Fancy the magic of those words in that vast sun-baked barrack of the Legion, those words that cut through the routine of life like a sword. Drills, Swedish exercises, road-mending, the awful blaze of the Algerian mid-summer, all collapsed, broke away, vanished like the memory of a nightmare before the vision of war.
Not a rough and tumble Arab war, either, but a great German war, made in Berlin, polished and complete in all its parts, an affair "worth something."
There were men in the Legion well versed in the intricacies of European diplomacy; there were men in the Legion better fitted to write the history of what we call Armageddon than many a European scribe renowned in his trade. But from the lowliest to the likeliest, there was not a man who thought or cared for anything but the fight ahead.
For the Legion does not care what it fights so long as it fights, where it goes so long as it goes, or how far it goes so long as it gets clear of barracks.
The Germans in the Legion were quite ready to fight Germany, the Spaniards to fight Spain, the Austrians to fight Austria; but, and this is the mysterious thing, they were all eager to fight for France.
For France who paid them a halfpenny a day and worked them like horses, yet who had, by some alchemy, made them her loyal soldiers second to none in the field.
Some days later at Oran, whilst they were waiting to embark, Jacques and a companion, having obtained leave of absence from barracks, were taking a stroll through the town.
Jacques had only been here once since that day, years ago, when, having parted with Casmir and Choc, he had been arrested and taken back to Sidi-bel-Abbès. The place was just the same, the same sun-splashed streets, Arabs, Jews, Levantines, Greeks, the same salt sea wind blowing round corners and wiping out the same Oriental smells, the same children playing in the gutter, the same beggars and plum-coloured porters topped with red fezes, the same Spahis smoking the same cigarettes.
Then, turning a corner they came on a crowd and a dog fight.
An awful Arab brute was engaged in a battle to the death with a dust-coloured mongrel, and the mongrel was Choc.