I can't get 'em up,
I can't get 'em up at all!
The old familiar sounds very naturally suggested old remembrances. I dreamt of a misty morning and a hammock slung between two mango-trees, somewhere in the valley of Santiago de Cuba, and a very tired war correspondent listening sleepily to the morning call floating over from the tents of the Sixth Cavalry hard by. A hazy recollection of fantastical foreign legions and broken fortunes crept into the dream. But surely there were no such things. Little Smiley, trumpeter of "B" troop of the Sixth, was sounding the morning call in his funny, drawn-out fashion—of course it was Smiley:
I can't get 'em up at all….
It was but a dream. Awakening, I sat up and stared about me. Where was I, anyway? No mango-trees here, no tents, no Sixth Cavalry. And very slowly I realised that Cuba and war corresponding were things of the past, that the pebble-stones of the courtyard were part and parcel of a French barrack and the soldiers in flaming red trousers running about in the courtyard had a perfect right to call me their comrade. There had been no mistake however about the morning call. There it sounded for the third time: "I can't get 'em up"—the réveillé of the U.S. regulars!
The riddle's solution was rather simple: The "get 'em up" signals of the French and the American army are exactly the same.
For three days we stayed at the old barracks high up on the cliffs near Oran. On the third day the packet brought a new batch of recruits for the Foreign Legion, twenty men, most of them Germans. We were all bundled into a rickety little railway train and, at an average speed of about fifteen miles an hour, we raced towards the South, to Sidi-bel-Abbès, the recruiting depot of the Foreign Legion, and headquarters of the Legion's first regiment, the "Premier Etranger."
It took us six hours to reach Sidi-bel-Abbès. As the distance was about eighty miles, I considered this a very poor performance and felt personally aggrieved by the train's slowness. I had yet to learn that from now on time would be no object to me. After leaving Oran our train crawled through beautiful gardens and pretty little villas. The gardens were followed by long stretches of fields and farmhouses, and then at last civilisation vanished. The desert sands of Africa claimed their right. The burning sun shone upon wavy lines of endless sandhills, upon naked sand.
After six hours' ride we arrived in Sidi-bel-Abbès. The little station was swarming with men in the uniform of the Foreign Legion. At the primitive little platform gate stood a guard of non-commissioned officers, carefully watching for would-be deserters.
A corporal took charge of us and we fell in line to march to the Legion's barracks.