Several weeks afterwards there was shown to us at roll-call the photograph of a body that had been horribly maimed. It was the Austrian. A patrol had found him by the Morocco frontier. The officer in command, to whose equipment according to regulation a camera belonged, had taken the photograph. Each company in the Legion got a copy of this awful picture, in order to identify the corpse. The regiment has quite a series of these pictures, all showing a man's naked body, hacked about in the most appalling fashion. This is the work of the Moroccan brigands, to whom the légionnaire, staggering hither and thither under the influence of the cafard, is a real source of joy. His uniform and bayonet are priceless possessions, easily won with a few sword-strokes. Besides, there is the consideration that Allah and his prophet reward a pious deed like torturing a dog of a Christian.
Hundreds of légionnaires who have started out in cafard have met with this awful death in the desert, martyred, maimed and tortured.
In general, however, the légionnaire finds going on pump, this flight into the desert, this mad rush for freedom without any real goal and without any sort of preparation, something quite natural that everybody tries once at any rate in the course of his career. In cafard….
As a rule the men desert in little groups, without any equipment but the uniform they wear and the bayonet that clanks at their side. They go forth at night, before nine o'clock, while the barrack gates are still open, and run, under cover of the darkness, madly through the sandy vineyards. They are miserably cold in the chilly African night, and the pangs of hunger soon assail them. But they keep going on: they are accustomed to accomplish miracles of marching even when loaded with the Legion's heavy baggage; without it they cover enormous distances. Five minutes at the double with that long cat-like stride of the Legion which never tires those who have once got the knack of it—and then five minutes' marching. They go on like this without stopping all through the night, and in the morning the truants are a good sixty kilometres from the garrison. Arriving at some lonely farm or other in the grey of the morning, they obtain a crust of bread and a sip of wine. It is very seldom the sympathetic heart of the Spaniard that takes pity on them: no, it is more often the bayonets which advise him to be obliging and conciliatory. In the daytime the poumpistes hide among the rocks or bury themselves in a deep hole in the sand. When night comes on they start on their way once more, ever southwards, keeping their bearings by the stars as they have learnt to do in the Legion—for a very different purpose it is true. When they hear the sound of horses' hoofs they take cover in deadly terror and lie for hours, still as mice, until the patrol has long passed out of sight below the horizon. Thus the days pass by. Bands of energetic and enterprising runaways often terrorise the Arabs in the lonely settlements for weeks on end, until the oppressed ones send for help and a fight results in which the deserters are of course sadly worsted.
Desperate fellows "on pump," who are determined to reach Morocco at any price, sometimes succeed in getting hold of a rifle. They have then a weapon to defend themselves against the brigands. They cannot take their own rifles with them, for with rifles they would never be allowed to pass the barrack gates.
A tough old veteran, who knows the frontier, marches with the utmost care. He knows that there is a triple row of tents, a quarter of a kilometre apart. One dark night he creeps through. This operation takes a long time to carry out. The tents, it is true, are a long way apart from each other, and it seems easy enough to get through. But this is only at first sight. For every 200 yards there stands a sentry guarding the line till the next tent is reached.
The line of tents is almost endless. Were the deserter to attempt to creep through direct or even in a slanting direction, he could not possibly avoid being noticed by one of the sentries who are stationed in a triangular arrangement. But he knows the trick. He creeps through 100 yards from a sentry and then strikes off at an angle of 45 degrees until he reaches the next row. Then straight on once more and then off again at an angle….
Now he works himself, crawling on his stomach and burying himself in the sand for hours at a time, up to a tent in the outside line. He steps silently into the tent, feels about with care—and he is the possessor of a rifle and a cartridge-belt. Thus armed he has now a chance of life and of getting safely across Morocco.
In most cases, however, after a few days of golden freedom, a freedom consisting of perpetual marching and ceaseless hunger, the man on pump meets his fate in the shape of a band of mounted "Goums,"[ [5] and finds himself, after a very short space of time, looking down the muzzles of their revolvers. He then has to go back the same way he came, fastened by a long chain to one of the Goums' horses, panting and coughing with the exertion of keeping up with the horse, which he must do if he doesn't want to be dragged over the sand and stones. Thus he is taken from station to station till the garrison is reached. If he is lucky enough not to have lost any part of his equipment and has not been absent more than a week, he is tried by the regiment, and gets off with sixty days' cellule—solitary confinement in the dark. If, however, any part of his uniform is missing, he is tried for theft and desertion by the court-martial in Oran, which is noted for its Draconic sentences.