Bennett J. Doty - The Legion of the Damned: The Adventures of Bennett J. Doty in the French Foreign Legion as Told by Himself

I HAVE been asked by friends to write the account of my experiences while serving as a fighting private in the French Foreign Legion, and of the special ordeal I went through. These experiences form a rather extraordinary adventure, taking in a years fighting in Syria, and culminating on June 6, 1926, when my father and mother, in their home in Tennessee, abruptly were faced with the news that, thousands of miles away and among strangers, I was about to be shot.

I say culminating. Happily this was a culmination that was not an ending. I was not shot. And I am now back home once more, librfree!

I am sitting at a table in my room in our old house in the home town. Although the day is near Christmas, the window is open, for this is down in Mississippi. I can hear a tree rustling, there, just below the sill.

And I feel as though in a dream; or just having finished a dreamI dont know which.

It is hard to believe that I am really free. Every moment I expect to wake up. And find myself facing again the dread Conseil de Guerre, or within the narrow confines of my cell at Clairvaux Prison, or stretched in my little bunk at Sidi Bel Abbes. Events have happened so rapidly of late I can hardly believe that anything is real.

On December 1just three weeks ago, I was with my regiment in Algeria, just reprieved from a terrible sentence. The regiment was getting ready to entrain for Morocco; I had before me a prospect of several more years of cruelly hard service away from country, friends and home. And suddenly on that day, December 1, I am notified that I am released from the Legion. Freed! I am to embark immediately for France.

Then follows the crossing of the Mediterranean on the French transport Tafna. We were in a great storm. My bunk consisted of just one fifth of the dining-room table of the small steamer. The other four fifths of the table belonged to four companions, four other Legionaires, discharged at the end of their long terms of enlistment. They averaged, I think, fatter than I was, for from my place on the western edge of the table every now and then I would find myselfcompletely shoved off. And whenever an extra-big roll came along, off we would all slide, like a pile of slippery dishes off a tray. We were of five distinct nationalities; every time this happened, all in a heap on the tossing floor, we swore in five languages. And we were all seasickwhat a crossing! And yet how happy I was!

I landed at Marseilles looking like a scarecrow. I had been terribly sick for two days and nights, I was unshaven, my hair was cropped close, as is the style in the Legion; I had slept in my clothes. And those clothes were the hand-me-downs the Legion presents to the discharged soldier as the last token of its affection and esteem. My sleeves stopped a little way below the elbow, my shoulders cracked everywhere through the cloth. They had been liberal though with the pantaloons. They were pants made for some giant; I could have gone entire into either one of the legs. No necktie, no collar, an undershirt without shirtI was a sight.

Well, I shaved, I bathed. I couldnt do anything about my hair, which remained cropped close, but I did buy some clothes. They were French clothesMarseilles clothes, to be exactI did not look quite like the last pattern of acollege boy of Harvard or Yale, but believe me, just to feel the soft cloth on me after those years of khaki, and the freshness of linen, that was a part of the dream I had walked into. And in another day I was strolling Monte Cristos home town like the veriest tourist; and then the train, the luxurious Orient Express, with sleeping car, dining car, observation caf; and then Paris.

Six days in Paris!

At Cherbourg I embarked on the Majestic, to return to my home, to the parents I had not seen for three and a half years and whom unwittingly I had placed on the worst of racks of uncertainty, fear and dread.

And let me tell you something which has to do, I think, with that relativity of Mr. Einsteins.

The Majestic is at present the largest liner afloat, a ship of fifty-six thousand tons, fitted with all the conveniences and luxuries known to man.

Well, the passage was rough. Gale upon gale hit us; we bucked a continuous head sea. But really it was not much worse than if you were in the Woolworth Building and it rocked a little. Yet on the third day I caught myself complaining at the length of the trip and the state of the sea.I, only a few days ago Gilbert Clare, private of the French Foreign Legion, and barely escaped from a most unpleasant fate!

Snap out of it, Gilbert Clare! I said to myself. Snap out of it! I think this is going to be my motto from this day on.

And now as to this book which I am going to writea new adventure on which I embark rather cheerfully, because I know I have something to say, and any one who really has something to say cannot go far wrong in the saying of it.

It was on June 12, 1925, that I enlisted in the Legion. All of the dramatic experiences that have befallen me since that day will be told with absolute truth and fidelity in this book. They will be told with no reservations, no pinkish glossings-over, but also without exaggeration. I wish the book to be a true human document.

Of the interest there is in the material itself, I think there can be no doubt.

For an entire year I was in the Foreign Legion, during some of the most desperate fighting that famous corps has ever done. And this in a far country, one of color and mystery and romance.

I had hardly completed my preliminary trainingin Algeria when I was assigned to the now famed Vingt-neuvime Compagnie de Marche, the Legion, hurled into Syria in August 1925, with revolt, fire and rapine reigning everywhere and the French sorely pressed.

In Syria we took part in all the most difficult and dangerous combats, including the battles of Mousseifr and Rezzas.

For its valor and devotion in these combats, and its faithful endurance in the terrific toil and murderous marching which went with them, the Vingt-neuvime Compagnie de Marche was given the fourragre.

This consists in the right of every man in the command to wear slung across his left shoulder a looped cord braided of scarlet and horizon blue. This distinction is accorded only for extraordinary service; the French Government gave it to some of our best troops during the big war. But in our case still another distinction was made. The right to the fourragre usually remains with the unit to which it is given; a soldier leaving such a unit cannot take the fourragre with him. Well, we were given that right. And now any soldier of the Vingt-neuvime, even if transferred, keeps hisfourragre, and proudly wears it among the men of the less distinguished unit.