Part 1

Chapter 14,126 wordsPublic domain

A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION

EDWARD MORLAE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1916

_Published June 1916_

PREFACE

When Sergeant Morlae turned up at the _Atlantic_ office and, with his head cocked on one side, remarked ingratiatingly, "I'm told this is the highest-toned office in the United States," there was nothing to do but to assure him he was right and to make him quite comfortable while he told his wonderful story. That story, however, was not told consecutively, but in chapters as his crowding recollections responded to the questions of his interlocutor. It was a story, too, which could not be told at a sitting, and it was not until the evening of the second day that Sergeant Morlae recounted the exploit which won the Croix de Guerre pinned to his chest--a cross which he said, with the sole touch of personal pride noticed in three days passed largely in his company, had above it not the copper but the silver clasp.

Sergeant Morlae is a Dirk Hatteraick of a man to look at, and the education of that beloved pirate was no more rugged than his own. His father was a Frenchman born who had seen service in '70 and won a captain's commission in the "Terrible Year." After the war, Morlae, senior, settled in this country and his son was born in California. As young Morlae grew up, finding the family business of contracting on a small scale somewhat circumscribed, he sought more hazardous employment in active service in the Philippines and in more than one civilian "scrap" in Mexico. It was good training. August, 1914, found him again in Los Angeles. For two days his French blood mounted as he read the newspapers, and on the morning of August 3 he packed his grip and started for Paris to enlist in the Legion. Since he had already seen service, he was soon made a corporal and later a sergeant. Morlae, says a letter from a Harvard graduate who served under him in those days, was "an excellent soldier," "a strong, efficient, ambitious man," though, as the reader of this and letters from other Legionaries may infer, he was neither sentimental in his methods nor supersensitive with his men. Maintaining discipline in so motley a crew as the Legion is rather a rasping process, and Sergeant Morlae was born disqualified for diplomatic service. Future reunions of La Légion are likely to lack the sweet placidity which wraps the Grand Army of the Republic on the anniversaries of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

But to the story. The things that war is are not often told except in generalization or in words of fanciful rhetoric. It would be hard to find elsewhere, crammed into a brief narrative, so much of the sense of actuality--that realism made perfect which even readers who have known no such experience feel instinctively is true. Yet the story is not made of horror. The essence of its life is the spirit that delights in peril. The "Soldier of the Legion" has in it that spinal thrill which has electrified great tales of battle since blood was first let and ink spilled to celebrate it.

ELLERY SEDGWICK.

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE SOLDIER _Frontispiece_

AS THEY SWUNG INTO COLUMN THE NIGHT BEFORE THE 25TH OF SEPTEMBER 18

AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN LEGION SHOWING TYPE OF HAND-GRENADES 38

AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN LEGION RECEIVING NEWS FROM HOME 100

A SOLDIER OF THE LEGION

One day during the latter part of August, 1915, my regiment, the 2me Étranger (Foreign Legion), passed in review before the President of the French Republic and the commander-in-chief of her armies, General Joffre. On that day, after twelve months of fighting, the regiment was presented by President Poincaré with a battle-flag. The occasion marked the admission of the Légion Étrangère to equal footing with the regiments of the line. Two months later--it was October 28--the remnants of this regiment were paraded through the streets of Paris, and, with all military honors, this same battle-flag was taken across the Seine to the Hôtel des Invalides. There it was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and, with reverent ceremony, was placed between the flag of the cuirassiers who died at Reichshofen and the equally famous standard which the Garibaldians bore in 1870-71. The flag lives on. The regiment has ceased to exist.

On the battlefield of La Champagne, from Souain to the Ferme Navarin, from Somme Py to the Butte de Souain, the ground is thickly studded with low wooden crosses and plain pine boards marked with the Mohammedan crescent and star. Beside the crosses you see bayonets thrust into the ground, and dangling from their cross-bars little metal disks which months ago served their purpose in identifying the dead and now mark their graves. Many mounds bear no mark at all. On others again you see a dozen helmets laid in rows, to mark the companionship of the dead below in a common grave. It is there you will find the Legion.

Of the Legion I can tell you at first-hand. It is a story of adventurers, of criminals, of fugitives from justice. Some of them are drunkards, some thieves, and some with the mark of Cain upon them find others to keep them company. They are men I know the worst of. And yet I am proud of them--proud of having been one of them; very proud of having commanded some of them.

It is all natural enough. Most men who had come to know them as I have would feel as I do. You must reckon the good with the evil. You must remember their comradeship, their _esprit de corps_, their pathetic eagerness to serve France, the sole country which has offered them asylum, the country which has shown them confidence, mothered them, and placed them on an equal footing with her own sons. These things mean something to a man who has led the life of an outcast, and the Légionnaires have proved their loyalty many times over. At Arras there are more than four hundred kilometres of trench-line which they have restored to France. The Legion has always boasted that it never shows its back, and the Legion has made good.

In my own section there were men of all races and all nationalities. There were Russians and Turks, an Annamite and a Hindu. There were Frenchmen from God knows where. There was a German, God only knows why. There were Bulgars, Serbs, Greeks, negroes, an Italian, and a Fiji Islander fresh from an Oxford education,--a silent man of whom it was whispered that he had once been an archbishop,--three Arabians, and a handful of Americans who cared little for the quiet life. As Bur-bekkar, the Arabian bugler, used to say in his bad French, "Ceux sont le ra-ta international"--"They're the international stew."

Many of the men I came to know well. The Italian, Conti, had been a professional bicycle-thief who had slipped quietly into the Legion when things got too hot for him. When he was killed in Champagne he was serving his second enlistment. Doumergue, a Frenchman who was a particularly good type of soldier, had absconded from Paris with his employer's money and had found life in the Legion necessary to his comfort. A striking figure with a black complexion was Voronoff, a Russian prince whose precise antecedents were unknown to his mates. Pala was a Parisian "Apache" and looked the part. Every man had left a past behind him. But the Americans in the Legion were of a different type. Some of us who volunteered for the war loved fighting, and some of us loved France. I was fond of both.

But even the Americans were not all of one stripe. J. J. Casey had been a newspaper artist, and Bob Scanlon, a burly negro, an artist with his fist in the squared ring. Alan Seeger had something of the poet in him. Dennis Dowd was a lawyer; Edwin Bouligny a lovable adventurer. There was D. W. King, the sprig of a well-known family. William Thaw, of Pittsburg, started with us, though he joined the Flying Corps later on. Then there were James Bach, of New York; B. S. Hall, who hailed from Kentucky; Professor Ohlinger, of Columbia; Phelizot, who had shot enough big game in Africa to feed the regiment. There were Delpeuch, and Capdeveille, and little Tinkard, from New York. Bob Soubiron came, I imagine, from the United States in general, for he had been a professional automobile racer. The Rockwell brothers, journalists, signed on from Georgia; and last, though far from least, was Friedrich Wilhelm Zinn, from Battle Creek, Michigan.

The rest of the section were old-time Légionnaires, most of them serving their second enlistment of five years, and some their third. All these were seasoned soldiers, veterans of many battles in Algiers and Morocco. My section--complete--numbered sixty. Twelve of us survive, and of these there are several still in the hospital recovering from wounds. Zinn and Tinkard lie there with bullets in their breasts; Dowd, with his right arm nearly severed; Soubiron, shot in the leg; Bouligny, with a ball in his stomach. But Bouligny, like many another, is an old hand in the hospital. He has been there twice before with metal to be cut out. Several others lie totally incapacitated from wounds, and more than half of the section rests quietly along the route of the regiment. Seven of them are buried at Craonne; two more at Ferme Alger, near Rheims. Eighteen of them I saw buried myself in Champagne.

That is the record of the first section of Company I. Section III, on the night of the first day's fighting in Champagne, mustered eight men out of the forty-two who had fallen into line that morning. Section IV lost that day more than half of its effectives. Section II lost seventeen out of thirty-eight. War did its work thoroughly with the Legion. We had the place of honor in the attack, and we paid for it.

Two days before the forward movement began, we were informed by our captain of the day and hour set for the attack. We were told the exact number of field-pieces and heavy guns which would support us and the number of shells to be fired by each piece. Our artillery had orders to place four shells per metre per minute along the length of the German lines. Our captain gave us also very exact information regarding the number of German batteries opposed to us. He even told us the regimental numbers of the Prussian and Saxon regiments which were opposite our line. From him we learned also that along the whole length of our first row of trenches steps had been cut into the front bank in order to enable us to mount it without delay, and that our own barbed-wire entanglements, which were immediately in front of this trench, had been pierced by lanes cut through every two metres, so that we might advance without the slightest hindrance.

On the night of September 23, the commissioned officers, including the colonel of the regiment, entered the front lines of trenches, and with stakes marked the front to be occupied by our regiment during the attack. It was like an arrangement for a race. Starting from the road leading from Souain to Vouziers, the officers, after marking the spot with a big stake, paced fifteen hundred metres to the eastward and there marked the extreme right of the regiment's position by a second stake. Midway between these two a third was placed. From the road to the stake, the seven hundred and fifty metres marked the terrain for Battalion C. The other seven hundred and fifty metres bearing to the left were assigned to Battalion D. Just one hundred metres behind these two battalions a line was designated for Battalion E, which was to move up in support.

My own company formed the front line of the extreme left flank of the regiment. Our left was to rest on the highroad and our front was to run from that to a stake marking a precise frontage of two hundred metres. From these stakes, which marked the ends of our line, we were ordered to take a course due north, sighting our direction by trees and natural objects several kilometres in the rear of the German lines. These were to serve us for guides during the advance. After all these matters had been explained to us at length, other details were taken up with the engineers, who were shown piles of bridging, ready made in sections of planking so that they might be readily placed over the German trenches and thus permit our guns and supply-wagons to cross quickly in the wake of our advance.

The detail was infinite, but everything was foreseen. Twelve men from each company were furnished with long knives and grenades. Upon these "trench-cleaners," as we called them, fell the task of entering the German trenches and caves and bomb-proofs, and disposing of such of the enemy as were still hidden therein after we had stormed the trench and passed on to the other side. All extra shoes, all clothing and blankets were turned in to the quartermaster, and each man was provided with a second canteen of water, two days of "iron rations," and one hundred and thirty rounds additional, making two hundred and fifty cartridges per man. The gas-masks and mouth-pads were ready; emergency dressings were inspected, and each man ordered to put on clean underwear and shirts to prevent possible infection of the wounds.

One hour before the time set for the advance, we passed the final inspection and deposited our last letters with the regimental postmaster. Those letters meant a good deal to all of us and they were in our minds during the long wait that followed. One man suddenly began to intone the "Marseillaise." Soon every man joined in singing. It was a very Anthem of Victory. We were ready, eager, and confident: for us to-morrow held but one chance--Victory.

III

Slowly the column swung out of camp, and slowly and silently, without a spoken word of command, it changed its direction to the right and straightened out its length upon the road leading to the trenches. It was 10 P.M. precisely by my watch. The night was quite clear, and we could see, to right and to left, moving columns marching parallel to ours. One, though there was not quite light enough to tell which, was our sister regiment, the 1er Régiment Étranger. The other, as I knew, was the 8me Zouaves. The three columns marched at the same gait. It was like a funeral march, slow and very quiet. There was no singing and shouting; none of the usual badinage. Even the officers were silent. They were all on foot, marching like the rest of us. We knew there would be no use for horses to-morrow.

To-morrow was the day fixed for the grand attack. There was not a man in the ranks who did not know that to-morrow, at 9.15, was the time set. Every man, I suppose, wondered whether he would do or whether he would die. I wondered myself.

I did not really think I should die. Yet I had arranged my earthly affairs. "One can never tell," as the French soldier says with a shrug. I had written to my friends at home. I had named the men in my company to whom I wished to leave my personal belongings. Sergeant Velte was to have my Parabellum pistol; Casey my prismatics; Birchler my money-belt and its contents; while Sergeant Jovert was booked for my watch and compass. Yet, in the back of my mind, I smiled at my own forethought. I _knew_ that I should come out alive. I recalled to myself the numerous times that I had been in imminent peril: in the Philippines, in Mexico, and during the thirteen months of this war. I could remember time and again when men were killed on each side of me and I escaped unscratched. Take the affair of Papoin, Joly, and Bob Scanlon. We were standing together so near that we could have clasped hands. Papoin was killed, Joly was severely wounded, and Scanlon was hit in the ankle--all by the same shell. The fragments which killed and wounded the first two passed on one side of me, while the piece of iron that hit Bob went close by my other side. Yet I was untouched! Again, take the last patrol. When I was out of cover, the Germans shot at me from a range of ten metres--and missed! I felt certain that my day was not to-morrow.

Just the same, I was glad that my affairs were arranged, and it gave me a sense of conscious satisfaction to think that my comrades would have something to remember me by. There is always the chance of something unforeseen happening.

The pace was accelerating. The strain was beginning to wear off. From right and left there came a steady murmur of low talk. In our own column men were beginning to chaff each other. I could distinctly hear Soubiron describing in picturesque detail to Capdeveille how he, Capdeveille, would look, gracefully draped over the German barbed wire; and I could hear Capdeveille's heated response that he would live long enough to spit upon Soubiron's grave; and I smiled to myself. The moment of depression and self-communication had passed. The men had found themselves and were beginning their usual chaffing. And yet, in all their chatter there seemed to be an unusually sharp note. The jokes all had an edge to them. References to one another's death were common, and good wishes for one another's partial dismemberment excited only laughter. Just behind me I heard King express the hope that if he lost an arm or a leg he would at least get the _médaille militaire_ in exchange. By way of comfort, his chum, Dowd, remarked that, whether he got the medal or not, he was very sure of getting a permit to beg on the street-corners.

From personal bickerings we passed on to a discussion of the Germans and German methods of making war. We talked on the finer points of hand-grenades, poison gas, flame-projectors, vitriol bombs, and explosive bullets. Everybody seemed to take particular pleasure in describing the horrible wounds caused by the different weapons. Each man embroidered upon the tales the others told.

We were marching into hell. If you judged them by their conversation, these men must have been brutes at heart, worse than any "Apache"; and yet of those around me several were university graduates; one was a lawyer; two were clerks; one a poet of standing; one an actor; and there were several men of leisure, Americans almost all of them.

The talk finally settled upon the Germans. Many and ingenious were the forms of torture invented upon the spur of the moment for the benefit of the "Boches." "Hanging is too good for them," said Scanlon. After a long discussion, scalping alive seemed the most satisfactory to the crowd.

It had come to be 11 P.M. We were at the mouth of the communicating trench and entering it, one by one. Every so often, short transverse trenches opened up to right and left, each one crammed full of soldiers. Talking and laughing stopped. We continued marching along the trench, kilometre after kilometre, in utter silence. As we moved forward, the lateral trenches became more numerous. Every fifteen to eighteen feet we came to one running from right to left, and each was filled with troops, their arms grounded. As we filed slowly by, they looked at us enviously. It was amusing to see how curious they looked, and to watch their whispering as we passed. Why should we precede them in attack?

"Who are you?" several men asked.

"La Légion."

"A-a-ah, la Légion! That explains it."

Our right to the front rank seemed to be acknowledged. It did every man of us good.

We debouched from the trench into the street of a village. It was Souain. Houses, or ghosts of houses, walled us in on each side. Through the windows and the irregular shell-holes in the walls, the stars twinkled; while through a huge gap in the upper story of one of the houses I caught a glimpse of the moon, over my right shoulder. Lucky omen! "I'll come through all right," I repeated to myself, and rapped with my knuckle upon the rifle-stock, lest the luck break.

Not one house in the village was left standing--only bare walls. Near the end of the street, in the midst of chaos, we passed a windmill. The gaunt steel frame still stood. I could see the black rents in the mill and the great arms where the shrapnel had done its work; but still the wheel turned, slowly, creaking round and round, with its shrill metal scream.

The column turned to the left and again disappeared in a trench. After a short distance we turned to the right, then once more to the left, then on, and finally, not unwillingly, we came to a rest. We did not have to be told that we were now in the front line, for through the rifle-ports we could see the French shells bursting ahead of us like Fourth-of-July rockets.

The artillery had the range perfectly, and the shells, little and big, plumped with pleasing regularity into the German trenches. The din was indescribable--almost intolerable. Forty, even fifty, shells per minute were falling into a space about a single kilometre square. The explosions sounded almost continuous, and the return fire of the Germans seemed almost continuous. Only the great ten-inch long-range Teuton guns continued to respond effectively.

We looked at the show for a while, and then lay down in the trench. Every man used his knapsack for a pillow and tried to snatch a few hours' sleep. It was not a particularly good place for a nervous sleeper, but we were healthy and pretty tired.

The next morning, at 8 A.M., hot coffee was passed round, and we breakfasted on sardines, cheese, and bread, with the coffee to wash it down. At 9 the command passed down the line, "Every man ready!" Up went the knapsack on every man's back, and, rifle in hand, we filed along the trench.

The cannonading seemed to increase in intensity. From the low places in the parapet we caught glimpses of barbed wire which would glisten in occasional flashes of light. Our own we could plainly see, and a little farther beyond was the German wire.

Suddenly, at the sound of a whistle, we halted. The command, "Baïonnette au canon!" passed down the section. A drawn-out rattle followed, and the bayonets were fixed. Then the whistle sounded again. This time twice. We adjusted our straps. Each man took a look at his neighbor's equipment. I turned and shook hands with the fellows next to me. They were grinning, and I felt my own nerves a-quiver as we waited for the signal.

Waiting seemed an eternity. As we stood there a shell burst close to our left. A moment later it was whispered along the line that an adjutant and five men had gone down.

What were we waiting for? I glanced at my watch. It was 9.15 exactly. The Germans evidently had the range. Two more shells burst close to the same place. We inquired curiously who was hit this time. Our response was two whistles. That was our signal. I felt my jaws clenching, and the man next to me looked white. It was only for a second. Then every one of us rushed at the trench wall, each and every man struggling to be the first out of the trench. In a moment we had clambered up and out. We slid over the parapet, wormed our way through gaps in the wire, formed in line, and, at the command, moved forward at march-step straight toward the German wire.

The world became a roaring hell. Shell after shell burst near us, sometimes right among us; and, as we moved forward at the double-quick, men fell right and left. We could hear the subdued rattling of the mitrailleuses and the roar of volley fire, but, above it all, I could hear with almost startling distinctness the words of the captain, shouting in his clear, high voice, "En avant! Vive la France!"