Then after a pause:
"What do you really expect? What do you want? We are in the Legion. You are a légionnaire—don't forget that again, légionnaire!"
If I had not in my complete loss of self-control ventured to air my opinions in language unheard of in the Legion, I should very likely have left the ominous peg in front of the guard-tent as a dead man.
Thanks to the opium pills of the assistant surgeon I was able, however, to march the next day with the others, but not without exerting every spark of my will-power. The time from one milestone to the other seemed endless. The expectation of the five minutes' rest at the fifth milestone was the power that drove me forward. I counted my steps in order to make me forget the pain in the mechanical occupation of counting. One hundred and twenty steps represented one hundred metres; when I had counted ten times one hundred and twenty, we had covered a kilometre, the fifth part of the road to rest….
At last we reached our paradise, the few minutes of exhausted rest. And then the torment began afresh….
The manœuvres in a desert covered with peculiarly sharp stones, three hundred kilometres south of Sidi-bel-Abbès, occupied exactly eight hours, and from the standpoint of the Legion they were superfluous and consequently useless. The development of the firing-line, the skilled search for cover, the rush of the bayonet attack, the understanding of all the orders, the complete discipline under fire, are things which, in the never-ending practical military training of this fighting regiment, become part and parcel of the légionnaire's flesh and blood. The closing manœuvre was (I heard our captain discussing these matters with Lieutenant Garde) nothing more than a small private entertainment on the part of our colonel, who wished to show off with his regiment; a military amateur dramatic performance. On the other hand, the commander-general had said to his adjutant that it was a great pleasure to him to give his légionnaires an "airing." The regiment had already idled about barracks for six months, and might in the end forget that its real home was amongst the sand of the desert, and that it had no other object in life than to march, march a lot, to go on marching.
The légionnaires knew this fad of the general's well enough, and never called him anything else but the "marching pig." The fat sergeant of our first "peloton" used to say, with great lack of respect:
"As soon as I see the fellow I feel tired…."
When the general was still colonel and in command of the first regiment, he once met a drunken légionnaire in one of the side streets of Sidi-bel-Abbès. The man, only just capable of saluting, got the mad idea to address his colonel.
"Eh, mon colonel," he stammered, "I am still very thirsty. Ten sous, mon colonel."