#LEGION AMMUNITION FOR CLEAR THE SKIES PROFESSIONAL#

#LEGION AMMUNITION FOR CLEAR THE SKIES PROFESSIONAL#

The Italian, Conti, had been a professional bicycle-thief who had slipped quietly into the Legion when things got too hot for him. As Bur-bek-kar, the Arabian bugler, used to say in his bad French, вЂ Ceux sont le ra-ta international.вЂ™ - вЂTheyвЂ™re the international stew.вЂ™

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. There were Frenchmen from God knows where. There were Russians and Turks, an Anamite and a Hindu. In my own section there were men of all races and all nationalities. The Legion has always boasted that it never shows its back, and the Legion has made good. At Arras, in La Champagne, there are more than 400 kilometers of trench-line which they have restored to France. These things mean something to a man who has led the life of an outcast, and the LГ©gionnaires have proved their loyalty many times over. You must remember their comradeship, their espirit 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. Most men who had come to know them as I have would feel as I do. And yet I am proud of them-proud of having been one of them very proud of having commanded some of them. Some of them are drunkards, some thieves, and some with the mark of Cain upon them find others to keep them company. It is a story of adventurers, of criminals, of fugitives from justice.

Of the Legion I can tell you at firsthand. On others again you see a dozen helmets laid in rows, to mark the companionship of the dead below in a common grave. Beside the crosses you see bayonets thrust into the ground, and dangling from their crossbars little metal disks which months ago served their purpose in identifying the dead and now mark their graves. On the battlefield of La Champagne, from Souain to the Ferme Navarin, from Somme-Pye to the Butte de Souain, the ground is thickly studded with low wooden crosses, their plain pine boards marked with the Mohammedan crescent and star. 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 Reichshofena dn the equally famous standard which the Garibaldians bore in 1870-71. 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 HГґtel des Invalides. The occasion marked the admission of the LГ©gion EtrangГЁre to equal footing with the regiments of the line. On that day, after twelve months of fighting, the regiment was presented by President PoincarГ© with a battle-flag. One day during the latter part of August, 1915, my regiment, the 2me Г‰tranger (Foreign Legion), passed in review before the President of the French Republic and the Commander-in-Chief of her armies, General Joffre.

Legion ammunition for clear the skies