I still suffered from pains in my stomach. To-day it is a puzzle to me how I managed to march 300 kilometres in this condition in the burning sun and to stand the cold during the nights. But others were no better off. They marched with open wounds in their feet; with blisters between neck and shoulder-blades, where the straps of the heavy knapsack pressed; with eyes inflamed by the sun; with severe bronchial troubles; with bleeding and festering sores on their thighs. Many limped, and most marched bent wellnigh double, sunk together—a miserable, pitiful sight. Surly, silent, raging bitterness pictured in the hard lines of the face and in the tired eyes, we stamped onwards. The only words heard were curses.
Our nerves were strained to bursting-point. Over the whole troop lay the strain of over-exertion, bodily and mental nerve-sickness. The Foreign Legion has manufactured a special expression of its own for this mental state—"Cafard."
The "cafard" reigned. The "cafard" of the Foreign Legion, a near relative to tropical madness, is a collective name for all the inconceivable stupidities, excesses and crimes which tormented nerves can commit. The English language has no word for this condition. In "cafard" murder hides, and suicide and mutiny; it means self-mutilation and planless flight out into the desert; it is the height of madness and the depth of despair.
Many nights we were roused from sleep by a pandemonium of noise. Légionnaires—légionnaires in "cafard"—jumped round the tents in the dim light of the watch-fires, roaring the old Legion song out into the night. The "song" commenced with abusing the corporal and went on through the whole scale of charges up to the commander-general—in a horrible Legion French, of which the chief advantage was its extraordinary power of detailed expression. No officer was passed over in this song and each one was carefully mentioned by name, so that there might be no mistake….
The song was painted with insults in rainbow colours. The insinuation that Captain So-and-So kept up his private harem with the funds of the company was one of the most harmless, and with the assertion that he was an old monkey, the register of the regiment commander's sins only began.
At the top of their voices the "cafard" madmen shrieked this song of insubordination out into the still night, until the camp became lively. With many oaths the sentries tussled with the mad singers, and from out of the darkness bawling voices roared applause.
Such things were not taken seriously. The "singers" were bound to pegs in front of the guard-tent over the night, to give them a chance to cool down, and they had to join their companies at day-break—to march on.
When we got back to Sidi-bel-Abbès, our uniforms and our spirits were in sad condition….
CHAPTER X