out planned course. We got off the main road to the wooded area. There, after almost two straight days of driving on county roads, the airplanes attacked us. I managed to escape by the skin of my teeth into the woods, where, after a few hours, your Cossack friend got hold of me and brought me to the partisans’ ditch.” He sipped his tea and sighed. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll serve as an engine driver in the next war.”
“But you’re Jewish,” she remarked. “So how did you manage to hide it?”
“That was among the best advice I received at the Hungarian conscription office. I was very careful not to expose myself in the showers. I always used to move aside, as though by chance, when anyone was peeing. I only had to reveal myself at the ditch, when you interrogated me. There was no problem at the Foreign Legion. There were many Jews there. My brother, Berzi, served with me.”
He looked up. “Lots of stars,” he said, pensive. “That means a nice day. You know, I didn’t hear myself until now. The monotonous sound of the engine never left me right until this very moment. Thank goodness for this blessed peace.”
He went on with his story. “There’s no point talking about myself without pointing out a few historical facts, to explain the times to you. Well, toward the end of the Great War, the October Revolution broke out in Russia. The Red Army fought the White Army, and the fighting spread to Hungarian soil, as well. You wouldn’t believe it, but my brother, who was two years older than me, and I got swept up with all those speeches in the squares and became fervent Communists. I was seventeen, and I believed Communism would redeem the whole world and save it.
“We learned how to shoot a rifle and fought against the Czech. What happened in Hungary is nothing like what happened in Russia. Ina, back in Russia, the Bolsheviks won completely. But in Hungary, the Communist victory was short lived. The leader of the Hungarian Reds, Bella Kun, formed the government of the Soviet Republic. (By the way, he was Jewish.) But he couldn’t hold on to power, and after 130 days, the Romanians took control of Hungary and handed it over to the White Army, headed by Miklos Horthy. Bella Kun fled to the Soviet Union and settled there. To the best of my knowledge, he was arrested in 1936 during Stalin’s purges. I don’t know whether he was murdered or was sent to one of those gulags in Siberia until he died there.”
“Strange,” Ina said. “I’ve never heard about him—or about any Communist government in Hungary—that had fallen into the hands of the Whites. I don’t recall studying that in history class.”
“Of course not. All of Communism’s military failures until its outright seizure of Eastern Europe have been erased from your history books. At any rate, the Whites attacked the Reds’ camps. Berzi and I were captured along with our entire unit, officers and soldiers alike. We were charged with illegal activity as well as aiding and abetting traitors. After a hurried trial we didn’t even attend, we were sent, per a summary judgment, to an internment camp and sentenced to death. I don’t know about the officers. They were held at the same compound of sheds, but from the moment we were all captured, we never saw them again.
“The compound was circled by a fence, but there was no lighting. Each morning, they marched a dozen soldiers to dig ditches. They were then shot, and a dozen others were sent to cover their bodies. The Whites chose them at random. They simply stood at the shed’s doorway and pointed, ‘You, you, and you…’ We were so terrified we wet ourselves. After five days, they told Berzi and me to cover the bodies. When we left camp, we saw there were gaps in the fence in some places. We decided to escape that night. It was Berzi’s determination that dictated we wouldn’t wait for the following day.
“When darkness set in, we snuck out of the sheds and crawled our way toward the fence. To this day, I have the scars from the barbed wire that cut me deep. We were lucky, the guards were so drunk they didn’t notice anything, so by dawn, we were already far away from camp. We arrived in a rural area, where, much to our surprise, we found a group of tents right in the middle of a potato field. We had no idea whose camp it was. Cleverly, Berzi suggested we get closer and watch the soldiers. After observing them for a few hours, we came to a joint decision we ought to reveal ourselves to them. I think it was hunger that got the better of us. The tents belonged to the French Foreign Legion, who had come to assist the White Army. We concluded we were Whites from then on and made our way toward the tents. The French Legionnaire who arrested us led us to the officers’ tent. They sat on top of field beds on top of pieces of cloth that were laid over the ground. Our arrival didn’t bother them in the least, and they didn’t ask us any questions. We didn’t speak their language anyway. This was the first time I heard French. I think our attempt at putting on a brave face impressed the senior officer in the tent. He looked at us and nodded as if to say ‘These two are OK.’
“The Legionnaire took us to the adjacent tent, where he produced two sets o
f uniforms and laid them on the beds. He pointed at us and said, “S’il vous plait.” [Please] The next day, they signed us up to volunteer. I signed up for four years. I then signed twice more and ended up serving a total of thirteen years in the Foreign Legion. In short, that day, we got a backpack complete with our gear. It was comprised chiefly of clothes, a pair of laced-up boots and a coat. That evening, they took us to the train station. That was how we began serving in the Légion Étrangère, which had consisted of volunteers from across Europe.”
“I heard, or more accurately, learned, about the Legion at my college back in Tuskegee. They said about the recruits who joined during the war, that they were criminals and deserters, and that there was some concern about giving those people weapons.”
“It’s both true and not true,” Janos replied. “Many of the volunteers did abandon the Legion after we had all arrived at the port of Trieste, between Italy and Yugoslavia. They simply took off and blended in there or in the nearby Balkan states. Nevertheless, those who stayed on, continued the journey, sailed to Algeria, and persisted, like I did, gained a profession. For instance, I learned how to drive. Anyone could join. Recruitment to the Legion was completely free. My regiment had criminals of all kinds, from thieves through con men to murderers. Some were thugs, and some were frail-looking idealistic dreamers who could barely carry their weapons and stand upright with it at parades. The French didn’t care about all that. All they wanted was to demonstrate their military prowess, so they sent this dubious mix of people to North Africa. After all, the Sahara was no place for mutiny or desertion. They achieved their goal, which was to maintain their tight grip over those regions. Believe me; it wasn’t easy to live with such a diverse crowd. Each of those types concealed their life-story. Luckily, we had each other, Berzi and me, so we watched each other’s back. In those years, the main struggle was for survival.”
Bob listened and commented, “I get it. I would love to hear more. You must have had so many adventures in the course of those thirteen years.”
“I certainly did. I’m chock full of stories. And not just from there, other countries, too. But I’m dead tired. Let’s leave something for next time and get ready to sleep. What do you say, Ina? Ina?”
“I’m already sleeping,” she replied in a lull. “Sorry, tell me about Algeria tomorrow.”
“I still think we oughta move ahead. We’re pretty close to the gates of Vienna.”
“No Bob, that’s not a good idea,” Janos answered decisively. “We have no visual aids. The locomotive headlight shines only on the tracks, and darkness may invite trouble. I think we’d better be on our way in the morning.”
“OK, Sergeant, I’m sold. What about the engine? Shall we turn the fire out and let the boilers cool off?”
“No. We shouldn’t do that. Let’s keep them on a low burner. They should remain hot in case we need to flee the scene quickly.”
“I’ve got a question.”
“Yes, Bob?”
“Do you smoke, Janos?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“So let’s share a cigarette before bed.”
18. Adventures in the Foreign Legion
This was Janos and Berzi’s first-ever voyage on a boat. They went on board the sun-scorched, rugged upper deck. The Mediterranean was stormy. They went through the next few days in their tiny, stinking cabin, lying on their bunk beds. They didn’t remember how long it took to sail from Trieste to Algeria, since they spent most of the time leaning over a bucket, seriously dizzy.
Then, they made the way from the port of Oran to the small town of Sidi Bel Abbès, the location of the Legion’s headquarters and basic training camp, by truck. It was a distance of about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles), so by the time they arrived at the base, they were much better. The mercenaries, most of whom had arrived at the French colony from Europe, were surprised to discover a wasteland filled with sand dunes and soft mounds exposed to the desert winds. The houses and streets were in the middle of this endless wilderness. The makeshift roads between the houses were home to cattle and beasts with long legs, a long neck, and a hump. Either side of the hump had hanging sacks, and atop sat a man with a kind of long dress and a dark headband [abaya]. Military vehicles, mostly armored cars with a tarp over them, were parked by the side of the road. The truck drove on slowly and stopped by an iron gate.
They got off the truck and immediately covered their faces, as both the sun and the wind were strong there, and hot sand hit their eyes. The other trucks pulled up shortly thereafter. Janos rubbed his eyes and took a sip from his water jug. The few trees he saw by the fence looked nothing like the trees he knew. They all had a tall pointy trunk and a small green canopy. They had orange fruit. Across the fence, they saw gray-yellow two-story stone structures, a large compound of long sheds and tarp tents behind them.
The new recruits were marched off in single file into the tents compound and were ordered to unload their gear right in the middle. A sergeant tried to explain to them what they should do. No one understood him, but his movements and gestures expressed his irritation over what was going on. That subsided, however, when additional legionnaires came over and motioned them to move into one of the structures.
It turned out they had to pass medical check-ups in the large clinic, a structure bordering on the headquarters building. Only after many hours of waiting did Janos and Berzi see a doctor, who took no notice of the fact they were circumcised.
For the time being, the new life they had in store came in duties across the arid camp, physical exercises and training, two daily meals, a daily shower and sleeping on a field-bed. It took them three weeks to get used to the heat. But the main obstacle—understanding their commanders’ language—did not abate.
During that period, the recruits were examined according to their physical ability, as well as accomplishing their tasks. They were assigned to units based on those categories. Janos and Berzi were assigned to Unit 1 of the first Foreign Legion’s regiment and began four months of basic training.
The first four weeks were very tough, even for the strongest among the recruits. They had to follow orders they did not understand. They spoke ten odd languages or more between them all, whereas their commanders spoke French and nothing else. They were also brutal, instilling discipline forcibly and running a very tight ship, complete with strict adherence to timetables. Nevertheless, the language barrier proved much more of a challenge than the physical difficulties they had to overcome.
The recruits who had come from Romania were the first to pick up French thanks to the similarity between both languages. The other soldiers paid close attention and broke their jaws trying to speak it. Their clumsy attempts got better over time. Within days into basic training, they swore in French rather than in their own mother tongues, and within a few weeks, the orders in French became more intelligible. The tent-dwellers began to speak French. However broken, their French meant they could understand and be understood in the same language.
*
Basic training concluded in a festive parade. It was name time for the “epi blanc,” receiving their white berets and stylish uniforms. They were then moved to the sheds, where there were long rows of beds. They had bare lamps to light the shed, however faintly. The new legionnaires who just got their commission began accompanying the newcomers and training them. At the same time, they proceeded to the next step in their own preparation: from basic training to advanced, complete with battle simulations in the open field. They had to contend with strict water limitations, rigorous target practice, and mastering operating their weapons swiftly and confidently, as well as storming sandbags in lieu of the enemy. Apart from all this, the soldiers still had to adjust socially.
After six months of training, the regiment was sent to secure the caravan trail that ran from the north of the Sahara Desert down to its south, from the Algerian port city of Oran to the commercial hub of Timbuktu, in the center of Mali. Despite having a common border, the dista
nce between these countries’ two major cities was still over two thousand miles [over three thousand and two hundred kilometers], covering a territory that was chiefly desert and swampland. Timbuktu had been an important commercial center, thanks to its proximity to another trade route, running east to west along the Niger River.
Both commercial roads had been plagued by gangs that made their living attacking and terrorizing merchants. Highwaymen and rebel tribes took to ambushing the caravans and attacked them at every opportunity, often killing the merchants, looting the goods, and making off with the livestock.
The Legionnaires’ garrison was called to protect the road. The units had based themselves in fortresses surrounded by high stone walls complete with firing portholes and battlements. Each fortress was erected within a camel’s daily walking distance with meeting points for the soldiers in between.
When day broke, even before the first rays of light had hit the ground, they would go on patrols. It was already noon when they met the patrolling unit from the adjacent fortress. They passed the hot afternoons in a shaded oasis by the side of the road, right next to a water-well. Then, when the heat had subsided, each unit would return to base for the night.
*
During those tours, the legionnaires had the occasion to meet caravans that required their protection. The merchants displayed their wares for sale—cloth, dates, spices, coffee and tea—and haggled over each penny.
There were other, less pleasant encounters, with the Tuareg, a warrior Berber tribe who dared attack them and constantly made their protective assignments that much more difficult. Once, such an attack occurred during a tour Janos was a part of.
The incident was triggered by the legionnaires approaching a well the Berbers had camped around. The soldiers posed no threat. The patrolling unit comprised sixteen soldiers and the sergeant in charge of them, whereas the Tuareg people numbered close to one hundred, circling the well in two spacious rings. Nevertheless, ten warriors mounted their horses and charged, swords drawn, shouting at the legionnaires as they marched down the dune.