When roll-call had been finished in our quarters and everybody had gone to bed, I quietly left the room. Sleep did not appeal to me that night. The still of night lay over the barrack-yard. The white moonlight shone on the bare walls of the barracks. The stars of far south glittered in their trembling beauty. I stared up into the splendour of the heavens and brooded over happiness far away—passed—dead….
I heard footsteps and saw a shadow moving somewhere on the other side. And over there a trembling awkward voice sang softly:
L'amour m'a rendu fou….
Far into the night I crouched in a corner of the Legion's barrack-yard.
The first days, the first weeks of life in the Legion were quite sufficient to render me immune against strange things and strange sights. Sometimes it seemed to me as if my nerves were quite dulled. Every day brought monstrous sights and hideous impressions. I shuddered at unheard-of things and wondered at these strange specimens of humanity. But the next moment some new horror made me forget what I had just seen.
In a few minutes' walk with the bugler round the barrack-yard one could meet with a variety of sights like the following:
A légionnaire ran past us, shrieking in extreme pain, splashed with blood. He had cut off the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand so as to be unfit for active service.
A poor crippled Arab, bent with age, stopped when he saw us. He was evidently on his way to the kitchen buildings to beg for food. In his hands he carried a Standard oil-can. A Standard oil-tin as receptacle for food in connection with an Arab, Algeria and the Foreign Legion struck me as something distinctly new. But there was more to follow. In very broken German the Arab addressed us:
"Gut' Tag, légionnaires. Cigarette! Ick sein deutsch—Magdeburg gewesen—1870."