Pause. The tormented lungs worked in short hard gasps. It was impossible to stand still. One was obliged to walk up and down quickly in order to gradually quieten the pumping lungs.
The body had to expend all the strength it could in this morning drill. Swedish gymnastics, "le boxe," formed the alternative to this doubling. The training progressed very quickly. All the recruits had served in some of the world's armies, and the first rudiments of military wisdom had been drilled into them long ago. Three-quarters of my fellow-recruits were Germans, who did not understand any French, and to whom the French commands were Greek. Continual repetition was here necessary.
"A gauche--gauche means left about," explained the corporal, and repeated it ten times, until "gauche" had been mastered. The most necessary French expressions were very quickly learnt by this most natural of all methods.
A hot sun burned down on us. Ten times during a single forenoon every stitch of clothes on one's body was soaked with perspiration, and ten times it dried again. In the pauses one stood about, smoking hand-twisted cigarettes, the inevitable cigarette of the Legion smoked in every free moment, and by which the pause is measured according to the old custom of the Legion? The pause was the duration of a cigarette. When the corporal had finished smoking his cigarette he slowly walked to a distance of about one or two hundred metres and lifted his hand:
That meant we were to run up to him and recommence work.
"I've never run so d----d fast in all my life," was Herr von Rader's continual lament. "I've an idea the suckers here are mistaking me for an express train!"
At 11 A.M. we marched back to barracks. Knapsack and cartridge-belt were thrown into the "paquetage," and dead tired we threw ourselves upon our beds. But after a few short minutes, the soup signal rang out from the barrack-yard.
"A la soupe, légionnaires, à la soupe, soupe, soupe."
"Soupe ..." every one yelled. Woe if the orderly of the room did not rush to the kitchen, and woe if he did not reappear with the soup-kettle in the twinkling of an eye! In everything connected with food a genuine légionnaire stands no nonsense--he has too often suffered starvation on marches and campaigns not to appreciate "la gamelle."