The Pittsburgh Press (April 5, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria –
The home of the Legion was a great and pleasant surprise to me. I expected it to be a slovenly tent-camp out in an almost unbelievable desert, with dirty cutthroat troops and brutal-looking officers.
Everything is just the opposite. The headquarters is in a city of 60,000 people, with fine sidewalk cafés and paved streets and modern apartment houses. It is not in the desert at all, but in rich farming country.
The Legion buildings form a sort of academy, right in the heart of the city. There are four-storied permanent barracks, and fine parks inside the walls, with many flowers and extraordinarily clean grounds and buildings. There are museums, and beautiful statues and monuments about the grounds. There are nice homes for officers and noncoms and their families.
Officers are uniformed as though by Bond St., and most of them might be American businessmen or professors as far as their looks are concerned. At Saint-Cyr, the West Point of France, the top man in each class has the privilege of choosing where he shall serve. And it is a tradition that he always chooses the Foreign Legion. So, the Legion is led by career men.
Wooden hand is prize memento
Legionnaires tell me that many of the officers, though strict, are almost fatherly in their attitude toward the soldiers. And certainly, the ones I met are, without exception, gentlemen in anybody’s country.
The French Foreign Legion was created in 1831. So, it has more than a century of tradition behind it. The Legion is extremely proud of the two museums here in headquarters which depict its history. On the museum’s tiled floors there are beautiful brown-and-white Algerian rugs, somewhat similar to our own Navajo Indian rugs. Around the walls are case after case of Legion mementos – old swords, flags, pieces of uniform, guns, bullets, decorations.
The walls are hung with hundreds of pictures of Legion members who have died gloriously. Life-sized wax figures standing around the walls of one room show the dozen or so types of uniform worn by the Legion over the years.
The Legion’s most prized memento is, of all things, a wooden hand. In 1854, the Legion fought in the Russian Crimea, and in that campaign a Capt. Danjou had one hand shot off. So, he had a wooden hand made to replace it. The hand is of fine workmanship, the fingers are all jointed, and the thing looks almost lifelike.
Legion abandoning its cavalry
Well, the Legion went to Mexico during Maximilian’s reign, and there was fought the most memorable battle in its history. A tiny party of 115 Legionnaires barricaded themselves in a hacienda at the town of Camerone, and battled 4,000 Mexicans. All but three of the Legionnaires were killed. It was much like our own Alamo. Capt. Danjou with the wooden hand was killed in this battle. Later his hand was found, and sent back to Sidi Bel Abbès.
The battle was fought April 30, 1863. The Legion observes April 30 each year with great parades and reviews. Capt. Danjou’s hand is brought out in its glass case and stands there as a symbol of what the Legion means.
It all seems a little gruesome, but the Legion feels deeply about it.
The Legion, though hard, is just as sentimental as any other organization. You can see it especially right now among their cavalrymen. As we came unexpectedly into the stables, we caught a glimpse of one young soldier kissing his horse’s forehead as he finished currying it. He was a tough-looking boy who didn’t seem capable of tenderness or sentiment. Something will be lost when the Legion’s cavalrymen start riding iron horses.