Besides Rader and his fellow-deserters, there were forty others in the general cell. When at ten o'clock at night the sergeant inspected the prison and the cells were opened, I saw how the men lay huddled together on the wooden benches, man to man, like sardines packed in a tin. But in spite of this scarcely twenty out of the forty prisoners could find room on the bench. The others crouched in the corners, sleeping with their knees drawn up to their chins; several lay on the bare floor, filthy though it was. It was freezing cold for them in their thin drill clothes. The prison blankets they had been given were hardly worth calling blankets, ancient rags, so thin that one could see through them like a veil and so small that the men had the choice of covering their feet or their bodies; the blankets were not big enough to do both. They were stiff with dirt and most of them were alive with vermin. In the daytime they were just thrown into a corner of the cell.
It was no wonder that the men who had just been shut up in this cell could not sleep. Once I heard Rader ask gently who was doing sentry. He must have stood on the shoulders of one of his comrades to be able to reach the ventilation hole, which was high up in the wall. When I answered it was I, he said he could not stand it any more in there—hadn't I a cigarette? I spitted a packet of cigarettes on my bayonet and handed it up to him.
"Keep up your pecker, old man," I whispered.
"Good Lord, good Lord …" was the reply, in a pitiful tone which hadn't even a touch of Rader's droll humour left in it.
The sound of groans and curses reached me continually from the cell; all spoke very gently for they knew that they would be severely punished if a noise was heard. It is a prison custom for the sentry in the corridor to let the butt of his rifle fall loudly on the floor when he hears the sergeant coming. This is a warning signal. When in their excitement they spoke a little louder I could now and then hear through the opening what they were saying. In eloquent French, one of the prisoners, whose accent proclaimed him to be a man of education, was complaining of life in the Legion, and all was still in the cell while the ringing voice spoke in passionate excitement.
Snatches of what I heard are still fixed in my memory:
"My God, if I could only die!—My friends, I've always done my duty here.—I've marched and marched and marched for four long years.—For four years I've borne burdens, exposed to wind and weather, and have tired my strength.—Four long years! Yes, I've lost my tie, oh, la la, a thin blue rag worth a couple of centimes—and was marched off to prison! I'd stolen the tie, I'd sold it—who believes the word of a légionnaire! Mea culpa, my friends!"
"Mea maxima culpa!" repeated the speaker quietly. "'Tis true one has never been much use and has made a monstrous thing of one's life—you and I and all of us! And why not? That's all past and done with now. All the same—I'm ashamed of the country in which the Foreign Legion can exist. I'm a Frenchman. But I say: Damn the Legion, damn the land of the Legion…."
And over all there hung the pestilential vapours in the tiny room with the crowded humanity within.
When I was relieved at midnight the sergeant asked: "Anything unusual?"