Epic of the Foreign Legion
Its Wonderful Story Will Stand as One of the Vital Things of the War
The self-redeemed have always had the world’s sympathy—sometimes they have won the world’s acclaim. Visitors to that shrine of French honor and glory, the famous Hôtel des Invalides, may now see the battleflag of the Foreign Legion, draped between the flag of the Cuirassiers who fell at Reichshofen, and the standard borne by the Garibaldians in 1870-1871—not only draped in that honorable association, but wearing on its folds the cross of the Legion of Honor. And those who know will tell visitors that that flag was the flag of the redeemed.
It was said with shame and contempt at first that the Foreign Legion was composed of the riff-raff, scalawags and murderous upstarts of the nether world. So it was, but events proved that “there is a spirit in man” that can throw off degraded conditions and rise to the performance of nobly heroic deeds and sacrifices. This Legion, made up of renegades and social outcasts from all quarters of the globe, men beyond the pale of the law speaking a various language, tendered its services to France in 1915, was recognized by the President of the Republic, accepted by the Commander-in-Chief and admitted to the army on an equal footing with the regular regiments of the line. The pariahs became soldiers of France.
It was an extraordinarily nondescript assembly—all nationalities, all colors, from the black of the negro to the blonde of the Saxon, having but two things in common, their former outlawry and the “spirit that quickeneth,” and through the quality of that spirit they squared their debt to life,—for the Legion dissolved in the fire that met the “drive” in September, 1915, so soon after it entered the service. As one of the few survivors wrote: “War did its worst thoroughly with the Legion. We had the place of honor in the attack, and we paid for it.” Right good words.
There is all the material for an epic in the glory of the Foreign Legion. A great deal has been written about it, but the best is yet to be written—some time when the war is further away, and out of its horror the things that glow will rise into clearer view. Really, it is a great thing when the reject of the social order spring from their fugitive haunts and rush to death in defense of the higher civilization. In the meantime there is the moving story, graphically yet simply told, by Legionary Morlae, a survivor, published in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1916.
The Legion was placed in the van, and Morlae’s company formed the front line of the extreme left flank.
Infinite care had been taken with the preparations, every detail provided for, even to the extent of arming twelve men from each company with long knives and hand grenades for use in their assigned duty as “trench-cleaners”; this duty was to enter the German trenches and caves and bomb-proofs and “dispose of such of the enemy as were still hidden therein after we had stormed the trench and passed on to the other side.”