IN THE LEGION

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 142, 18 June 1931, Page 7

IN THE LEGION

THE REAL PICTURE

STRIPPED OF ROMANCE

TEEBIBLE SUFFEEDfG

It is an interesting fact that Germans predominate in the French Foreign Legion. Thousands of Germans enlisted in the Legion after tlio war was over, because they had no means of earning a living in the impoverished Fatherland. Herr Ernest F. Lohndorff, the German author of "Hell in the Foreign Legion," states that after the collapse of tho Communist movement in the Rhine-: land there was a rush to join the Legion. "Those were the days of-dis-tress in.Germany," he writes, "when tho Foreign Legion, that sheltering 'mother ' of the homeless, the desperate, the uprooted, the hungry, the seekers of adventure, and the fleers from justice, opened its recruiting offices all along the Rhine, attracting with magic power hundreds and thousands of men who were broken and disillusioned^ by the Great War and the revolution." Tho author himself was' "one of a pitiful batch of human animals, numbering about two thousand," who had enlisted, and were being drafted to Africa. "They are merely poor wretches, broken by hunger and physical privations, whose eyes betray a dull indifference to' everything that the future may have in store for them," he writes. "Some have scarcely the most indispensable articles in the way of clothing. WRONG IDEAS. "Ho doubt there maybe a few among them whose record is far from clean, for they brightened up and were obviously seized with unnatural joy as the company got further and further away from the frontier, of the unoccupied territory. There arc also young fellows who have run away from, their well-fed employers with a handful of meagre money from the till; typical spoilt mothers' darlings of tho middle class, who imagine the Legion to bo a sort of endless picnic under date palms, lion hunting with venerable white-bearded sheiks and adventures with hot-blooded Bedouin women. But the great majority of the men marching in front of me are driven by misery, want, and the raving hunger that glares from time to time in their sad, tired eyes." Shortly after the author was drafted to the First Regiment of the Foreign Legion, then stationed at Sidi-Bel-Abbes, in Morocco, a thousand Russians arrived to join the Legion. They were a remnant of the White Army of General Wrangel, and had been interned at Pera, near Constantinople. A large numbor of these Russians were officers, and two were generals, but all had to join tho rank and filo of. the Legion and carry rifles. 6n hearsay evidence Herr Lohndorff gives the number of Germans in the Legion as 75 per cent., of tho total. Of the rest, 15 per cent, are Frenchmen, describing themsolves as Belgians, and the others consist of Scandinavians, Russians, Italians, Poles, Spaniards; Swiss, Arabs, and a very small number of Englishmen. The author refers briefly to Comrade Holloway, who came from Melbourne, as "perhaps the only Australian in the Legion." WRETCHED LIFE. In recent years several books have been published describing the hardships of life in the Legion, and the terrible nature of the punishments inflicted, for even minor offeifces against military discipline. Herr Lohndorff experienced hardships and brutal punishments; but he writes: "A man in the Legion may experience nothing whatever worth noting. Another may experience a little; a third may perhaps go beyond ..that; while the rest, the numerous rest, of whom nothing is heard, experience far too much, but nobody cau tell about them, for tho Sahara, or the sombre mountains of the great Atlas country, swallow them up without a trace. In one garrison life may be tolerable for a soldier who demands no luxury, because tho men in command are human; but in another it may bo hell on earth, and the officers and subordinates like laughing devils poking the flames 1" While a member of the garrison at Fort Jonnart, an oasis in tho Sahara desert, which is five days' journey by camel from the next fort, the author witnessed terrible punishment inflcted on a Legionary named Pieter de Gries, a Walloon (Belgian), whose original offence was neglectng to salute the commanding officer of the fort, Captain Mitrailleuse, nicknamed the Machine Gun. As punishment he was ordered to count, one by one, the contents of a bag of dates. He refused, and was locked up in one of the hottest detention cells, with chains on his hands and feet. Usually the prisoners in the detention cells become frantic with the heat, and beat their hands in frenzy against the walls in the hopeless effort to get out. But Pieter do Gries made no sound, though Captain Mitrailleuse paced the yard up and down, listening for evidence that the prisoner's spirit was broken. aOn the following day the captain had the prisoner brought out of his coll for further punishment. "It is now midday, a blazing heat streams down from the burning sky, pressing one to the earth and making one feel like a driedup wash-rag," writes Herr Lohndorff. "Pieter de Gries is taken outside the hut, stripped and buried naked in sand up to the neck. His eyes had a mocking look at first, but became bloodshot, and after about half an hour an appalling shriek comes from his livid lips. And while wo stupified Legionaires stand glaring at him he yells for mercy without ceasing. He is willing to count ten sacks of dates, a hundred even, if only somebody will take him out of the terrible blazing heat that is burning and stifling him. . . . The captain lets him wait for a while, and then orders him to be shovelled out and laid on his bed. And his spirit is broken. He now belongs to the Legionairos who execute every command, be it ever so crazy, submissively and idiotically, with the greatest hurry." HEAT MADNESS. Iv the desert forts men succumb to a form of tropical madness known as the cafard. Some run amok and attempt to kill their officers: others commit suicide; others run away into tho desert and are seen no more. The author describes the suicide of a non-commissioned officer, who, while suffering from the cafard, thought himself the clapper of a bell, and hung himself with a rope. "He had tho cafard!" said the author to a comrade with whom he had watched tho man's dying struggles, without any attempt to save him, because of the brutal way in which he had treated those under him. "I've been in the Sahara and know all about it. It comes from drinking and loneliness, and the sun. Somo men fancy they are clocks, another thinks he is tho Sultan, a pump, or a boll-clapper." In describing tho life of tho garrison at Fort Jounart. the author writes: "It is getting unbearable. Captain Mitrailleuse is a torturer and Sntan. He does everything ho can to torment us. And yet what can this man do by himself, against the terrible power of the desert, which turns us all into lunatics and bleating idiots, who bow and scrape before the officers and sergeants'? The majority of us are spiritually degraded men, who have neither will nor energy, while the lesser half of us are teeth-gnashing, eye-rolling victims of frenzy, who have to be ordered three .times before they execute a command,

and who follow one another in unbroken succession time after time, in the five detention cells, beating their hands against tho walls, wailing and shouting, so that those who are lying in the dormitory or standing sentry, stuff their fingers in their ears in exasperation, and would like to run away from it all out into the flaming desert. "We keep no account of the date. At first we mado notches in an old rifle butt, but now wo arc too lazy even for that, too indifferent, or too mad. We are all afraid of Captain Mitrailleuse, his devoted, absinthe-drinking lieutenant, and the three sergeants, rogues such as never befouled the soil of this earth before; like the very plague, but not more than the former, we fear the desert and the blazing sun with its scorching heat, which slowly devours our brain. Yes, we fear the sun, that slings arrows of fire into our solitude, from which we cannot escape. And our human tyrants fear the power ot Nature as much as we do."