Part 6

These rumors appear to be true but they cannot be satisfactorily verified.

It is known that the French prisoners in Belgium and northern France are not allowed to communicate in any way with the outside world, although prisoners in Germany are allowed to send and receive communications from relatives and friends.

It has been learned that these six Americans after receiving the warning of the opposition of Germany to Foreign Légionnaires who were not citizens of a country at war with Germany, discussed plans to be followed in the event of being taken prisoners.

They determined, if captured, to destroy all regimental marks on their uniforms, to throw away their army-books, and to assume fictitious names.

CHRONOLOGICAL MILITARY RECORD OF RUSSELL A. KELLY

1914

November 3, left New York on steamship _Orcadian_.

November 19, reached Pauillac, France.

November 21, Saturday, docked at Bordeaux.

November 23, applied at recruiting station.

November 24, enlisted in the Foreign Legion.

November 26, began military training at Dépôt de Lyon.

1915

February 6, left barracks for the front.

February 8, arrived at Bouzy, near the front.

March 8, left Bouzy and same day arrived at Verzenay and entered first line trenches.

April 24, left Verzenay for region north of Arras.

April 28, reached Aubigny; again entered first line trenches.

May 9, Sunday, in the attack on La Targette and Neuville St. Vaast.

May 10, battle continued.

May 11, relieved from the captured position and returned with regiment to rear for reorganization.

May 29, reëntered first line trenches.

June 16, in the attack on Cabaret Rouge near Souchez and at the taking of Hill No. 119.

June 18, reported as missing.

1917

May Still missing.

Is this military record, like the record of many another Legionary, forever closed; and does that youthful

“Heart that once beat high for praise Now feel that pulse no more?”

X LA LÉGION ÉTRANGÈRE

All the countries of the old world have “crack” military organizations famous for deeds of valor, many of which came into existence long before the time of our revolutionary war. In the United States, most large cities have at least one regiment with a record of which the civilians as well as the soldiers are justly proud. But all their histories and achievements pale before the extraordinary record, ancient formation and remarkable membership of France’s famous corps, _la Légion étrangère_. That body is easily the most ancient, unique and widest known military organization in the world.

Here is a Legion numbering, before this war, eight thousand men, all of whom, except the officers, being aliens of the country for which they give up their lives. Very few of them are able to understand the language of the country, and very few become citizens of the country even after enlistment in its army.

They are not requested to enlist and when they do apply for admission they are told of the hardships to be encountered. If the applicant still insists he must wait until the following day before his application is considered.

Since the beginning of the present war many enlisted, no doubt, from love of France; but it is difficult to understand how this large membership was maintained prior to the war.

None enlisted for protection of their homes or families. Nor for glory as scarcely any Legionary has even become a general. Not for money; the pay is one cent a day, a wage the meanest outcast in the street would spurn with scorn. Not for comradeship; the ranks being recruited from the whole world are too cosmopolitan for lasting friendships.

Not for an easy life; for they were assigned, before this war, to duty in the unhealthy waste places of Africa and Asia.

Answers to this riddle would be almost as diversified as the volunteers are numerous.

No weakling can be accepted, for it takes a good physique to stand the training necessary to develop a man to fight for his life and the country. For example it is part of the routine of the Legion for each company to march once a week, in full marching equipment, twenty-eight miles within ten hours.

Historians cannot agree as to when this Legion was first organized, but it is conceded that it was in existence in the time of Clovis who stands out in history as the founder of a new France, and with whose rule French history begins. He employed this very organization in the year 486 when he defeated the last of the Roman power in northern Gaul, at Soissons, which city is still in existence and stands less than ten miles from the place where their equally courageous successors gave up their lives for that same France, but now a glorious republic, fourteen hundred and twenty-nine years later.

In our country we consider an institution that is one hundred years old as ancient, our government itself being in existence less than a century and a half, yet here is an organization that when Columbus discovered America, was a thousand years old.

Mercenaries, or troops who serve alien countries for pay, were used from the very earliest times. Thirteen thousand Greeks fought in the year 401 B. C. under Cyrus, the Persian, against his brother Artaxerxes; and even the all powerful Romans often availed themselves of the services of foreign soldiers.

The French always employed large numbers of mercenaries, and in the year 886 their King, Charles le Gros had a bodyguard of foreigners: an example followed by St. Louis in the year 1226. In the protracted wars between France and England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries these mercenaries formed the major part of both armies.

The last mercenaries used by England were twenty-two thousand Hessians hired from the landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Casse, Prussia, and for whom they paid about £3,191,000, or $16,000,000, to assist in the war against the American colonies. These were the troops that Washington so decisively defeated at Trenton on Christmas night, 1776.

The Foreign Legion continued under all the French rulers, and Napoleon frequently acknowledged their great worth to him.

After the Napoleonic wars the Legion was known as The Royal Foreign Legion. In 1831 a new law was enacted reorganizing the Legion and establishing its headquarters in Algeria. In 1835 the Legion was the subject of one of the most remarkable transactions in history; it was sold by King Louis Philippe to Queen Maria Christina of Spain for a sum equal to about one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars, being the estimated value of its arms, uniforms and equipment.

The Legion proceeded to Spain landing at Tarragona, four thousand strong; it fought valiantly for four years in the first Carlist war, and when that war ended in the early part of 1839 only five hundred Légionnaires survived.

Within a few weeks after the old Legion landed in Spain, a new Legion was organized by France and sent to Algeria, where it did most effective work.

In the Crimea war the Legion was part of Canrobert’s division at the battle of the Alma; and during the siege of Sevastopol it was repeatedly mentioned in reports for its brave and successful efforts. In this campaign the Legion lost eighteen hundred officers and men, and as a reward for their gallantry the Emperor gave the Légionnaires the right to become French citizens should they desire to.

The Legion was part of Maximilian’s forces in Mexico and on April 30th, 1863, near the village of Camaron, a detachment of three officers and sixty-five Légionnaires held at bay two thousand Mexican cavalry for ten hours, when the survivors numbering only twenty were captured. As a reward the word “Camaron” is inscribed on the colors of the First Regiment.

Four thousand two hundred and thirty-seven officers and men of the Legion died in Mexico.

In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 the Legion performed remarkable services as a rear guard, to cover the retreat of the French army.

The Legion in time of peace consists of two regiments, the _Premier_ or First, and _Deuxième_ or Second, they being kept separate and distinct. The headquarters of the First Regiment is at Sidi-Bel-Abbés which is in the northwestern part of Algeria, forty-eight miles inland by rail from Oran, a port on the Mediterranean. The headquarters of the Second Regiment is at Saida, also in Algeria.

The First Regiment has the great distinction of having had its flag decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, only ten regiments of the three hundred and odd composing all branches of the French army having this great honor. It is the boast of its soldiers that “the Legion of Honor dwells with us.”

This regiment’s flag carries the motto

“Honneur et Discipline”;

the flags in the other regiments of the French army hear the motto

“Honneur et Patrie.”

So these wanderers from all countries, after enlistment are without a country.

At the beginning of the present war these two regiments were mobilized, and there being a large number of volunteers, each regiment was divided into four regiments and designated as _régiments de Marche_, or marching regiments. Each _régiment de Marche_ was divided into four battalions, being known as A, B, C and D; a battalion consisted of four companies; each company of four sections; each section of four squads, and there were sixteen men to a squad. This arrangement accounts for four thousand and ninety-six men, and as there were additional officers and attachés, a full _Régiment de Marche_ was frequently composed of as many as four thousand four hundred men.

The four _régiments de Marche_ of the First _Régiment étrangère_ were, therefore, about seventeen thousand strong.

The Second _Régiment étrangère_ was, in the same way, divided into four _régiments de Marche_, and was of the same numerical strength as the First _Régiment étrangère_. Hence, the Foreign Legion in April and May, 1915, when its ranks were full, consisted of about thirty-four thousand troops.

The First _Régiment de Marche_ of the First _Régiment étrangère_ was composed mostly of Garibaldians, the second of Swedes, Spaniards, Russians, Canadians, English, Americans, and others, while the third and fourth were mostly Greeks.

The designation of Russell A. Kelly was as follows:

Soldat KELLY, Russell. No. 24641 1 Régiment étrangère 2 Régiment de Marche Battalion B 2 Compagnie 4 Section 15 Escouade

The Légionnaires who survived the battle of June 16th, 1915, being very few in number, were assigned some weeks later to the Second foreign regiment, then located in the Champagne district, to the east of Rheims.

On September 25th, that regiment took part in a very severe attack on the German lines between Souain and Perthes-le-Hurlus, about twenty-seven miles from Rheims. This attack continued on the 26th, 27th and 28th and was entirely successful, for they finally captured the redoubt of Bois Sabot, but at the cost of more than half of the regiment. This engagement is now designated as the battle of Champagne, and is considered one of the most important battles of the war.

The Legion, after being recruited and generally strengthened, next took part in the very severe fighting in December at Hartmannsweilerkopf in the Vosges.

It did exceptional work in the severe battles around Verdun in February and March. The following despatch was sent from Paris March 7th, 1916:

“The unanimous French military opinion is that the recapture of Douaumont by the French infantry line, the Foreign Legion and chasseurs, on Feb. 26th, was one of the finest feats in military annals and equal to Gen. Galliéni’s famous charge at Sedan in 1870.”

In the summer of 1916 the French government revived the ancient Fourragère decoration; this consists of a braided cord about 34 inches long, terminating in an aiguillette; one end is fastened on the soldier’s left shoulder, and then extended under his left arm and fastened on his left breast so that the aiguillette hangs below this second fastening.

It is not awarded for individual merit, but is conferred on a military unit, as a section, company, battalion, or sometimes an entire regiment; it is a reward for two distinct citations for unusual bravery or heroism.

Almost the first award made was to the entire Second _Régiment de Marche_ of the First Foreign Regiment. The two citations entitling the regiment to this revived decoration were, first, for its extraordinary work during the battle of Artois, which began May 9th and ended June 19th, 1915; and second, for equally meritorious and successful action during the battle of Champagne, which took place from September 20th to October 17th, 1915.

For several years prior to the present war, the Germans very bitterly attacked the French Foreign Legion by articles in their newspapers and magazines, as well as pictures in their moving picture shows and songs in their café concerts. One very violent attack was a play entitled, “The Hypocrite,” which was first produced February 24th, 1914, at the Künstler Theatre, Berlin.

In a ray of green light a legionary advanced toward the front of the stage with a sign inscribed “We are the légionnaires of Africa” written in French; it continued in German, “All that you behold here is strictly true; we show you what we suffer and how we die.”

The play was received with great applause, although the critic of the _Berliner Tageblatt_ had the fairness to write, “This drama of the Legion is a sluggish and untimely melody of the boulevard.”

Germany’s arguments against the Legion were summarized in the Spring of 1914 as follows, viz.:

FIRST. They deny the right of a modern state to have recourse for its defence to the services of foreign subjects and they say they have been confirmed in this by the fact that all states, except France, have successively renounced the employment of foreign soldiers.

SECOND. That the contract on enlistment is harsh as the duration of the services is too long, the pay is insufficient and the service imposed is excessive.

THIRD. That France takes advantage of the wretchedness of the applicants and secures their enlistment while they are in ignorance of the severity of the service.

FOURTH. That recruiting is carried on by crimps who abuse their victims by getting them drunk and by false promises, and it results in forming a scandalous mixture of starving men, adventurers and bandits, devoted to drunkenness and the most infamous morals.

FIFTH. That it is applicable to minors, recruits being taken at the age of eighteen years.

SIXTH. That Germany has, more than any other country, the right to occupy itself with that which is going on in the Legion, by reason of the great number of its subjects who serve there.

Mr. Gaston Moch issued a book in Paris in 1914, before the war, entitled “The Question of the Foreign Legion,” in which he fully discusses these arguments from the French side.

The Foreign Legion is, therefore, acknowledged to be the last of the mercenaries, a connecting link between the present day and the days before the beginning of the Christian era.

Transcriber's Notes:

Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.

Typographical errors were silently corrected.

Spelling and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.

Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

End of Project Gutenberg's Kelly of the Foreign Legion, by Russell A. Kelly