French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  And units were often reluctant to send their best troops to the “student corporal section” because they would lose them.139 While promotion appears to have been fairly rapid during the 1880s, when the Indochina campaign required great numbers of soldiers, it slowed down considerably toward the end of the century, so that only in one's second period of enlistment might a corporal's stripes become a possibility.140 Many did not care to wait that long. For those who were ambitious, the pay and promotion prospects were infinitely superior in la coloniale, causing a hemorrhage of many of the best soldiers and sergeants into that service.141 Nor was the recruitment of NCOs helped by the ease and frequency with which they might be broken back to the ranks, as typified by the reminder offered by officers that stripes were not awarded, but were merely “on loan.”

  The result was an NCO corps that was at best uneven, in which “chance has played such a role in their investiture that they do not all possess, it must be admitted, the presence which commands authority.”142 But how important was this to training? While in the years preceding World War I General Hubert Lyautey complained that the absence of NCOs had diluted training in the Legion,143 the truth is that this was probably less important than in other corps, because of the large number of ex-soldiers who were to be found among the new recruits. The anonymat that encouraged parallel hierarchies also made up in part for the lack of a formal hierarchy by providing role models and unofficial leadership (some of which, it must be admitted, might not always have been constructive). Lastly, the emulation and competition among the various nationalities, not to mention the fact that for many the Legion represented the last throw of the dice with which they had to succeed or fail utterly, made the absence of a formal hierarchy less important.

  A second training deficiency related to the inadequacy and shortage of NCOs, according to Martyn, lay with the fact that the depot companies were too large and unwieldy, so that “recruits are not looked after and supervised in the way that is necessary to the proper education of a recruit.”144 Sidi-bel-Abbès and Saïda not only offered basic training, they were also centers that filtered men coming and going from postings in the Far East, Madagascar, Morocco or one of the numerous garrisons in the Sud Oranais (southwestern Algeria). In this constantly fluctuating mass of men, the authority of the command was even less than in a detached company. And it was here that unsuspecting recruits might fall under the influence of the undesirable elements shed by the field companies. They befriended a disoriented youth, drinking at his expense until his money ran out, “then incite him to sell his equipment for a few sous to a Spaniard or a Jew, to get some money to go AWOL where he perverts him completely,” Captain Abel Clement-Grandcourt complained in 1910. “Admit it, the number of young soldiers who are spoiled in the beginning and from then on are only jail bait is large, very large.”145

  The problem seems to have become more acute after the turn of the century, when the government adopted a deliberate policy of sending many soldiers of the Bats d'Af into the Legion. Flutsch was cautioned on the dangers of basic training: “In Saïda, there are men who come in from the discipline companies or the penitentiary,” he was warned.

  They've got some filthy habits.... They'll be nice chaps. They'll help you out. They will do jobs for you and then try to take you off somewhere, and even if you hold your own, you can be badly hurt. So at Saïda, don't make friends. Say that you are big enough to look after yourself, and if they insist tell them to bugger off and be ready to smash them. It's not the same in the companies. We know each other and everyone is more or less alike. If trash like that gets in by chance, he is soon sent back where he came from. But Saïda is the headquarters and there a youngster has to be careful.146

  In 1906, War Minister Eugene Etienne ordered that new recruits must be kept for at least six months in a training company “as far as possible from the depot,” a method already applied in the Bataillons d'Afrique. But he conceded that “the moral amelioration of legionnaires ... will take a long time.”147

  However, these defects, while serious, were not critical. Dangy discovered that “The commanders count on the initiative of their men and upon the experience of the veterans to perfect the acquired knowledge.”148 But the real strength of Legion training lay with the fact that it concentrated on the essentials. Rosen waxed almost rhapsodic about Legion training: “ ‘Being practical’ was the leading principle of the whole training.” He found the instructors very helpful. “We were obliged to work hard, but never had the feeling of being bothered with anything unnecessary. It was practical work, the reason for which every one understood.”149 The Legion did not measure up to Germanic standards of drill, according to Premschwitz: “We marched in the streets with much noise, and paraded effortlessly to the great satisfaction of our commanders,” he wrote of a July 14, 1898, parade at Sidi-bel-Abbès.

  But even so, we did not keep in step and the alignment was bad. The parade is the least worry of the French gentlemen. It is always piteously carried out. This was hardly surprising, because one could not find the time to bother with something which is considered a nonsense. Here the essential thing is to know bayonet drill, boxing and gymnastics. This is how one forms an accomplished soldier.150

  It must be conceded that one school of thought would argue that this neglect by the Legion of drill and other ritualistic aspects of soldiering calculated to build morale and inculcate instinctive obedience must lower efficiency: “Not only does [drill] make men look like soldiers,” writes English historian Richard Holmes, “but, far more important, it makes them feel like soldiers.”151 But this simply was not the style of a corps that was, after all, a colonial and not a continental force. While European regiments were usually tightly knit organizations ruled with a rod of iron by a strict and omnipresent hierarchy, the Legion appears to have been largely a self-regulating world in which discipline “was a collective act where the judgments of the community were the most redoubtable,” according to Flutsch.152 In the absence of a more formalized organization, recruits were brought into contact with those who stood at the epicenter of Legion culture—the old sweats who had learned to “think Legion.” This translated into a “je m'en foutisme” (“I don't give a damn!”), a refusal to be rattled, a “calme colonial” in the face of the inevitable adversities, large and small, of Legion life, a serenity of mind achieved only by those who had acquired the habit of experiencing life exclusively in Legion terms.153

  The result was the ironic and perhaps contradictory one that, while Legion punishments were more frequent than in other regiments, Legion discipline was less formal, even relaxed. Luc Dangy, who enlisted in the Legion at eighteen but who was obliged upon reaching his twentieth birthday to transfer to a metropolitan regiment to do his military service, found the transition a difficult one: “The principal cause of my failures came from the fact that I had been a legionnaire,” he wrote. “I was used to a certain liberty in an organization which was special, which banished the small vexations, the little troubles, the little stupidities of military life, and I could not accept that in France these were exploited on an industrial scale.” While in the Legion the old soldiers showed the newcomers the ropes, in France those in their second and third years of service terrorized the bleus” While the Legion hierarchy was inspired by a large dose of common sense, officers in France lacked tact, imposed a depressing discipline, were like “prefects in a school ... despotic functionaries.... You have to believe that they sought out every possible way to bother the soldier.” They even forbade putting hands in pockets: “Well, in the Legion one could put his hands in his pockets, even if it were 100 degrees in the shade.” Compared to the Legion, the metropolitan army was a perversion of military life: “I, who had been a good legionnaire [four days prison in two years], became a bad soldier.”154

  A system that emphasized physical toughness, emulation and peer pressure rather than formalized discipline and drill probably appealed more to the mature, experienced soldier, as well as to the ma
n who might have found it difficult to fit into a more formal military environment. In this way, the contradictions of the “good fighter bad soldier” were minimized. “The Legion understands its soldiering business,” Rosen wrote. “One must admit that.”155

  Legion training stressed the development of individual initiative, according to Rosen, and nowhere was this more evident than in field training.156 Flutsch agreed and described an experience in which a group of recruits was placed in charge of a private who claimed to have served as an adjutant (sergeant-major) in the marines, and told to attack a hill. The ex-adjutant deployed his troops, ordered two imaginary volleys and then stormed the slopes a la bayonette. The training sergeant gathered everyone about and complimented them on their courage. The bayonet attack was especially impressive, he said, a worthy subject for a painting, for which he even suggested a title, “La prise du mamelon vert” (“The Storming of the Green Knoll”), an allusion to an episode during the Crimean War. Unfortunately, “in a real action, you would all be dead. Now, nothing is as inoffensive as a dead man. Personally, I would far rather fight five thousand dead men than ten determined live ones.” He then made them repeat the maneuver using the cover of the terrain and more direct individual fire. Once this had been accomplished successfully, he cautioned his men against the attitude, common in other corps, that branded those who sought cover as cowards:

  That which in la biffe would be judged dishonorable is highly honorable here because it is practical ... don't hesitate to lower your head, throw yourself on your belly when you are under precise fire. In this way, you will remain alive to shoot in your turn, in this way, you will form the Legion, the most dangerous troops in the world for the enemy. . . . Always remember, in the Legion we don't fight like the knights of the Middle Ages. We fight as dirty as possible. The enemy doesn't like that. But, then, he's the enemy and we don't have to be particularly nice to him.157

  In the Legion, as in any army, one trained to fight. However, in the Legion, one also fought to train. Life in the Legion, especially for new men, or men assigned to a new unit within the Legion, was like a perpetual series of challenge rounds. Single combat was folded into Legion culture as a necessary requirement for personal respect. In the fifteen or so years immediately following the Franco-Prussian War, fighting was ritualized in the form of dueling among soldiers. However, this was officially discouraged, and gradually fell from fashion, to be replaced by an atmosphere in which, according to Dangy, “Violence reigns as mistress.... In this reunion of individuals of all sorts, pusillanimity is a defect which puts a man at the mercy of his companion,” he wrote. “One must dominate, never retreat, face up always, which offers proof that one is as good as anyone, only this will get you respect.”158 Le Poer discovered that “It was necessary to fight a little at the beginning to assure one's rights and obtain an equitable share in the distribution of food and other things. But once one had proved himself, things went smoothly.”159

  ROSEN WAS HORRIFIED by the atmosphere of pervasive violence: when a larger man provoked him by sitting on his newly made bed, he had no choice but to descend into the barrack yard to settle accounts. Although Rosen complained that legionnaires “can't box like Christians” but instead “roll around like pigs,” by Legion standards his fight was merely a polite little scuffle, even though he managed to prevail in the unequal contest only by banging his assailant's head on a stone: “Parbleu, that was a good idea with the stone,” his opponent said after he had picked himself up off the ground. “Eh, you'll be a good legionnaire very soon. We men of the Legion quarrel often, but at heart we're comrades.”160

  Fighting appears to have been more pervasive in the Legion than in other corps. One reason was that it was tacitly encouraged because it was taken as a sign of masculine aggressiveness: “When we got into a fight, it wasn't like here, it caused a lot of problems,” Flutsch was told by an ex-marine. “In the Legion, they don't bother you about that.. ,”161 The international character of the corps also contributed to these intramural contests: “Because the Legion is French, and Germans are the most numerous, the differences of race come back to this Franco-German antagonism,” wrote legionnaire Jean Martin.

  The majority of Russians or “candle-eaters,” the Poles, and in general those from northern and central Europe are with the Germans. The Latins, the Belgians are francophile. The British, when there are any, don't give a damn. One mustn't think that this makes for perpetual conflict, but it gives rise to niggling problems, to preferences of NCOs for their nationals, and on payday, often fights between drunken legionnaires which have no other cause.162

  Violence also offered a way to control regimental thugs, the “caïds, who think that with a good blade and the skill to use it they can always give orders.”163 Flutsch witnessed the fate of a new transfer, a giant of a man named Leborgne, who attempted to terrorize his section: “[Leborgne] charged,” he recorded.

  The ex-sailor dropped down in a quick movement, to simulate a head butt, rose up and threw two fists forward, powdering the eyes of Leborgne with a double jet of sand which he picked up during his first feint. Leborgne swore and lowered the head, just enough to receive a terrible kick in the face, which put him on his backside. A second kick, more violent, threw him backwards. In the blinking of an eye, Van Lancker was on him and with hard kicks of his hobnailed heels in his face, forced his head into the gravel.... The ex-sailor continued to roll over his adversary who no longer reacted with kicks. He began to work him over in detail, on the ankles, the knees, on the tibias, with angry and destructive relentlessness. After breaking the ribs in passing, he stretched out the inert arms to smash the hands, the elbows, the forearms. “Don't kill him completely,” Garrigou warned. “No fear”, Van Lancker said. “I've done enough so he won't bother us any more.”164

  If violence formed a rite of passage in the Legion, the validation of one's worthiness to qualify as a bona fide legionnaire, it also served as a way to promote collective loyalty and unit cohesion. Sections were willing to go to almost any lengths to promote solidarity: Corporal John Le Poer agreed to turn a blind eye when his comrades wanted to teach an Austrian in their section a lesson. But when the lesson turned to tragedy, he helped them arrange a cover-up by sticking a knife in the cadaver and throwing it over the wall to make it appear as if the unfortunate victim had been killed by natives. “I was sure at least that none of my men would try to shoot me in the back when we were next in combat,” he reasoned.165 Le Poer recounted that quarrels between men of different sections could set off collective feuds that outclassed that of the Hatfields and McCoys in lethality.166

  Sectional loyalty might be affirmed in other ways, especially on payday or during the “cuite de la quinzaine”—literally the fortnightly drunk— when the wine purchased on payday was consumed in a matter of minutes. Then entire sections might join in combat against other sections with picks and shovels, the results of which, as Flutsch discovered, might be at least as damaging as a relatively warm skirmish with marauding Arabs.167 Le Poer's company got into a pitched battle with another Legion company, an epic fight that he claimed left twenty dead and had to be broken up by two squadrons of Chasseurs d'Afrique.168

  However, the fact that life in the Legion was often like a perpetual Olympic boxing final without referees or even rules must not be taken to mean that it teetered on the brink of complete disintegration. On the contrary, once they stepped beyond the barracks gates, “without questioning, legionnaires grouped together against the others,” wrote Jean Martin. “This was because, while we were admired for our toughness and our renown by men of other arms, we felt by their attitudes that we were still for them outlaws, even in Africa where they lived next to us.”169 The Legion's unwritten code required all of its members to come running when the shout of “à mot, la légion” issued from any bar or back street, no questions asked. In the tribalized society of Algeria, where Frenchmen, Spaniards, Maltese, Italians, Jews and several varieties of Arab and Berber, not to ment
ion the miscellaneous collection of regiments that called itself the Armée d'Afrique, coexisted in an uneasy relationship, fights were not only frequent, they seemed (to legionnaires at least) to be a perfectly normal activity. “The legionnaires, who regard themselves as superior, deeply despise the natives, and treat them with less respect than dogs,” wrote Raoul Béric in 1907. “They take pleasure in bumping them in the streets of the town and insulting them in every language of Europe,” which led to frequent fights.170 The contempt that legionnaires showed the inhabitants was also extended to other regiments, especially the penal units, perhaps because they were so often confused with them in the popular mind: “But if a dispute arises between a battalion of zéphyrs and another of the Foreign Legion,” Le Poer wrote with only slight exaggeration, “there is but one way of restoring order—call out the cavalry and the guns.”171

  Dangy believed that “if violence is not always necessary, it is always useful.”172 For if fighting among legionnaires validated personal courage, fighting between legionnaires and Arabs, Spaniards or soldiers from “the French army” helped to reinforce corps solidarity. Furthermore, violence against the outside, non-Legion world became a sort of defiance of conventional social norms from men who had never found satisfaction in conventional society. In its extreme and least attractive manifestations, it almost became a revenge upon a disdainful world.