The Legion was thoroughly afraid of the hospital! They were desperate fellows indeed who tried shamming!
The topic of desertion from the Foreign Legion is wellnigh inexhaustible. When the transports sail from Oran or Marseilles to Indo-China with relief companies of the Legion on board, the Suez Canal is a favourite means of deserting. According to the Canal regulations the steamers must slacken speed in the narrow straits of Suez, and the légionnaire takes the opportunity to jump overboard. He swims the short stretch to land and is then safe. The sentries on the transports may not use firearms in the international waters of the Suez Canal, and therefore cannot fire on the deserter as he swims. Neither is extradition from the English or Egyptian authorities to be feared.
Several of these transports from the Foreign Legion pass through the Suez Canal every year, and these desertions are so frequent that the Ghetto of Port Said pays a fixed price of ten shillings for the capital service boots of the Legion!
Desertions en masse occur now and then, but these may be classed as mutinies rather than as desertions. In Southern Algeria, in the loneliness of the desert, the garrison of some small fort occasionally breaks out, marching for the Morocco frontier. The next bevy of troops soon brings the runaways back again, and even if it comes to a shot or two the superiority of the numbers against them soon brings the mutineers to reason. A mutiny like this generally ends in the mutineers being shot. An act of this sort is nothing else than an outbreak of madness caused by the dreadful monotony of service on the lonely stations in the desert. It is an outbreak of the cafard! The poor devils should be treated by a doctor instead of being sentenced by a court-martial.
The Foreign Legion is a fruitful field for hypnotic suggestion. In my time a number of légionnaires deserted from Sidi-bel-Abbès, with the intention of fighting their way through to Morocco. Morocco was just then talked about till the idea became surrounded with a sort of halo. The attempt itself was pretty hopeless—the men were driven to it by the suggestive power of the words, "le Maroc."
Morocco was the Legion's fairyland, the land the soldier longed for. Not a single day went by without a rumour of fighting in Morocco raising excitement in the Foreign Legion to fever pitch. Dark war-clouds were gathering on the horizon. From the frontier there came continual reports of the intrigues of the pretender, and in the inland of Morocco mighty battles were fought at short intervals. Among the watchful officers of French Africa every one was certain that the internal troubles in Morocco were not merely the petty splutterings of the usual native fireworks, but the first sparks of a mighty bonfire.
The Foreign Legion knew of this; then all that was discussed in the officers' mess filtered through to the regiment through its own various private channels.
Orderlies came rushing into the barracks in a fever of excitement as soon as they came off duty in the mess and told their friends in the Legion all about the heated debates that had taken place and which all revolved around Morocco. The servants of the staff officers brought news of Moroccan visitors closeted with their masters; Spahis who had served their time in the Morocco frontier garrisons and who were quartered on the regiment on their way through to Oran, told how sharp duty on the frontier now was, and how the garrisons were perpetually being strengthened.
The veterans put their heads together and discussed the prospects of a bloody war! They had wonderful stories to tell of the golden treasures of Morocco, of the jewels that the better classes wore, and in their fancy they pictured an Eldorado of plundered wealth and booty. These mysterious rumours grew from day to day. More than half of the regiment's officers were ordered to the little frontier towns, and it was not unnatural when the Legion found in this a sure sign of fighting to come. With a broad smirk, an orderly brought the news that the colonel had engaged two masters to teach him Arabic, and it was easy to see how proud he was of the enormous supply of ammunition which was sent out from France. Recruiting began with zeal in the Spahi barracks opposite. Arab recruits with their splendid horses joined daily. Sections for telegraph duty went off to the frontier to see to the old wires and to lay new ones; volunteers were called for to form a corps for the heliographs, and veterans whose time was up got the tip from one or other of the officers that it would be very much to their advantage to stay on and not to take their dismissal just then….