ON RIFF FRONT

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 August 1925, Page 8

ON RIFF FRONT

WITH THE FOREIGN LEGION.

J. M. N. Jeffries. ‘‘Daily Mail” correspondent in Morocco, writes - Die tents of the Foreign Legion were pitched on a slope in the centre of 'Jdaqunat camp, and -as one Rooked down upon them, stories of old warfare came to the mind. The monstrosities of modern superhuman fighting here were nowhere to be seen. Not here were flame-throwers, and tanks, and asphyxiating gas, or the darkness of those bases where human beetles hide from human insects of the air. The camp instead flickered with a thousand watchfires, dwindling from those which flared and smoked nearby, to match-lights in the distance. The stamping and neighing and jingling of the cavalry lines mingled witii the calls from fire to fire of the soldiery, crying their good-nights e«e they lay down by the blaze. At the foot of their guns, pointing out over the valley, the gunners rolled themselves in cloaks and settled to fitful sleep. At such a camp must Wellington and Soult have gazed and listened, amid the o.utposts of the Peninsula. And in its midst the Foreign Legibn still kept its vigil.. With a great laugh a broad-set leg* ionary cast down a great hunch of at the edee of the blaze, Erom the fire they called out to him in halfheard snatches of Spanish, French, German,, for all nations are m the legion, and of Gemans more than a few. At a camp fire near where I was standing, they were all Germans, or perhaps Austrians, with broad, bearded faces, strange above thei-r French uniforms.

Presently, in answer to a message, a young soldier, with a tin of cocoa in his hand, came up and made himself known. He was the sole British Legionary in that company, a corporal named Carroll, born in Montreal, a real soldier of fortune, who enlisted in the Lesion after having his fill of Gallipoli. ( A well-spoken young fellow was Corporal Carroll, and we had an odd talk there in the gathering darkness. He had come with his lieutenant in his old British regiment over io Africa to enlist, and’his lieutenant. Norman by name, had quickly won his commission and was a lieutenant of France at Sidi-Bel-Abbes. There was an American in his battalion, a boxer from Boston. But Kearney was over there in the rough trenches on the hill across the valley, tho hill of Astar. The Legion had recaptured it that morning, after it had fallen through native treachery. When they reached the top of Astar they had found the dead French sergeant at his post, burnt to the knees. His own Danish comrade, Count Kashe, had fallen beside him tlien, on the hill-crest, a bullet through his head, and called but one final entreaty to his British corporal as he fell.

There were many men of family scattered about the Legion, who came in and went out like that. Lawless deeds had brought some of the Legionaries to its ranks, but it was mostly wildness. A Belgian sergeant came and talked to us, and he was so quiet and gi'ave of voice, seemed at once so. sad and steady, I wondered what had led him there.

’ “Oh, the sergeant?” they told me later, “the sergeant had a motor-cycle in Brussels, and he was very fond of it and used to go very fast. He ran into a girl and she died, and he lied in terror of prison, and here he is.” We talked on and on as the fires sank lower. Presently they were but voices, 1 the Belgian sergeant and He British corporal, telling of the life and death of th\ Legion; how it was not so much at the forlorn hopes which came so regularly, but at the fatigue one grumbled; how th© inarch to position under Riff fire was bad, but it was the return, when, as often, they evacuated at evenfall and the Pit from behind rock and trees sniped at their backs, which was worse; of how other British compatriots got along, Wilson. White ,Steadman, who was also a corporal, Dunn, who had been in the Black Watch, and had gone after discharge to Dunkirk from London for a trip one day on a return ticket, and when he woke up at Dunkirk next morning found himself enlisted in the Legion; and of how the German Legionaries fought well but bullied the French, who were in the Legion under foreign names; and of their general good understanding with their officers, stem in peace, /but; huma nand kind in war; how they played a bit of football at the depots, and how God knew where they were going to fight to-morrow; and bow you threw away the tent you carried even under fire in order to move more freely, aAd picked up another from one of the dead at the end of the engagement.

Then the Belgian sergeant bade me a gentlemanly adieu in his sad, grave voice of a man of sixty, and the brave young corporal went back to his cocoa making.

So the canin-fires faded out ami night gathered us in, and t.h© crickets chattered unceasingly, “Ont of the dust—-into the dust.” Then with a roar a gun fired its red heart through the dark, and then another and another. The air shook, but soon was still.

And fast and furious the crickets chattered on, th© crickets at I l ’-'

endless task, the dry crickets whisking away mortality—“out of the dust —into the dust —out of the dust—into the dust.” But the legionaries paid them no heed, but with five fairly sure hours of living before them, lay down, and the camp in the mountains slept before action.