The discipline is very strict in a way, but the legionnaires have
to be handled differently than any other troops. They still delight
to tell about what was dubbed the "Battle of Montluel." Three pals
from the legion were in the town on leave. One was an American civil
engineer, one an Irishman of the school you read about--chivalrous,
humorous, always ready to fight--and the third was an Englishman who
had travelled so much that he belonged nowhere in particular.
They drank all the good wine in Montluel and refused to pay for any of
it. At last they wandered into a tavern they had missed and demanded
something to drink. The innkeeper refused them, having heard of their
escapades.
The Irishman dashed at him. The proprietor floored him with a chair.
The two others leaped upon the innkeeper. Peasants and townsmen
rushed in with flails, sticks and anything handy and began beating the
life out of the three legionaires, who yelled for the gendarmes. The
gendarmes came, but they arrested the soldiers and returned them to
their military commander. They were sentenced to twenty years of hard
labor on the railroad in Algeria.
But they begged so hard to be allowed to fight as long as the war
lasted that the commander agreed, saying they deserved to be shot
anyway.
I don't believe they will ever serve their twenty years in prison,
for if they are not killed they will have won their pardon. Already
they have won "citations" and would have been decorated were they not
technically prisoners.
I would just like to say one word about training men for fighting in
Europe. I don't want to presume to give advice, but I fully believe
that the only place to train men for this kind of fighting is right
behind the lines, where they will hear the shells bursting. Then
they can be moved up to the reserve trenches and used for repair and
construction work until they are ready to be put into the fighting.
In this war every man must take care of himself. There has never been
fighting like it. I don't care how well trained a soldier may be, he
has got to see something of the war before he will be any good in a
fight.