Legionnaire: The Real Life Story of an Englishman in the French Foreign Legion by Simon Murray

Author:Simon Murray [Murray, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330470063
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2011-11-10T23:00:00+00:00

1962

1 January 1962

A holiday in the Legion! There was an assembly of the company in the main tent. Jais reviewed the year and told us what a good lot of guys we were. We drank toasts to ourselves, the Legion, France, de Gaulle, and several other things of greatness. There was much singing of ‘Le Boudin’ and ‘Le Képi blanc’ and so on and then shouts for volunteers to stand on the table and sing.

Then to my embarrassment there were yells for ‘Johnny et Koch’, repeated over and over again like supporters at a football match. Jais called us forward, Koch and myself, and we leapt to the table and sang. Heaven knows what we sang, I don’t think I want to remember but with Koch’s fantastic harmonizing it sounded quite good apparently. Yells and bellowing of applause and shouts for more – amazing what alcohol can do to people’s ears! General toast to us both and more gulping of liquid. Terrific stuff, I really enjoyed it. The day was super relaxed and everybody appeared on good form. Steffen was magnificent with his face covered in black boot polish, a huge beret on his head and sunglasses; he staggered around with a candle in his hand calling himself ‘le Roi de Bougie’. Charlie Chauvin went to bed last night in a stupor and woke up this morning naked. We told him he’d been rogered during his unconsciousness; lots of eyewitnesses as to the best spectacle in years congratulated him on being a part of it. He spent the day going round pouncing on suspects – saying, ‘C’était toi qui m’as encoulé hier?’ He couldn’t find the culprit – there wasn’t one, but he’ll never really know.

2 January 1962

Today we are serious again and business begins anew. We were up with the dawn and tramped the hills all day. Yesterday’s quick breath was a fantasy, just hard concentrated relaxation; a pause in the endless strides we make trekking through the months, the years, in these lonely mountains.

It is six in the evening and we have paused for the night. I am on a corniche with my sleeping-bag laid down on the hard ground inviting sleep much needed. The sun has dropped behind the pinnacled horizon, and the sky glows red in the distance while nearer it is blue and then purple and jet black above and behind. Below me and around me the fires of an army flicker over an enormous area. The valley sweeps down below and up the other side, dark now in the shadow of the falling light but illuminated by all the fires like a procession of burning torches in the night. Little groups cluster round the fires; a shadow leans forward to put on a can of beans or coffee and moves back to disappear again into the blackness. Night falls quickly like a final curtain and muffled voices drone softly into eventual silence. Fires are stamped out – another day has passed over my shoulder and it is time to snuggle down into my sleeping-bag.

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