Читать книгу A Modern Legionary - John Patrick Le Poer - Страница 5

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Let me first describe the sergeant who was in chief command of our party. He was a small, active, sharp-tongued man, wearing a couple of medals and the Cross of the Legion of Honour on his breast, neat in his dress—I believe he would, if it were possible, polish his boots forty times a day—having a constant eye to us, such an eye as a collie has for the flock. When he gave an order, it was clear and abrupt; when he censured, you felt no doubt about his meaning, for tongue and tone and eye and gesture all united to convey contempt and abuse; if he gave ten minutes for a meal, we had to fill our stomachs in that time or go half hungry; and as for accepting a drink from one of us—for some had a little money—he would as soon have thought, he let us know, of accepting a glass of hell-fire from Satan. He was one of those men found in every army in the world—men who cannot live out of barracks, who feel comfortable only in uniform, who look upon civilians as beings to be pitied for not having the military sense, just as the ordinary man pities the blind, the deaf, or the dumb. Such men's minds receive few, and these transient, impressions from outside their own corps. To hear the regiment rated soundly on inspection day is a greater calamity than the cutting off of a squadron by Berbers or the ambushing of half a battalion by Black Flags; in fine, they are soldiers of the regiment rather than of the army.

We were divided into two squads, each under the immediate control of a corporal. My corporal was a jolly, good-humoured fellow, a bit malicious, a Parisian gamin in uniform. He told us terrible stories of the Foreign Legion, and said that we should get through our purgatory if we only lived in it long enough. But in the end he defeated his own object, for, as some tales were obviously untrue, we had no difficulty in persuading ourselves that all were lies. The other corporal, a tall, lank man, seemed to me moody or, perhaps I should say, pensive. However, he had nothing to do with me, so I scarcely observed him.

With regard to the journey, I can only say that we marched from the barrack to a railway station, travelled by train to Marseilles, thence by transport to Oran, where we were handed over by the sergeant to a sous-officier of our own corps. Some incidents and scenes of the journey I must relate, as they show how my military education began. And first I must tell about the unpleasantness which I spoke of in the first chapter.

Of course, a woman was the exciting cause—the match to the gunpowder. Women can't help it; they are born with the desire of getting you to do something for them. The average woman merely gets her husband to support her; she would like to have every other woman in the parish there to see the weekly wages handed over, the wages which, if he were a bachelor, would represent so much fun and frolic and reckless gaiety. But there are women who would incite you to commit murder or to save a life with equal eagerness, just to feel that their influence over you was unbounded. However, this has little to do with the present case, which was merely a casual flirtation and its ending.

At a certain station, which had more than its due share of loungers, our train was stopped for some reason. We were allowed to get out during the delay, and the report quickly spread that a squad or two of recruits for the Foreign Legion had halted at the place. We were soon surrounded by a curious group, many of which passed by no means complimentary remarks upon our personal appearance and the crimes they supposed us to have committed in our own countries before we came, or rather escaped, to France.

In the crowd was a rather handsome woman of about thirty who pretended great fear of us, as if we were cannibals from the Congo. The sergeant, however, reassured her, told her that we were quite quiet under his control—pleasant for us to listen to, wasn't it?—and volunteered to give her all information about us. Well, he gave us information about ourselves too.

He described the Pole as a dirty Prussian who had robbed his employer and then made his escape to Paris. The Spaniard became a South American who had more murders on his soul than a professional bravo of the Middle Ages. The Russian was a Nihilist who had first attempted to blow up the Tsar and afterwards betrayed his accomplices, so that in the Foreign Legion, and there only, could he hope to escape at once justice and revenge. An Alsatian was described as a Hungarian brute: "these Hungarian dogs are so mean, sneaking, filthy, and cowardly"; while the poor Hungarian, who had heard all this, almost at once found himself pointed out as an Austrian, a slave of an emperor who was afraid of Germany. Unfortunately, as it turned out afterwards, I escaped his notice, and what I congratulated myself upon at the time I had reason afterwards to regret.

While the sergeant was thus trying to advance himself—the vain fool!—in the handsome woman's favour and was getting on to his own satisfaction, if not to ours, into the crowd struts a young corporal of chasseurs. As soon as she saw him the woman turned her back upon our sergeant, put her arm affectionately through the corporal's, and brought him, vacuously smiling, down to us to tell the sergeant's stories over again. She muddled them, but that was of course. We never minded anything she said; but weren't we delighted to see our sous-officier so excellently snubbed!

"And where, my dear Marie, did you learn all this?" queried the happy and smiling chasseur.

"Oh, pioupiou told me." And she pointed with the tip of her parasol at the man who a moment before had mentally added her to the list of his conquests. And pioupiou was angry; his cheeks got all white with just a spot of red in the centre, his eyes glared, he twisted his moustache savagely; he turned on us and ordered us back to the carriages. But that was not all: the crowd laughed, Marie laughed, the corporal—another fool—laughed. Some of us laughed, and we paid for all the laughter in the end.

Nothing was said while we were in the station, but as soon as the train was again on the move the sergeant began. The first to feel uncomfortable was the corporal of my squad. He was told that he did not enforce discipline, that he was too free with these rascals, these pigs, that he had no self-respect, that he was ill-bred, and much more to the same effect. We came in for worse abuse, the Hungarian and a Belgian being made special marks for the sergeant's anger because they had been the first to laugh when Marie called him "pioupiou." The abuse was kept up, with occasional intermissions, for over half-an-hour, and no one was sorry when our tormentor sought solace of a more soothing nature in his pipe. It is very hard for men to listen to angry words which they know they cannot resent, and, sooner than have no relief for their pent-up passion, they will vent it on one of themselves, as I found out before long.

We had stopped for ten minutes' interval at a station, and the three sous-officiers had gone to a small refreshment room after ordering us, on various pains and penalties, not to leave our seats. Scarcely were they on the platform when the Belgian, who had been most insulted, began to rail at me. I was astonished. My surprise increased when the others joined with him. I was asked why I should be spared while better men were being treated as dogs and worse than dogs. The visit of my friend, the kindly sergeant who brought me wine and tobacco, was raked up as an instance of favouritism, and the rather violent language which he had applied to others in the barrack room was also recalled. I felt indignant at the injustice but knew not how to reply. Indeed, there was but a small chance of doing so, as all were speaking loudly, and some even shaking their fists at me. At last the Belgian, who had started the affair, struck me lightly on the cheek. This was too much. I jumped at him, had him tightly by the throat with the left hand, and set to giving him the right hand straight from the shoulder as quickly and as strongly as I could. He was altogether taken aback, and, moreover, was almost stunned by my assault, for every blow drove the back of his head against the woodwork of the carriage. Before anyone could interfere I had given him his fill of fighting, and when I was torn off his mouth and nose were bleeding and the skin around both eyes was rapidly changing colour. Before the fight could be renewed the sub-officers returned, and we all sat silent and sullen in our places.

The sergeant at once grasped the situation.

"What, fighting like wolves with one another already! Very well, my fine fellows, it does not end here; to-day the fight and the arrest, to-morrow the inquiry and the punishment."

Thereupon he ordered the men on each side of us to consider themselves our warders. "If they escape, if they fight again, there will be a more severe punishment for you, whose prisoners they are."

"A beautiful way to begin soldiering," he continued, looking alternately at the Belgian and myself; "go on like this, and life will be most happy for you."

At the next station he ordered the Belgian to be transferred to the compartment in which the other squad, under the silent corporal, travelled. When he left, to give orders, I suppose, about the prisoner, the jolly corporal turned to me, and said:

"My worthy fellow, you have begun well; where did you learn to use your hands? No matter, the commandant will talk to you; he will settle all. But, my son, what was it about; did he insult you?"

"It was all the fault of the sergeant," I cried——

"Hold, hold!" interrupted the corporal; "take care, you are foolish to accuse your officer, and, besides, he was not present."

This gave me a hint.

"No; he was not here, and the corporals were not here either."

"Then it was my fault too?"

"Not yours so much as the sergeant's—you merely deserted your post—but he in addition to that abused the men so much before going away that their passion was aroused, and when men are angry they cannot help fighting."

"Yes, yes," said the corporal; "he did abuse people, there is no doubt that he was in bad humour, and would have abused his own brother at the time."

Little more was said, but the corporal was very thoughtful, and evidently was chewing a cud he did not like.

At the first opportunity, it was when we halted for a meal, the corporal took the sergeant aside, and a long conversation ensued. The upshot was that I was taken from my guards and brought by the corporal to where his comrade stood. The latter asked me to tell him the truth about the quarrel, and I spoke as he wished me to. I mentioned everything—the kindness of the first sergeant to me and his abuse of the others, his own harsh treatment of us from the beginning, his wrong and malicious descriptions to the woman—he winced when I mentioned her name—his fearful abuse of the men afterwards, and I took care to point out that I was the one who had been least hurt by his tongue, and I wound up by declaring that, if he and the corporals had not gone away, leaving us without any sous-officier in charge, the affair would not have taken place.

"I believe you have told me the truth," he said. And I knew well that he knew it, for all the time that I was speaking he kept his keen eyes fixed upon mine, and they seemed to read me through and through.

The Belgian and I were almost immediately relieved from arrest, but my opponent received strict orders to stay in the centre of the squad while marching, so that as little chance as possible might be given to the curious to note his bruises. He was furthermore told that for his own sake he had better tell anyone in authority who might chance to make inquiries that he had been suddenly, and when off his guard, assaulted by a drunken man at a wayside railway station. He afterwards did tell this tale when interrogated by an officer, and, as we others corroborated his statement, he escaped all punishment, and so did I. All the same, the sneers and whisperings of my companions during the remainder of the journey were at least as painful to me as his injuries were to the Belgian. In fact, I was more than boycotted by all, and the fact that none of my comrades would associate with me in even the slightest degree was gall and wormwood to the mind of a sensitive youth. How I wished that the first sergeant had not been so kind and the second so sparing of abuse to me. I was glad that in the depot for recruits I was altogether separated from the rest, and I may add now that, when I met some of them afterwards in the East, they seemed to have forgotten all the little annoyances of our first acquaintance.

I wish to say but little now about the rest of the way. The chief thing that remains in my memory is the scene aboard the transport that carried us from Marseilles to Oran. It was so striking that I fancy I shall never forget it.

There were troops of all arms aboard. I need not describe the party I was with, as I have said enough about it already, and of most of the others I can only recall that the various uniforms, the different numbers on the caps, all impressed me with the idea that I belonged to one of the great armies of the world. Having been, as I have already mentioned, brought up in a garrison town I at once noticed distinctions which another might pass over as trivial. I saw, for instance, that all the soldiers of the line did not belong to the same regiment in spite of the strong likeness the various corps showed to one another, and I knew that the same held true of the chasseurs and zouaves. I admired the way in which disorder was reduced to order; the steady composure of those who had no work to do, which contrasted so much with the quick movement and tireless exertion of the men told off for fatigue; the sharp eyes and short, clear orders of the sergeants; and, above all, the calm, assured air of authority of the officer who superintended the embarkation.

While I was noting all this my glance fell on a party of men, about fifty in number, wearing the usual blue tunic and red trousers, who had no mark or number in their caps. Now the Frenchmen of the line had each the number of his regiment on the front of the kepi, and we of the Foreign Legion had grenades on ours. Moreover, these men were set apart from all the rest and were guarded by a dozen soldiers with fixed bayonets. The men seemed sullen and careless of their personal appearance, and when a Frenchman forgets his neatness you may be sure that he has already forgotten his self-respect. Curiosity made me apply for information to the corporal over my squad, and he told me that these were men who for their offences in regiments stationed in France were now being transferred to disciplinary battalions in Algeria, where they would forfeit, practically, all a soldier's privileges and be treated more like convicts than recruits. I at once remembered what the sergeant whose acquaintance I had first made had said about the zephyrs, the men that could not be reclaimed. I saw them often afterwards, and, though in most of the battalions they are not very bad and are treated fairly enough, in others which contain the incorrigible ones the officers and sub-officers have to go armed with revolvers, and the giving out of cartridges, when it can't be helped, is looked upon as the sure forerunner of a murder. Figure to yourself what a hated warder's life would be worth if the convicts in Dartmoor had rifles and bayonets and if the governor had occasionally to serve out packets of cartridges, it being well understood that all—governor, warders, and convicts—are supposed to be transferred to, let us say, Fashoda, where there is now and then a chance of a Baggara raid.

I don't know much about the voyage across the Mediterranean as I was almost, but not quite, sea-sick. It has always been so with me, the gentlest sea plays havoc with my stomach. We got into Oran at about six o'clock in the evening, and our party at once disembarked. We were met on the quay by a sergeant of the Foreign Legion, who showed us the way to a barrack, where we were formally handed over to his control. That night we stayed in the barrack, and I suffered a little annoyance from my comrades, from all of whom I was separated next day, when we were transferred to our depot at a place called Saida. I do not know whether this is to-day the depot for the Foreign Legion or not, as I heard men say that an intention existed on the part of the military authorities to place it farther south. Here I spent some time learning drill, discipline, and all the duties of a soldier, and this was the hardest period of my military life, for my knowledge of French had to be considerably increased before I could quite grasp the meaning of an order, and very often I was abused by a corporal for laziness when I had the best will in the world to do what I was told, if I could only understand it.