Fortress El Zeeb by Gordon Landsborough

Author:Gordon Landsborough [Landsborough, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2018-05-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight – Their Commander Was Drunk

Again it was le Legionnaire Putôt, the Paralysed One, who roused the garrison with a warning cry half an hour later. He was at a post on the south wall, just beyond the long low barrack room.

In that time much had happened. Sergeant Glik had taken it upon himself to order the tricolour to be raised on high again. It was significant that he did so without first seeking the approval of the commanding officer; but the new commander was in a noisy state of drunkenness, and was an active incitement to undisciplined conduct.

Not that Glik the Latvian considered it in any way an act of indiscipline. To him, a crude-thinking soldier, it was wrong that with the enemy at the gate, the flag should be anywhere but at the masthead; and if the commander was too drunk to realise it, why, he, Sergeant Wilhelm Glik, next in order of rank, would see that it was put there. And he did.

Yet Sergeant Wilhelm Glik the Latvian would never have presumed to such an act if Le Gros had been the commanding officer and drunk into the bargain. Drunk or not, Le Gros was a man, a gentleman, and an officer of France. L’Irrité, he of the twitching white and worried eyes, was none of these.

So it was that with this simple act of insubordination the big sergeant did, in effect, take control over the defences of the fortress.

L’Irrité had forgotten to give orders about the disposal of the late lieutenant, who was known for good reason generally as Le Gros. Glik of the steel mouth had him boxed up, then ceremoniously buried him in a corner of the fort . . . It would have been inviting trouble to have had him taken and buried outside alongside Captain Paon.

Then he ordered a machine-gun — this weapon new, in those days, to the Foreign Legion — to be posted atop of the tower, and that caused trouble.

There had always been private debate on the value of a gun up there. Captain Paon always had one mounted on this, the highest point, in time of attack; Le Gros had been of the opinion that it was a waste of a good weapon, because it could only cover that part of the desert well beyond the fortress walls. Far better to have it over, say, the main gate, was his argument.

From a military point of view, Le Gros was undoubtedly correct, and the old-fashioned Paon had been in considerable error. But Glik the Latvian, a soldier for years under Paon, understood not the subtleties of the matter and because Captain Paon had a liking for a machine gun up in that apparently commanding position, why, he too decided it must be better there. And in the end it turned out well that he followed the captain’s theory . . .

Sergeant Etienne Phare saw the machine gun being hoisted up the steel ladder, and he knew that their new, if drunk, commanding officer had not ordered it to be taken up there.

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