Simon Murray - Nobody Will Shoot You If You Make Them Laugh

You smug-faced crowd with glittering eye

Who cheer when soldier-lads march by,

Sneak home and pray youll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go

Siegfried Sassoon

Sergeant Dornach got to work on the heads with a small, sharp penknife, cutting across the necks. I was numb inside and felt nothing as I watched him hack away, with bloodied hands. It was like something from Macbeth. His face was devoid of any expression and he could well have been skinning a rabbit. It took him an hour to remove the three heads.

By this time our company, two miles further down the valley, fearing trouble, had sent men back to look for us. I could hear them calling our names. Dornach put his bloodied finger to his lips for silence. He did not want us to be found by any enemy lurking in the vicinity cutting heads off their compatriots.

The shouts came closer and suddenly I heard my name called from a few yards away and I yelled back in response. Dornach dropped his knife, grabbed his machine gun and pointed it straight at me. He was seething, hissing at me to shut my fucking mouth or he would blow my guts out.

He finished his work and gave me two of the heads to carry in my musette, my punishment for calling out. The third head we left it was unrecognisable.

Down the valley we trudged, the heads dripping blood in my sack and onto my sleeping bag, over my rations, and down my back. Heads are heavy. It took us another three hours to get back to the camp by which time it was dark and the other legionnaires were cooking their sparse rations over campfires.

An officer from the Deuxime Bureau, the French intelligence service, came over to inspect the heads by the lights of a jeep. He confirmed from photographs in his file that they were Arabs serving in the French regular army, who had deserted after killing their French officers and joined the Fellagha rebels.

Five hours earlier, when we had reached the valley bottom the first time, we had been met by the officer of the Deuxime Bureau, and Dornach had been instructed to go back with two volunteers, (as if anyone would actively volunteer for this grisly task), which ended up being Auriemma and myself. We were to bring back the heads of the three Arabs we had shot earlier in the day for identification purposes. Cameras would have been helpful, but we hadnt thought of that. It was dangerous stuff. If any Fellagha were lurking around and found us cutting heads off their mates, they might turn nasty.

The heads matched the photos in the Deuxime officers files. Mission accomplished. Revenge complete.

The Arabs serving in the French armed forces were known as Les Harkis. They fought alongside us many times. They were fine soldiers, but as the war dragged on some began to have their doubts as to which side they should be on.

I was told to get rid of the heads, which I did, carrying them by their blood-soaked hair, one in each hand, and tossing them into the bushes. But the day wasnt over yet. Some Spaniards in the Second Section had made a small cauldron of soup by adding water to the dehydrated soup packets in our rations. They had all eaten and there was still soup left over. Unusual!

They hailed a German legionnaire, named Schreiber, and invited him to fill up his tin mug. Just as he was about to put the soup to his lips, one of the Spaniards reached into the cauldron and pulled out by the hair one of the heads that he had found in the bushes. Schreiber, who was much disliked, froze for a second, turned white, and then started shouting for Ruth, at the same time giving us a display of his innermost feelings. Everyone laughed, except Schreiber. I laughed too; there are times when I still worry about that laughter.

After finishing our bouff at the campfires, we boarded our trucks and drove back to Medina, our advanced base camp. Exhausted after nearly twenty hours of being on patrol, we just about had the energy to take down the tents. Towards midnight we set off in our GMC trucks for another four-hour drive to our new base camp in the Chelia Mountains. My thoughts turned to Christmas, just days away! Jingle bells all the way!