In the Foreign Legion — Themes and Context

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In Category - Adventure Picaresque Fiction

Authors: Rosen, Erwin, 1876-1923 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2012 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Algeria -- History -- 1830-1962; France. Armée. Légion étrangère; Rosen, Erwin, 1876-1923 Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 74,945

Reading time 326 min

Text sections 8

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #40479

Erwin Rosen's firsthand account of enlisting in the French Foreign Legion after personal despair, blending a prologue of his earlier adventures with statistical analysis of the Legion's composition and a stark portrayal of its harsh discipline and high mortality.

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File: pg40479

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Love had found me out across a continent. I read and read and read again.

That was the turning-point of my life. I broke my fetters, and I fought a hard fight for a new career....

Now the jewel happiness is mine.

In Belfort : Sunrays and fear : Madame and the waiter : The French lieutenant : The enlistment office of the Foreign Legion : Naked humanity : A surgeon with a lost sense of smell : "Officier Allemand" : My new comrades : The lieutenant-colonel : A night of tears 1

Transport of recruits on the railway : What our ticket did for us and France : The patriotic conductor : Marseilles : The gate of the French Colonies : The Colonial hotel : A study in blue and yellow : On the Mediterranean : The ship's cook : The story of the Royal Prince of Prussia at Saida : Oran : Wine and légionnaires : How the deserter reached Spain and why he returned 16

LÉGIONNAIRE NUMBER 17889

French and American bugle-calls : Southward to the city of the Foreign Legion : Sidi-bel-Abbès : The sergeant is not pleased : A final fight with pride : The jokes of the Legion : The wise negro : Bugler Smith : I help a légionnaire to desert : The Eleventh Company : How clothes are sold in the Legion : Number 17889 35

THE FOREIGN LEGION'S BARRACKS

In the company's storeroom : Mr. Smith--American, légionnaire, philosopher : The Legion's neatness : The favourite substantive of the Foreign Legion : What the commander of the Old Guard said at Waterloo : Old and young légionnaires : The canteen : Madame la Cantinière : The regimental feast : Strange men and strange things : The skull : The prisoners' march : The wealth of Monsieur Rassedin, légionnaire : "Rehabilitation" : The Koran chapter of the Stallions 48

THE MILITARY VALUE OF THE FOREIGN REGIMENTS

A day's work as a recruit : Allez, hurry up! : The Legion's etiquette : A morning's run : The "cercle d'enfer" and the lack of soap : The main object of the Legion's training : Splendid marchers : Independent soldiers : Forty kilometres a day : Uniform, accoutrements, baggage, victualling : The training of the légionnaire in detail : The légionnaire as a practical man : Specialties of the Legion : Programme for a week in the Legion : The légionnaire as a labourer 77

"THE LEGION GETS NO PAY"

The money troubles of the Legion : Five centimes wages : The cheapest soldiers of the world : Letters from the Legion : The science of "decorating" : The industries of the légionnaires : What the bugler did for a living : The man with the biscuits : A thief in the night : Summary lynch law : Herr von Rader and la Cantinière : "The Legion works--the Legion gets no pay!" 105

THE CITY OF THE FOREIGN LEGION

The daily exodus to town : Ben Mansur's coffee : The Ghetto : The citizens of Sidi-bel-Abbès and the légionnaires : How the Legion squared accounts with the civilians : A forbidden part of the town : Primitive vice : A dance of a night : The gardens : The last resting-place of the Legion's dead 117

A HUNDRED THOUSAND HEROES--A HUNDRED THOUSAND VICTIMS

The hall of honour : A collection of ruined talents : The battle of Camaron : A skeleton outline of the Legion's history : A hundred thousand victims : A psychological puzzle : True heroes : How they are rewarded : The chances of promotion : The pension system of the Foreign Legion 135

The Legion's war-cry : A night alarm : On the march : The counting of the milestones : Under canvas : The brutality of the marches : The légionnaire and the staff doctor : My fight for an opiate : The "marching pig" : The psychology of the marches : Excited nerves : The song of imprecations 155

THE MADNESS OF THE FOREIGN LEGION

An unpleasant occurrence : The last three coppers : The Roumanian Jew from Berlin : Monsieur Viaïsse : The Legion's atmosphere : The Cafard demoniacs : Bismarck's double : Krügerle's whim : The madness of Légionnaire Bauer : Brutal humour : A tragedy 176

The Odyssey of going on pump : Death in the desert : The Legion's deserters : A disastrous flight in a motor-car : The tragic fate of an Austrian engineer : In the Ghetto of Sidi-bel-Abbès : The business part of desertion : Oran and Algiers : The Consulate as a trap : The financial side of desertion : One hundred kilometres of suffering : Hamburg steamers : Self-mutilation : Shamming : In the Suez Canal : Morocco, the wonder-land 197

A CHAPTER ON PUNISHMENTS

The return of the poumpistes : The scale of punishments in the Legion : Of spiteful non-commissioned officers : The Legion's axiom : Sad history of Little Jean : The punishment machine : Lost years : A légionnaire's earnings in five years--francs, 127.75 : The prisons in the Foreign Legion : Pestilential atmosphere : Human sardines : The general cells : Life in the prison : On sentry duty among the prisoners 226

A variety of human vices : The red wine of Algeria : Shum-Shum : If there were no wine 248

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The prologue of In the Foreign Legion establishes a confessional frame: the narrator recounts his journey from a German student to a war correspondent, then to a man who 'lost the jewel happiness' and enlisted to forget. This personal history, sketched in brisk, episodic sentences, sets up the Legion as a place of deliberate oblivion. The tone shifts markedly in the second excerpt, where the narrator adopts a statistical, almost sociological voice, analyzing the Legion's size, nationalities, and death rates. He cites figures from Beauvoir and estimates over a hundred thousand men have served, while noting that the Legion's exact strength is deliberately obscured. This juxtaposition of intimate memoir and detached analysis is the book's defining structural feature.

A Confessional Prologue

The opening pages are not a conventional preface but a compressed autobiography. The narrator describes himself as a 'boy in disgrace' sent to America, where he worked on a Texas farm, became a journalist, and covered wars in Cuba and Central America. The prose is rapid and declarative: 'Things came to a climax. And the very next "Schnelldampfer" had amongst its passengers a boy in disgrace.' The turning point is a lost love—'the jewel happiness'—which drives him to enlist. He states plainly: 'That man was I.' This direct address, rare in adventure narratives, signals that the book will blend personal testimony with the collective experience of the Legion. Readers should note how the prologue's romantic, almost novelistic tone contrasts with the factual reporting that follows.

The Legion's Composition and Statistics

After the prologue, the narrator pivots to a data-driven analysis. He reports that in 1895 a single company at Sidi-bel-Abbès held 4,864 men, and provides a breakdown by nationality: Alsatians 45%, Germans 12%, Swiss 8%, and so on. He emphasizes the high death rate from fever and battle, and frequent desertions, concluding that 'a good deal over a hundred thousand men have served under the Legion's flag.' He is careful to note his figures are approximate. This section reads like a journalist's investigation, with phrases such as 'I have been through all the French books on the Legion to try and find the exact figure, but without success.' The tone is analytical, not sensational, grounding the narrative in verifiable detail.

Discipline, Discontent, and the Riddle of Service

The narrator describes the Legion's 'iron discipline' that punishes trivial offences harshly, and notes that pay is insufficient even for cleaning supplies. He calls the Legion 'a hotbed of seething discontent,' where the main topic of conversation is 'how and when to desert.' Yet he marvels that these discontented men 'always forgot their grievances when they came under fire.' He identifies a 'riddle' in why men sell their lives for a foreign country with low wages. A minority enlist to seek death, but for most, 'fighting has always been a delight.' This paradox—hatred of the Legion yet eagerness for battle—is presented without resolution, inviting readers to consider the psychological forces at work.

The Légionnaire's Voice and the Reader's Position

Throughout the excerpts, the narrator oscillates between first-person confession and third-person analysis. He speaks of 'I' in the prologue, then shifts to 'the légionnaire' and 'these thousands of desperate men.' This dual perspective allows him to be both participant and observer. He enriches the text with 'strange curses' and the Legion's own language, though the excerpts do not reproduce them. Readers should attend to how the narrator positions himself: he is one of the hundred thousand, yet he steps back to calculate their numbers. This tension between immersion and detachment shapes the reading experience, making the book as much a meditation on memory and identity as a war memoir.

The excerpts suggest that In the Foreign Legion is best read as a layered document: the prologue provides emotional context, the statistical sections offer a macro view, and the later narrative presumably returns to personal experience. Readers may find it useful to track how the narrator's voice shifts between these registers, and to consider how the statistical claims—such as the 45% Alsatian figure—color the depiction of the Legion as a multinational, desperate brotherhood. The book does not promise a conventional plot but an inquiry into why men choose such a life.

Sometimes a place holds more stories than its walls admit. That book about the Legion stayed with me the same way Fort Jefferson National Monument, Florida — Themes and Context did—both are remote, stark, and strangely human. Reading it, I kept thinking how isolation shapes people, or maybe just reveals them. It’s a quiet kind of lingering, not dramatic, but present.