Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion
PART ONEIncubation22 February 1960 - ParisI was awake long before the dawn, and by the time there was a grayness in  the sky I had finally made up my mind to go. By eight o'clock I was in the  Métro heading for the Old Fort at Vincennes--the recruitment center of the  Foreign Legion. There were few people about, and those who were had grim  Monday-morning faces, probably reflecting my own.From Vincennes station I walked through the streets and eventually arrived  at the massive gates of the Old Fort. On a plaque on the wall there was a  simple notice:bureau d'engagement - légion étrangére -  ouvert jour et nuit.I hammered on the huge doors, which swung open in response, and stepped into  a cobbled courtyard to be confronted by the first legionnaire I had ever  seen. He was dressed in khaki with a blue cummerbund around his waist and  bright red epaulettes on his shoulders. He wore a white kepi on his head and  had white gaiters, and I thought he looked quite impressive. I was less  impressed with the archaic-looking rifle at his side. He slammed the great  doors shut and beckoned me with his head to follow him.I was ushered into a room on the door of which was inscribed bureau de  semaine, which I assumed meant General Office or something similar. It was a  primitive enough chamber with a bare plank floor and a wooden table and  chair. One or two old and tired-looking photographs depicting legionnaires  holding the regimental colors, men driving tanks through the desert, and  others marching down the Champs-Élysées hung limply on the wall.A sergeant sitting behind the table looked me up and down but said nothing.  I broke the ice and said in English that I had come to join the Foreign  Legion, and he gave me a look that was a mixture of wonder and sympathy. He  spoke reasonable English with a German accent and asked me "Why?"I said something conventional about adventure and so on, and he said I had  come to the wrong place. He said five years in the Legion would be long and  hard, that I should forget the romantic idea that the English have of the  Legion, and that I would do well to go away and reconsider the whole thing.  I said I had given it a lot of thought and had come a long way, and  eventually he said "Okay" with a sigh and led me upstairs and into an  assembly hall.As I walked into the hall, I was confronted with about forty people sitting  on benches around the walls. Eighty eyes immediately focused on me, and my  own swiveled round the room in a flash. There was not one single face on  which my eyes could come to rest and l could say "He is like me" or "We are  the same in some way." I knew instantly that I had not the slightest thing  in common with any one of them.I took an empty place at the end of one of the benches and contemplated my  feet, but I could feel them all staring at me. They were an incredible  mixture, dark, gray, white, brown, beards, moustaches, bald, and shaggy,  wearing an unlimited array of different garments, but they all looked tough  and unkempt and totally different from me. I was wishing to hell that I had  worn a pair of jeans and an old pullover instead of a three-piece suit with  a double-breasted waistcoat, of all things.A couple of them were snickering on the other side of the room, and l kept  my eyes averted although I could feel myself getting hot. We sat for a long  time until at last an officer arrived with a couple of men in white coats,  and we were told to strip down to underpants.One by one we were called forward and given a series of medical tests. This  took two hours, and after it was over we were again left sitting on our  benches. The medical tests had loosened a few tongues, and people were  chatting away to each other in different languages, mostly German. I kept to  myself at this point and was wondering whether I would be in time to catch  the six o'clock flight from Orly back to London.An hour passed, and the officer reappeared accompanied by the sergeant who  had been in the Bureau de Semaine. He made an announcement in French, from  which I gathered that they had need of only seven of us and the rest could  go. They read out seven names and mine was one of them.The seven of us were called forward and led out of the room, leaving behind  the rest who were being herded up for departure back into the welcome arms  of Paris. We were taken along a series of dark passages and up several  flights of stone stairs to a supply room at the top of the old building,  where we were handed battledress and trousers, a pair of boots, and a  greatcoat. Then we were given some food in a dingy little room that had  metal tables and stools.Nobody spoke a word during the meal, and when it was over we were ushered  into a small room and made to listen to a tape recording, repeated in  several languages. In the room there was a single naked forty-watt bulb  dangling from the ceiling on a long cord, and the atmosphere was sinister.  With me were two Germans, a Spaniard, a Belgian, and two Dutchmen. Everybody  was tense.The tape played in English, and I was informed that I was about to sign a  five-year contract and that when l had signed there could be no turning  back. The voice that came over the loudspeaker was solemn and had all the  gloom of a judge pronouncing sentence of death. I wanted to talk to it, I  wanted to talk to anybody who was English, but it was a one-way dialogue and  it was decision-making time. We listened in silence and nobody said  anything, nobody started shouting to get out, nobody cracked or lost their  nerve or gave way to rising panic. Then we filed through into an office one  at a time and signed the contract. It comprised three enormous tomes of  unintelligible French. Attempts to read it were discouraged and would have  been pointless, anyway.I feel as though I have signed a blank check over to a complete stranger.  Night has fallen and we are in a dormitory. Metal beds with straw-filled  mattresses and a blanket. A bugle sounds "lights out" in the night, faint  and loud against the mood of the wind. It is the end of my first day and the  beginning of a new adventure. I think that the sergeant was right; it will  be a long road and a lonely one. I am in the heart of Paris but it feels  like the mountains of the moon.The Next DayWe were awakened early with a bouncy bugle shattering cozy sleep, and after  a cold-water rinse and a mug of coffee we were put to peeling potatoes,  sweeping floors, and other general chores, called corvée, around the fort.  There is very little talk, primarily due to the language problem. The day  passed quickly and tonight we are catching the train to Marseille. The  journey begins.24 February 1960There was trouble on the train last night and I have already made an enemy.  There were not enough seats and it was first come, first served. During the  evening I left the compartment for a pee and returned to find that the  Spaniard had pinched my seat. I didn't like this situation at all. I tried  very slowly to get across to him that he was in my seat and reading my  magazine, but he affected deafness. It was early days to be getting into  fights, but it was even earlier to be running away from them, and I knew  quite suddenly that I would have to make a stand.In one move, before I had time to talk myself out of it, I grabbed him by  the lapels, yanked him to his feet, and threw him the length of the  carriage.We were both quite surprised: he by being thrown so violently and me by  throwing him. I am quite small and am not used to throwing people about!However, his surprise quickly gave in to other emotions, and he came  charging at me. Our greatcoats and the lack of space hampered active  movement, and neither of us got the better of the other, but I think I gave  a good account of myself. Eventually the others in the carriage got bored  with it and we were dragged apart. Public opinion came down on my side and  the Spaniard was shoved out of the compartment back into the corridor. He  went out with wild eyes glaring at me, screaming Spanish oaths and what were  obviously threats of vengeance. I shall have to watch him.We arrived in Marseille in midmorning and were driven in trucks to a fort  overlooking the port. The fort is called Saint Nicolas. There are some three  hundred Legion recruits here, and they arrive in batches of about thirty a  day from the various recruitment centers at Strasbourg, Lyon, and Paris.  About half are shipped to Algeria every ten days or so.The first move was to issue us with denims in exchange for our battledress  uniforms. The denims are dirty and torn, without buttons, held together with  bits of string. Obviously the other gear was just for the train journey and  for the benefit of the general public so that they would not feel they were  traveling with convicts, because that is now what we look like.The central courtyard of the fort looks exactly like the kind of prison  compound that one sees in movies; groups cluster together looking furtive,  others sit on the ground leaning against the wall, somehow everybody is  whispering--or is it that I can't understand what they are saying? The NCOs  look tough and they probably are. Why the hell do they look like prison  wardens?The atmosphere inside the barracks is cold and gloomy. The sanitary  conditions are unbelievable. In a room that looks like an empty horse stable  on a winter's morning, there is a solitary tap protruding from the wall,  under which there is a sort of trough. The tap runs icy water, there is no  window and no light, and this is the washroom for a hundred men. The  lavatories are holes in the ground with footstands each side. Looks like a  bad place for backache. In the dormitories the bunks ar...