Told by Donald R. Thane, of the Foreign Legion of France
Back from the trenches, where he fought in the Foreign Legion of France, Donald R. Thane, an American boy, was wounded and "gassed" all in the same day. Mr. Thane has seen Mars in his blackest moods; he has seen him at play and laughs at some of the grim jests of the war god. His gossip of the trenches—or rather some of it—just as he told it, nervously, and coughing now and then, for his lungs are still raw from the gas, gives an American boy's view of the war and what is going on "out there."—Courtesy of the New York Herald.
I—STORY OF AN AMERICAN BOY IN FRANCE
I was walking through Belgium when the war started. Things began to get hot and I went over to Paris. It was there that I enlisted in the Foreign Legion.
Why did I do it?
Well, I'm not going to pull anything about wanting to rescue France, or being fired by the flame of liberty or anything like that. They asked a negro prizefighter—an American—the same thing. He ruefully regarded the many bandages that adorned his more or less mangled body, and said:
"Well, sah, I guess mah curiosity got de best ob mah good sense."
Looking back on it, he answered for me, too.
As soon as I enlisted I became a number. It was No. 38,606, and I think that when we started to fight there were about 65,000 men in the legion. I don't know how many there are now. I do know that regiments have been so decimated that they were consolidated. You must not think of a regiment of the legion, however, as you do of an American regiment with a fixed number of men. I have seen Zouave regiments with 43 companies and about 240 men in each company.
I was assigned to the First regiment of the legion, where there were a number of other Americans, about whom I will tell you later. If the Americans had all enlisted at about the same time probably they would have had a separate regiment, but as they came in separately they were scattered throughout the legion.