Another little romance revolving round the life of a legionary, whose
birth was enveloped in mystery, was told some years ago by a British
soldier who served in the Legion. After an engagement at Cao-Thuong,
there was found on one of the dead, sewn in a belt, six British war
medals and a letter addressed to the narrator. Judge of his surprise
when he found that it was in perfect English, of which he had never
for a moment suspected his comrade-in-arms had a knowledge, and
that it contained the statement that the medals had been won by the
writer's father and grandfather in India. His mother, the writer
explained, was a native, and therefore he, as a Eurasian, although born
in wedlock, was ineligible for the British Army. As his tastes were
wholly military, and the greatest desire of his life was to add to his
forebears' collection of medals, he had enlisted in the Legion.
The mental attitude of the man who regards the Foreign Legion as a _pis
aller_ is a common trait among its members; it is often, indeed, the
last resource of those who have met with life's disappointments.
There was once an officer of the German army who had invented a new
type of cannon, and could not get its merits recognised, either by his
own country or by France, as rapidly as he would have liked, or receive
prompt remuneration for his work. Straightway, therefore, he went and
joined the Légion Etrangère. Some little time later, in 1895, the
French authorities, waking up to the possibility of the value of the
work of so eminent an engineer, approached him on the subject, but by
then he had become thoroughly soured. He declined to have anything to
do with them, and with the air of one whose genius has been recognised
too late hastily returned to his kitchen, where he had long carried out
the duties of regimental cook.
In the barracks at Sidi-bel-Abbes, where the most cordial and
frequently rowdy _bonne camaraderie_ reigns, failures in art, science,
literature, and every other walk in life may be found by hundreds.
Special cases like that of the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel Elkington,
who, after being cashiered by general court-martial, joined the Legion
as a simple private at the beginning of the present war and won his
way to distinction, are rare. He was in the thick of the fighting in
the Champagne country, lay for ten months in hospital badly wounded,
and before regaining the confidence of his King and country was
personally decorated with the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de
Guerre by an officer attached to General Joffre's staff. To find an
exact parallel to this instance of reinstatement in the British Army
would be difficult. Among the legionaires, however, there have been
quite a number of men of the type of the American Daly, an artist and
pupil of Gérôme, who lost at Monte Carlo everything his father had
given him to pay for his art training in Europe; scores, too, of such
enigmas as that fine young fellow who joined the Legion in 1893, served
in Tongking, and left in 1898, at the end of his time, when by chance
his superiors discovered that he had been first tenor at the Theâtre de
la Monnaie at Brussels. Not a note had he sung, not a single reference
to music had he made whilst in the regiment! Ah, what stories some of
these ne'er-do-wells, drunkards, comedians, and gentlemen with fine
manners could tell if only they would consent to open their lips!