Warriors

My Name Is Legion

The mission is sacred. You will see it through to the end at any price.

—Part of the French Foreign Legion’s Code of Honor

Syria

June 20, 1941

“The Colonel found someone to carve a wooden hand.”

Hearing Durado’s voice behind him, Kline didn’t turn. He kept his gaze focused between the two boulders that protected him from sniper fire. Propped against a rocky slope, he stared toward the yellow buildings in the distance.

“Wooden hand?” The reference didn’t puzzle Kline, but the timing did. “This isn’t April.”

“I guess the Colonel figures we need a reminder,” Durado said.

“Considering what’ll happen tomorrow, he’s probably right.”

“The ceremony’s at fifteen hundred hours.”

“Can’t go,” Kline said. “I’m on duty here till dark.”

“There’ll be a second ceremony. The sergeant told me to come back later and take your place so you can attend.”

Kline nodded his thanks. “Reminds me of when I was a kid and my family went to church. The Colonel’s become our preacher.”

“See anything out there?” Durado asked.

“Nothing that moves—except the heat haze.”

“Tomorrow will be different.”

Kline heard the scrape of rocks under combat boots as Durado walked away. A torn blanket was over him. His uniform was minimal—tan shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, faded by the desert sun. His headgear was the Legion’s famed kepi blanc, a white cap with a flat, round top and black visor. It too was badly faded by the sun. A flap at the back covered his neck and ears, but for further protection, Kline relied on the blanket to shield his bare legs and arms and keep the rocks on each side from absorbing so much heat that they burned him.

His bolt-action MAS 36 rifle was next to him, ready to be sighted and fired if a sniper showed himself. Of course, that would reveal Kline’s position, attracting enemy bullets, forcing him to find a new vantage point. Given that he’d smoothed the ground and made this emplacement as comfortable as possible, he preferred to hold his fire until tomorrow.

Enemy bullets? Those words had automatically come to mind, but under the circumstances, they troubled him.

Yes, pulling the trigger could wait until tomorrow.

Kline wasn’t his real name. Seven years earlier, in 1934, he’d arrived at the Old Fort in the Vincennes area of Paris, where he’d volunteered to join the French Foreign Legion, so-called because the unit was the only way foreigners could enlist in the French army.

“American,” a sergeant had sniffed.

Kline had received a meal of coffee, bread, and watery bean soup. In a crowded barracks, he slept on a straw-filled mattress at the top of a three-tiered metal bunk. Two days later, he and twenty other newcomers, mostly Spaniards, Italians, and Greeks, with one Irishman, were transported via train south to Marseilles. They were herded into the foul-smelling lower hold of a ship, where they vomited for two days during a rough voyage across the Mediterranean to Algeria. At last, trucks took them along a dusty, jolting road to the Legion’s headquarters at the remote desert town of Sidi Bel Abbès. The heat was overwhelming.

There, Kline’s interrogation had started. Although the Legion had a reputation for attracting criminals on the run from the law, in reality it understood the difficulty of making disciplined soldiers out of them and didn’t knowingly accept the worst offenders. As a consequence, each candidate was questioned in detail, his background investigated as thoroughly as possible. Many volunteers, while not criminals, had reached a dead end in their lives and wanted a new start, along with the chance to become French citizens. If the Legion accepted them, they were allowed to choose a new name and received new identities.

Certainly, Kline had reached a dead end. Before arriving in France and volunteering for the Legion, he’d lived in the United States, in Springfield, Illinois, where the Great Depression had taken away his factory job and kept him from supporting his wife and infant daughter. He’d made bad friends and acted as the lookout for a bank robbery in which a guard was killed and the only cash taken was $24.95. During the month he’d spent eluding the police, his daughter had died from whooping cough. His grief-crazed wife had slit her wrists, bleeding to death. The single thing that had kept Kline from doing the same was his determination to punish himself, and that goal had finally prompted him to do the most extreme thing he could imagine. Responding to an article in a newspaper that he happened to find on a street, he ended his anguished wandering by working as a coal shoveler on a ship that took him to Le Havre in France, from where he walked all the way to Paris and enlisted in the Legion.

According to the newspaper article, no way of life could be more arduous, and Kline was pleased to discover that the article understated the facts. Managing to hide his criminal past, he endured a seemingly endless indoctrination of weapons exercises, hand-to-hand combat drills, forced marches, and other tests of endurance that gave him satisfaction because of the pain they caused. In the end, when he received the certificate that formally admitted him to the Legion, he felt that he had indeed made a new start. Never forgiving himself or the world or God for the loss of his family, he felt an unexpected deep kinship with a group that had “Living by Chance” as part of its credo.

The Irishman called himself Rourke. Because he and Kline were the only men who spoke English in their section of volunteers, they became friends during their long months of training. Like everyone else in the Legion, Rourke referred only vaguely to his past, but his skill with rifles and explosives made Kline suspect that he’d belonged to the Irish Republican Army, that he’d killed British soldiers in an effort to make the British leave his country, and that he’d sought refuge in the Legion after the British Army had vowed to use all its resources to hunt him down.

“I don’t suppose you’re a Roman Catholic,” Rourke said one night after they completed a fifty-mile march in punishing heat. His upward-tilted accent sounded melodic, despite his pain as they bandaged the blisters on their feet.

“No, I’m a Baptist,” Kline answered, then corrected himself. “At least, that’s how I was raised. I don’t go to church anymore.”

“I didn’t see many Baptists in Ireland,” Rourke joked. “Do you know your Bible?”

“My father read from it out loud every night.”

“ ‘My name is legion,’ ” Rourke quoted.

“ ‘For we are many,’ ” Kline responded. “The gospel according to Mark. A possessed man says that to Jesus, trying to explain how many demons are in him. . . . Legion.” The word made Kline finally understand where Rourke was taking the conversation. “You’re comparing us to devils?”

“After putting us through that march, the sergeant qualifies as one.” Kline couldn’t help chuckling.

“For certain, the sergeant wants the enemy to think we’re devils,” Rourke said. “That’s what the Mexican soldiers called the legionnaires after the battle at Camerone, isn’t it?”

“Yes. ‘These are not men. They’re demons.’ ”

“You have a good memory.”

“I wish I didn’t.”

“No more than I.” Rourke’s normally mischievous eyes looked dull. His freckles were covered with dust. “Anyway, after a march like that, we might as well be devils.”

“How do you figure?”

Wiping blood from his feet, Rourke somehow made what he said next sound like another joke. “We understand what it feels like to be in hell.”

Rourke was gone now.

Kline’s years in the Legion had taught him to banish weak emotions. Nonetheless, the loss of his friend made him grieve. As he stared between the boulders toward the seemingly abandoned sandstone buildings, he thought about the many conversations he and Rourke had shared. In 1940, as Germany increasingly threatened Europe, they’d fought side-by-side in the concrete fortifications of the Maginot Line that France had built along its border with Germany. Their unit endured relentless assaults from machine guns, tanks, and dive-bombers, counterattacking whenever the Germans showed the slightest sign of weakness.

The casualties were massive. Still, Kline, Rourke, and their fellow legionnaires continued fighting. When the officer in charge of a regular French unit insisted that no one had a chance and that surrender to the Germans was the only reasonable choice, the Legion commander had shot him to death. A second French officer tried to retaliate, and this time, it was Kline who did the shooting, defending his commander, whose back was turned. Every legionnaire understood. From their first day of training, absolutes were drilled into them, and one of them was, Never surrender your arms.

“What do Baptists believe?” Rourke asked the night after another battle. They were cleaning their rifles.

“God punishes us for our sins,” Kline answered.

“What can you do to be saved?”

“Nothing. It all depends on Christ’s mercy.”

“Mercy?” Rourke’s thin face tightened as he considered the word. “Seen much of that?”

“No.”

“Me, neither,” Rourke said.

“What do Catholics believe about being saved?” Kline asked.

“We say we’re sorry for our sins and do penance to prove we mean it.” Thinking of his wife and daughter, of how he’d left them alone while he’d helped in the bank robbery, of how his wife had committed suicide after his daughter had died, Kline asked, “But what if your sin’s so bad that you can’t possibly make up for it?”

“I ask myself that a lot. I was an altar boy. I almost went into the seminary. But maybe I’m in the wrong religion. You say God punishes us for our sins and our only hope is to depend on His mercy? Makes sense to me.”

That was when Kline decided that Rourke hadn’t joined the Legion to avoid being hunted by the British Army. No, he was in the Legion because, like Kline, he’d done something horribly wrong and was punishing himself.

Kline missed his friend. Staring between the boulders, he sought distraction from his regrets by reaching for his canteen under the blanket that protected him from the sun. He unscrewed it and withdrew his gaze from the ancient sandstone buildings only long enough to drink the metallic-tasting, warm water.

He focused again on the target. Men with rifles were over there, watching this ridge. Of that, he had no doubt. There would be a battle tomorrow. Of that, he had no doubt, either.

Behind him, footsteps approached, dislodging rocks.

Durado’s voice said, “The first ceremony’s over. I’ll take your place.”

“Everything’s quiet,” Kline reported.

“It won’t be tomorrow. The captain says we’re definitely going in.”

Kline pulled the blanket off him, feeling the harsh rays of the sun on his now-exposed arms and legs. Careful to stay low, he made his way along the bottom of the rocky slope. After passing other sentry emplacements, he reached the main part of camp, where half the Thirteenth Demi-Brigade was in formation next to its tents.

The air was blindingly bright as the Colonel stepped onto a boulder, facing them. His name was Amilakvari. He was a Russian who’d escaped the Communist revolution when he was eleven and joined the Legion when he was twenty. Now in his mid-thirties, he looked gaunt and sinewy after months of desert combat. Nonetheless, he wore a full-dress uniform.

Despite his Russian background, the Colonel addressed the legionnaires in French, their common language, even though privately most still spoke their native language and formed friendships on the basis of it, as Kline had done with Rourke. Solemn, the Colonel raised a hand, but the hand didn’t belong to him. It had been carved from a block of wood, the palm and the fingers amazingly lifelike.

Neither Kline nor anyone else needed to be told that it was supposed to be a replica of the wooden hand of the Legion’s greatest hero, Captain Jean Danjou. All of them knew by heart the events that the colonel was about to describe, and every battle-hardened one of them also knew that, before the ceremony was completed, tears would stream down his face.

Camarón, Mexico. The Legion called it Camerone.

As many times as Kline had heard the story, with each telling it became more powerful. Listening to the Colonel recite it, Kline sensed he was there, feeling the cool night air as the patrol set out at 1 A.M. on April 30, 1863.

They were on foot: sixty-two soldiers, three officers, and Captain Danjou, a decorated combat veteran with a gallant-looking goatee and mustache. Few understood why they were in Mexico, something to do with a pact between Napoléon III of France and Emperor Maximilian of Austria, a scheme to invade Mexico while the United States was distracted by its Civil War. But legionnaires were indifferent to politics. All they cared about was completing any mission they were assigned.

The French force had arrived at the port of Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico, where they immediately discovered an enemy as lethal as the Mexican soldiers and furious civilians who resisted them. The ravages of yellow fever killed a third of them and forced them to move their headquarters sixty miles inland to the elevated town of Córdoba, where they hoped the air would be less contaminated. The shift in location meant that the supply route between Veracruz and Córdoba needed to be kept open, and the responsibility for doing that fell to patrols like the one Captain Danjou commanded.

Kline imagined the long night of walking along the remote, barren road. At dawn, the legionnaires were allowed to stop for breakfast, but as they searched for wood to build cook fires, a sentry pointed to the west.

“Mexican cavalry!”

The dust raised by the approaching horses made it difficult to count the number of riders, but this much was clear—there were hundreds and hundreds of them.

“Form a square!” Danjou ordered.

The men assembled in rows that faced each direction. The first row knelt while the second stood, their rifles aimed over the heads of the men kneeling in front.

The Mexican cavalry charged. As one, the legionnaires in the first row fired, breaking the attack. While they reloaded, the men behind them aimed, ready to fire if ordered.

Knowing that he’d gained only a little time, Danjou studied the open area around him, in search of cover. To the east, a ruined hacienda attracted his attention. He urged his men toward it, but again, the Mexicans charged, and again, the legionnaires fired, their fusillade dispersing the attack.

“Keep moving!” Danjou yelled.

Nearing the ruins, he peered over his shoulder and saw foot soldiers joining the Mexican cavalry. Out of breath, he and his patrol raced into a rubble-littered courtyard.

“Close the gates! Barricade them!”

Danjou assessed where they were. The hacienda had dilapidated farm buildings arranged in a fifty-yard square. A stone wall enclosed it. In places, the barrier was ten feet high, but at other spots, it had collapsed, forming a chest-high heap of stones.

“Spread out! Take cover!”

A sentry scurried up a ladder to the top of a stable and reported the dust of more horsemen and infantry arriving.

“I see sombreros in every direction!”

“How many?” Danjou yelled.

“At least two thousand.”

Danjou quickly calculated the ratio: thirty to one.

“There’ll soon be a lot less of them!” he shouted to his men.

He got the laugh that he’d hoped for. But his billowy red pants and dark blue jacket were soaked with sweat from the urgent retreat toward the hacienda. In contrast, his mouth was dry, and he knew that, as the day grew hotter, his men would be desperate for water.

A quick search of the ruins revealed that there wasn’t any, however. But that wasn’t the case with the Mexicans. A nearby stream provided all the water the enemy could want. Danjou’s lips felt drier at the thought of it.

“A rider’s coming!” the sentry yelled. “He’s got a white flag!”

Danjou climbed the ladder to the top of the stable. The movement was awkward for him. He had only one intact hand. Years earlier, his left one had been blown off by a musket. Undaunted, he’d commissioned a carver to create an ornate wooden replacement. Its lacquer was flesh-colored. Its fingers had hinges that made them flexible. It had a black cuff into which he inserted the stump of his wrist. By moving the stump against leather strips inside the cuff, he had taught himself to make the wooden fingers move.

Keeping that artificial hand out of sight behind his back, lest it be interpreted as a weakness, Danjou peered down at a Mexican officer who rode to him. The many languages of Danjou’s legionnaires had forced him to become multilingual.

“You’re outnumbered,” the Mexican officer said. “You don’t have water. You’ll soon run out of food. Surrender. You’ll be treated fairly.”

“No,” Danjou said.

“But to stay is to die.”

“We won’t lay down our arms,” Danjou emphasized.

“This is foolishness.”

“Try to attack us, and you’ll learn how foolish that is.”

Enraged, the Mexican officer rode away.

Danjou descended the ladder as quickly as he could. Even though he shouted encouragement to his men, he was troubled that the hacienda was situated in low terrain. The elevated ground beyond it allowed enemy riflemen to shoot down past the walls and into the compound.

Mexican snipers opened fire, providing cover for another cavalry charge. The dust the horses raised provided cover for advancing infantry. Bullets walloped through the wood of the buildings and shattered chunks of stone from the walls. But despite the unrelenting barrage, the disciplined volleys from the legionnaires repelled attack after attack.

By 11 A.M., the heat of the sun was crushing. The barrels of their rifles became too hot to touch. Twelve legionnaires were dead.

Danjou urged the remainder to keep fighting. Gesturing with his wooden hand, he rushed from group to group and personally made each man know that he counted on him. As he crossed the courtyard to help defend a wall, he lurched back, struck in the chest by a sniper’s bullet.

A legionnaire who ran to help him heard him murmur with his last anguished breath, “Never give up.”

Danjou’s second-in-command took charge, shouting to the men, making them swear to fight harder in Danjou’s honor. “We may die, but we’ll never surrender!”

With two thousand Mexicans shooting, the enormous number of bullets hitting the compound—perhaps as many as eight thousand per minute—would have felt overwhelming, like the modern equivalent of being strafed by numerous machine guns. The noise alone would have been agony. Buildings crumbled. Gun smoke filled the air.

The farmhouse caught fire, perhaps ignited by muzzle flashes. Smoke from it further hampered vision and made the legionnaires struggle to breathe. But they kept shooting, repelling more attacks, ignoring more pleas to surrender.

By four in the afternoon, only twelve legionnaires remained alive. By 6 P.M., the number of men able to fight had been reduced to five. As the Mexicans burst into the compound, the handful of survivors fired their last remaining ammunition, then attacked with fixed bayonets, rushing through the smoke, stabbing and clubbing.

A private was shot nineteen times while he tried to shield his lieutenant. Two others were hit and fell, but one struggled to his feet and joined his last two comrades. They stood back to back, thrusting with their bayonets.

The Mexican officer, who’d spoken to Danjou earlier, had never seen fighting like it.

“Stop!” he ordered his men.

He spun toward the survivors. “For God’s sake, this is pointless. Surrender.”

“We won’t give up our weapons,” a wounded legionnaire insisted.

“Your weapons? Are you trying to negotiate with me?” the Mexican asked in amazement.

The bleeding legionnaire wavered, trying not to fall. “We might be your prisoners, but we won’t give up our weapons.”

The Mexican gaped. “You don’t have any ammunition. Your rifles are almost useless anyhow. Keep the damned things.”

“And you need to allow us to take care of our wounded.”

Astonished by their audacity, the Mexican officer grabbed the sinking legionnaire and said, “To men like you, I can’t refuse anything.”

Kline stood under the stark Syrian sun, listening to his commander describe the battle at Camerone.

Kline had heard the details many times, but with each telling, they gained more power. In his imagination, he smelled the blood, heard the buzzing of the flies on the corpses, and tasted the bitter smoke from the gunpowder and the burning buildings. The screams of the dying seemed to echo around him. He felt his eyes mist with emotion and took for granted that the men around him felt the same.

All the while, the Colonel held up the wooden hand, a replica of Danjou’s wooden hand, which had been recovered after the long-ago battle. The original hand was now protected in a glass case at Legion headquarters. Each year on April 30, the anniversary of the battle, the hand was carried around a crowded assembly room, allowing everyone to gaze at the Legion’s most precious relic. On that same day, a similar memorial—minus the hand—occurred at every Legion base around the world. It was the most important ritual in the Legion’s year.

But no one had ever arranged for a replica of Danjou’s hand to be carved. No one had ever gone this far to imitate the ceremony as it took place each year at Legion headquarters. Moreover, this wasn’t April 30. Given what was scheduled to happen the next morning, Kline understood that the wrong date reinforced how determined the Colonel was to remind him and his fellow legionnaires of their heritage.

Standing on the boulder, holding the wooden hand above his head, the Colonel spoke so forcefully that no one could fail to hear.

“Each of the sixty-six legionnaires at that battle carried sixty rounds of ammunition. Every round was used. That means they fired thirty-eight hundred rounds. Despite the heat and thirst and dust and smoke, they killed almost four hundred of the enemy. Think of it—one out of every ten bullets found its mark. Astonishing, given the circumstances. Those legionnaires were offered repeated opportunities to surrender. At any time, they could have abandoned their mission, but they refused to dishonor the legion or themselves.

“Tomorrow, remember those heroes. Tomorrow, you will be heroes. No legionnaire has ever encountered what all of you will face in the morning. We never walk away from a mission. We never fail to honor our obligations. What is our motto?”

“The Legion Is Our Country!” Kline and everybody else automatically shouted.

“I can’t hear you!”

“The Legion Is Our Country!”

“What is our second motto?”

“Honor and Nobility!”

“Yes! Never forget that! Never forget Camerone! Never disgrace the Legion! Never fail to do your duty!”

Brooding about the bleak choice he would face the next morning, Kline returned along the bottom of the rocky slope. Barely noticing the numerous sentries along the way, he came to where Durado lay under the blanket and peered between the two boulders toward the outskirts of Damascus.

“You’re back already? Just when I was getting comfortable,” Durado said.

Kline half smiled. The humor reminded him of the jokes that Rourke had used to make.

Heat radiated off the rocks.

“Do you think the Colonel’s speech made a difference?” Durado squirmed to the bottom of the slope.

“We won’t know until tomorrow,” Kline answered, taking his place between the boulders. “No legionnaire’s ever been forced into this situation before.”

“Well, we do what we need to,” Durado said, starting to walk away.

“Yes, God punishes us for our sins,” Kline murmured.

Durado stopped and turned. “What? I didn’t quite hear what you said.”

“Just talking to myself.”

“I thought you said something about God.”

“Did you ever realize that it didn’t need to happen?” Kline asked.

“Realize that what didn’t need to happen?”

“Camerone. The legionnaires were out of water. They had almost no food. Their ammunition was limited. In that heat, after three days without anything to drink, they’d have been unconscious or worse. All the Mexicans needed to do was wait.”

“Maybe they were afraid reinforcements would arrive before then,” Durado suggested.

“But why would the Mexicans have been afraid?” Kline asked. “There were so many of them that a rescue column wouldn’t have had a chance. If they’d set it up right and made it seem that only a couple of hundred Mexicans surrounded the hacienda, they could have lured the reinforcements into an ambush.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Just what I said—sometimes, battles don’t need to happen.”

“Like tomorrow’s?” Durado asked.

Kline pointed toward the buildings. “Maybe they’ll surrender.”

“Or maybe they hope we’ll surrender. Is that going to happen?”

“Of course not.” Kline quoted from the Legion’s Code of Honor, which all recruits were required to memorize at the start of their training.

“ ‘Never surrender your arms.’ “

“And they won’t do it, either,” Durado said.

“But in the end, France was forced to leave Mexico. Camerone made no difference,” Kline told him.

“Be careful. You’d better not let the Colonel hear you talking this way.”

“Maybe tomorrow’s battle won’t make a difference, either.”

“Thinking isn’t our business.” Now it was Durado’s turn to quote from the Legion’s Code of Honor. “ ‘The mission is sacred. You will see it through to the end, at any price.’ “

“ ‘At any price.’ ” Kline exhaled. “You’re absolutely right. I’m not paid to think. Tomorrow, I’ll fight as hard as you.”

“God punishes us for our sins? Is that what you said earlier?” Durado asked. “The things I’ve seen in this war prove He doesn’t exist. Otherwise, they never would have been allowed to happen.”

“Unless this battle tomorrow is God’s way of paying us back.”

“For our sins?”

“For the things we’d give anything to forget.”

“In that case, God help us.” Again, the irony in Durado’s voice reminded Kline of Rourke.

Kline lay under the blanket, staring across the rocky hill toward the buildings that seemed to waver in the heat. He knew that soldiers just like him watched from their own hiding places over there. With their weapons beside them, they brooded behind the city’s walls, parapets, turrets, and gates, knowing that soon, probably the next morning, the battle would begin.

Kline was struck by how different things had been a year earlier. When the Germans had broken through the concrete battlements of the Maginot Line and invaded France, the only tactic that had made sense was for him and Rourke and the rest of the legionnaires to fight a retreating action, trying to slow the German advance as much as possible.

And we still might have beaten them, Kline thought, if the Germans hadn’t realized the mistake they were about to make.

The risk to the invading army had been that a rush to occupy all of France would overextend their supply lines, leaving them vulnerable to devastating hit-and-run attacks by French civilians and the remainder of the French military. Without supplies, the Germans would have been helpless. To prevent that from happening, they’d developed the brilliant strategy of consolidating their forces in the northern and western parts of the country, an area that included Paris. Meanwhile, their massive threatening presence had convinced the rest of France that total occupation was only a matter of time, that it was better to capitulate and negotiate for favorable terms.

So the bastards in the south became collaborators, Kline thought.

The deal was that the southern two-fifths of France would remain free of German soldiers. Meanwhile, France would form a new government based in the community of Vichy in the central part of the country. In theory, this government was neutral to Germany, but in reality, the Vichy regime was so eager to placate the Germans that they were more than happy to hand over Jews or any other “undesirables” that the Germans wanted.

The rest of France might as well have been invaded. The result was the same, Kline thought. Maybe they could justify collaborating if they’d made an effort to resist. But as it was, they just surrendered and acted like the enemy.

He painfully remembered the last time he’d seen Rourke. Along with a remnant of their legionnaire unit, they’d been hiding in an abandoned French barn, waiting for nightfall when they could slip out and elude patrols by the Vichy militia.

Their radioman picked up a wireless signal that he quickly reported. “The Thirteenth Demi-Brigade shipped back from fighting in Norway.”

All the men hiding in the barn sat up from the straw they lay on. The context didn’t need to be explained—the Legion had been fighting on two fronts, and the Thirteenth’s objective had been Norway. But like the Legion’s unit on the Maginot Line, the Thirteenth had been forced to withdraw.

“They landed at Brest,” the radioman continued.

The men nodded, well aware that Brest was the westernmost port in France.

“When they realized France had capitulated and that the Germans were about to occupy the port, they hurried back on the ships and headed toward England.”

“So they’re going to help the Allies try to retake France?” Kline asked.

“Yes,” the radioman said. “But not all of them went to England.”

Rourke straightened. “What do you mean?”

“Some decided to go back to headquarters in Algeria.”

The legionnaires remained silent for a moment, analyzing the significance of this information. Another reason Germany had resisted invading all of France was that the move would have made enemies of Algeria and Morocco: French territories in North Africa. But by persuading France to form the Vichy government, a supposedly neutral regime that was in effect a puppet government, Germany gained indirect control of those French territories and prevented the legionnaires stationed there from helping England.

“They’re going to fight against the Brits?” Kline asked in shock.

“It’s more like they’re hoping Algeria will remain neutral. That way, they’ll be able to sit out the rest of the war without fighting anybody,” the radioman explained.

“Lots of damned luck to them,” someone said.

“The message came from England,” the radioman continued. “From Brigadier General de Gaulle.”

“Who’s he?”

“I never heard of him, either,” the radioman continued. “But apparently he’s in charge of something called the Free French Forces, and that includes the legionnaires who went to England. He wants every French soldier to get there somehow and regroup. The fight’s not over.”

“Thank God, somebody’s got some balls,” another legionnaire said. “I guess we know which way we’re going tonight. South to the coast. We’ll get our hands on a boat and head toward England.”

Most of the men readily agreed. They’d been born and raised in Spain, Portugal, Greece, or any number of other countries, but all were now French citizens and felt loyal to the nation they’d been fighting to protect.

Kline couldn’t help noticing that some were pensively quiet, however. Evidently, the previous year of fighting made the idea of sitting out the war in Algeria appealing.

Kline also couldn’t help noticing that Rourke was one of the men who remained quiet.

At dark, as the group sneaked from the barn, Kline motioned for Rourke to wait.

“I get the feeling you’re not going to England with us,” he said when the two of them were alone.

In the shadows, Rourke took a moment to answer. “Yes. When we reach the Mediterranean, I’ll find a way across to Algeria.”

“You’ve had enough fighting?”

“It’s got nothing to do with sitting out the war. Believe me, I’m happy to fight the Germans.” Rourke paused. “But I can’t go to England.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You and I never talked about our pasts, my friend.” Rourke put a hand on his shoulder. “But I think you guessed a lot about mine. If I go back to England, I might end up serving next to the same British soldiers who hunted me in Ireland before I joined the Legion. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t join the Legion to escape them.”

“I know. You joined to do penance.”

“See, we understand each other,” Rourke said. “I once told you that Catholics need to tell God they’re sorry for their sins and then do what-ever’s necessary to prove they mean it.”

“I remember.”

“Well, how can I keep doing penance if some bastard British Tommy recognizes me and shoots me?”

From the darkness outside the barn, a legionnaire whispered, “Kline, we need to get moving.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” he murmured through the rickety door.

He turned to Rourke. “Take care of yourself.”

“Don’t worry,” Rourke said, shaking hands with him. “We’ll cross paths again after the war.”

But Rourke had been wrong. It wasn’t after the war that they would cross paths. Soon after the split in the Legion, some men going to England, others going to Algeria, the Vichy government ordered the legionnaires in Algeria to assist the German army.

By June of 1941, when the Allies fought to liberate Syria from the invaders, Kline’s Legion unit was helping the British. Meanwhile, a different Legion unit, the Vichy brigade, was helping the Germans.

In the morning, Kline knew, the unthinkable would occur. Battling for Damascus, legionnaires who had trained together, bivouacked together, gotten drunk together, and fought together, would now fight each other, and unless Rourke had already died in combat, he would be one of those whom Kline would attack.

As the sun began to set, Durado returned one last time, assigned to sentry duty for the night.

The intense heat continued to weigh on them.

“Still quiet over there?” Durado asked.

“No sign of anyone. Maybe they pulled back,” Kline hoped.

“I doubt it.”

“Me, too. They know we won’t pull back.”

“But surely they realize they’re on the wrong side,” Durado said.

“Probably they’re saying the same thing about us.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re the ones fighting for France.”

“For a government sucking up to the damned Germans,” Durado said.

“Even so, it’s the only French government there is. Do you remember what Commander Vernerey said when the Allies told him to fight the Germans in Norway?”

“If I heard, I’ve forgotten.”

“Legionnaires fighting in snow instead of sand. He knew how crazy that was. But he didn’t argue with his orders. He said, ‘What is my aim? To take the port of Narvik. For the Norwegians? The phosphates? The anchovies? I haven’t the slightest idea. But I have my mission, and I shall take Narvik.’ “

“Yes,” Durado said. “We have our mission.”

“Something’s moving over there,” Kline said.

Durado squirmed next to him and peered between the boulders.

At a gate in the Damascus wall, a white flag appeared. Several legionnaires emerged, recognizable because each man’s cap was the Legion’s traditional white kepi. Unlike the shorts and short-sleeved shirts that Kline’s unit wore, the uniform of the opposing legionnaires consisted of full-length sleeves and pants.

In the last of the setting sun, they formed a line against the wall, stood at attention, and formally presented arms to Kline’s unit.

Kline strained to distinguish their faces, unable to tell if Rourke was among them. Even so, he had no doubt that, if he got closer, he’d be able to call each of them by his first name.

At once, he gripped the boulder on his right. Using it for leverage, he stood.

“What are you doing?” Durado asked in alarm.

But Kline wasn’t the only man who stood. All along the ridge, sentry after sentry rose to his feet.

Soon Durado did, also.

Someone yelled, “Present . . . arms!”

The line of sentries imitated their brethren across the way. Kline’s chest felt squeezed as he went through the ritual that ended with him holding his rifle close to him, the butt toward the ground, the barrel toward the sky.

From somewhere in Damascus, a bugle played, echoing across the valley. The song, “Le Boudin,” was familiar to every legionnaire, who learned it by heart at the start of his training. It dated back to the nineteenth century, when Belgium had refused to allow its citizens to join the Legion. As the pulsing melody faded to a close, a bugler on the Demi-Brigade’s side took it up. Soon voices joined in, filling the valley with the normally comical lyric about blood sausage and how the Legion wouldn’t share any with the Belgians because they were shitty marksmen.

“Le Boudin” was followed by another favorite from the first day of training, “La Legion Marche.” Its energy expanded Kline’s chest and made him sing so hard that he risked becoming hoarse. Even though his voice was only one of thousands on both sides of the valley, nonetheless he did his best to make Rourke hear him.

The Legion marches toward the front.

Singing, we are heirs to our traditions,

One with the Legion.

The song praised Honor and Loyalty, virtues that gave the Legion strength. But Kline’s voice faltered as he realized that absolute loyalty to a mission was what had brought the Legion to this moment.

When the lyrics reached their refrain, a section of it made Kline stop singing entirely.

We don’t only have weapons.

The devil marches with us.

He couldn’t help remembering the conversation he’d had with Rourke when they’d enlisted long ago.

“ ‘My name is Legion,’ ” Rourke had said.

“ ‘For we are many,’ ” Kline had responded. “A possessed man says that to Jesus, trying to explain how many demons are in him.”

From Damascus and from this ridge, each side now repeated the song’s refrain, their voices rising.

The devil marches with us.

As the sun dipped completely behind the horizon, the music sank as well, echoing faintly, descending into silence.

Enveloped by darkness, Kline stood at the bottom of the ridge, staring up at the cold glint of the emerging stars.

He left Durado and made his way to the mess tent. Although he had no appetite, he knew that he would need all his strength in the morning, so he ate the bread and bacon that was served, and drank bitter coffee. Many other men sat around him. None said a word.

Later, in the shadows of his tent, he wondered what Rourke had done that was so horrible it had made him join the Legion as his punishment. Had he set a roadside bomb intended for a British army convoy, only to see it blow apart a school bus full of children? Or had he set fire to a house occupied by an Irish family who supposedly had revealed the IRA’s battle plans to the British, only to discover that he’d set the wrong house ablaze, that the family who’d burned to death was innocent? Would those things be terrible enough to make someone like Rourke hate himself? In his nightmares, did he hear the screams of the dying children, just as Kline imagined his wife sobbing over the corpse of their daughter, reaching for a razor blade to slit her wrists while Kline hid from the police because of a bank robbery in which a guard had been killed for $24.95?

Everybody ran in different directions, Kline remembered. I never got even a dollar.

Imagining the relentless coughing that had racked and smothered his daughter, he thought, I should have been with them.

He remained awake for a long time, staring at the top of the tent.

Explosions shook him from a troubled sleep, so many roaring blasts that he couldn’t distinguish them. The ground, the tent, the air—everything trembled. The first shock waves slapped his ears, making them ring. But amid the persistent heavy rumbles, his ears quickly became numb, as if muffled by cotton batting. He grabbed his rifle and charged from the tent, seeing the chaos of a camp being struck by artillery shells. Powerful flashes illuminated the darkness as rocks, tents, and men disintegrated in the blasts.

Murky silhouettes of legionnaires ran desperately toward the cover of boulders, toward pits they’d dug, toward anything that would shield them from flying debris. The camp’s own artillery returned fire, howitzers and tanks shuddering as they blasted shells toward Damascus.

Burning blasts erupted from the sandstone buildings over there. They and the muzzle flashes of the cannons turned the darkness into a pulsing twilight that allowed Kline to see his way toward a rock wall behind which he dived before a nearby blast sent shrapnel streaking over it.

The bombardment went on for hours. When it finally ended, the air was thick with dust and smoke. Despite the continued ringing in Kline’s ears, he heard officers yelling, “Allez! Allez! Get on your feet, you lazy bastards! Attack!”

Kline came to his feet, the dust so thick that he sensed more than saw the men around him doing the same.

He and the others scurried up the ridge. Sometimes they slipped on loose stones, but that was the only thing that held them back. Kline sensed their determination as they reached the top and increased speed, charging past boulders toward the wall.

The dust still hovered, giving them shelter, but soon it thinned, and the moment they emerged from it, visible now, running toward the wall, the legionnaires opposing them opened fire. Kline felt a man beside him lurch back. A man ahead of him dropped.

But Kline kept charging, shooting toward movement on the parapets. At once, a portion of the wall blew apart from a cannon shell. A second explosion widened the opening. Kline paused only long enough to yank the pin from a grenade and hurl the grenade as far as he could through the gap in the wall. Other legionnaires did the same, diving to the ground the same as Kline did, waiting for the multiple blasts to clear their way.

He scrambled over the rubble and entered a courtyard. Among stone buildings, narrow alleys led in various directions. A bullet struck near him, throwing up chunks of sandstone. He whirled toward a window and fired, not knowing if he hit anyone before he charged on. Then he reached one of the alleys and aimed along it. Joined by other legionnaires, he moved slowly now, prepared to fire at any target.

Shots seemed to ring out everywhere. Explosions rumbled as Kline pressed forward, smelling gunpowder and hearing screams. The buildings were no taller than three stories. Smoke drifted over them, some of it settling into the alley, but he didn’t allow it to distract him. The doors and windows ahead were all he cared about.

A man next to him screamed and fell. Kline fired toward the ground-floor window from which the shot had come, and this time, he saw blood fly. A legionnaire near him hurled a grenade through the same window, and the moment after it exploded, they crashed through a doorway, firing.

Two soldiers lay dead on the floor. Their white legionnaire’s caps were spattered with blood. Their uniforms had the long sleeves and full-length pants of the opposing side. Kline recognized both of them. Rinaldo and Stavros. He’d trained with them, marched with them, shared tents with them, and sung with them at breakfast in the mess hall at Sidi-bel-Abbes.

Stairs led upward. From above, Kline heard shots. Aiming, he and the other legionnaire checked a neighboring room, then approached the steps. As they climbed, a quick glance toward his companion showed Kline that he was again paired with Durado. The Spaniard’s normally tan complexion was now sallow.

Neither spoke as they stalked higher.

Above, the shots persisted, presumably directed toward the alley they’d left or else toward the alley on the opposite side of the building. Perhaps the numerous explosions in the area had prevented the shooter from realizing that this building had been hit by a grenade. Or perhaps the shooter wasn’t alone. Perhaps he continued firing while another soldier watched the stairs, hoping to draw Kline and Durado into a trap.

Sweat trickled down Kline’s face. Nearing the top, he armed another grenade and threw it into a room. Immediately, he and Durado ducked down the stairs, protecting themselves from the force of the blast. They straightened and charged the rest of the way up, shooting as they entered the room.

No one was there. A neighboring room was deserted, also. At the last moment, the shooter must have hurried the rest of the way up the stairs, taking refuge on the third and final floor.

Kline and Durado took turns replacing the magazines on their rifles. Again they crept up, and this time, it was Durado who threw the grenade. An instant after the explosion, they ran to the top, but amid the smoke of the explosion, they still didn’t find anyone.

In the far corner, a ladder led to an open hatch in the roof.

Durado’s voice was stark. “I’m not going up there.”

Kline understood. Their quarry was probably lying on the roof, aiming toward the hatch, ready to blow off the head of anyone who showed himself through the small opening. There was no way to know which way to throw a grenade to try to clear the roof.

“Maybe he ran across to another building,” Kline said.

“And maybe not. I won’t climb up there to find out.”

“Right. To hell with him,” Kline said. He peered through an open window and saw a sniper in a window across from him. The sniper wore a white legionnaire’s cap. His sleeves were long. As the man aimed down toward an alley, Kline shot him before he had the chance to pull the trigger.

Durado pointed. “Snipers all along the roofs!”

Kline worked the bolt on his rifle and fired through the window. Worked the bolt and fired. The movement became automatic. Hearing Durado do the same through an opposite window, he loaded a fresh magazine and continued shooting in a frenzy. His uniform was drenched with sweat. Struck by his bullets, white-capped men with long-sleeved shirts slumped on the roofs or else toppled into the alleys.

An explosion shoved Kline forward, almost propelling him through the window. He managed to twist sideways and slam against the window’s frame before he would have gone through. His back stung, and his shirt felt more soaked, but this time, he knew it was from blood.

Trying to recover from the shock wave, he spun toward the room and realized that the explosion had come from the far corner. The ladder was in pieces. The man on the roof had dropped a grenade through the hatch.

“Durado!”

There wasn’t any point in running to try to help him. Durado had been shooting through a window near the ladder. The grenade had exploded next to him, tearing him open. His blood was everywhere. His gaping intestines lay around him. Already, the flies settled on him.

Kline aimed toward the ceiling’s open hatch. Abruptly, numerous bullets sprayed through the window next to him. The snipers across from him had realized the direction from which his shots had come. If the wall hadn’t been made of thick sandstone, their bullets would have come through and killed him. Even so, the wall would eventually disintegrate from the unrelenting barrage. He couldn’t stay in the room much longer.

When another grenade dropped through the hatch, Kline dived toward the stairs. The impact made him wince as he rolled down, feeling the edges of the steps against his bleeding back. The explosion roared behind him. He groaned when he hit the bottom, but he kept rolling.

He deliberately made loud noises, striking his boots hard as he clattered down the final section of the stairs. At the bottom, he fired once, hoping to give the impression that he shot at someone before he left the building. Then he silently crept up to the middle floor and hid in the adjacent room.

The most difficult part about standing still and waiting was trying to control the sound of his breathing. His chest heaved. He was sure that the strident sound of air going through his nostrils would give him away. He worked desperately to breathe less fast, but that only increased the urgency in his lungs. His heart seemed about to explode.

A minute passed.

Two.

Blood trickled down Kline’s injured back. Outside, the explosions and shots continued.

I’m wasting my time, Kline thought. I ought to be outside, helping.

The moment he started to leave, he heard a shot from the floor above him, and smiled. The man on the roof had finally decided that the building was clear. He’d jumped down to continue shooting from the cover of a window.

Kline emerged from the room. Hearing another shot above him, he eased up the stairs. He paused, waiting for another shot and the sound of the rifle’s bolt being pulled back. Those noises concealed his own sounds as he came to the top of the stairs and fired, hitting the man in the back.

The legionnaire, who wore long pants, slumped forward, his head on the windowsill. Kline recognized the back of his brawny neck. His name was Arick. He was a German, who’d been part of Kline’s group of volunteers back in 1934. Outside, other Germans fought each other, some for the Vichy Legion, some for the Free French Legion. But where a legionnaire had been born and raised made no difference.

The Legion Is Our Only Country, Kline thought.

God help us.

He turned to race down the stairs and reenter the battle. He reached the second floor. He hurried to the first at the same moment a man left the chaos outside, rushing into the demolished room. He wore the Legion’s white kepi. Long pants.

He gaped at Kline.

Kline gaped, as well.

The man was even thinner than when Kline had last seen him, his freckles almost hidden by the dust of battle.

“Rourke.”

The name barely escaped Kline’s mouth before he shot Rourke in the chest. The pressure of his finger on the trigger was automatic, the result of countless drills in which self-preservation preceded thought.

Rourke staggered back, hit a wall, and slid down, leaving a streak of blood. He squinted at Kline, as if trying to focus his dimming eyes.

He trembled and lay still.

“Rourke,” Kline said again.

He went to the open doorway, fired at an opposing legionnaire, and hurried into the tumult of the alley, hoping to die.

The battle persisted into the next day. By sunset, the Vichy Legion had been routed. Damascus had fallen to the Allies.

Exhausted, his back crusted with scabs, Kline lay with other legionnaires in the rubble of a building. It was difficult to find a comfortable position among the debris. They licked the last drops of water from the brims of their canteens. They chewed the last of the stale biscuits in their rations.

As the sun set and the cold stars appeared, Kline peered up at the vastness. He was puzzled by the casualty figures that had been reported to his group of men. On his side, only 21 legionnaires had been killed and 47 wounded. But of the opposing legionnaires, 128 had been killed while 728 had been wounded.

The contrast was so great that Kline had difficulty making sense of it.

They had plenty of time to secure their defenses within the city, he thought. They had buildings to shield them from our bullets while we attacked across open ground. We were easy targets. They should have been able to stop us from reaching the walls.

An unnerving thought squirmed through his mind. Did they hold back? Did they shoot to miss? Did they hope to appear to fight when all they wanted was for the battle to end as soon as their pride would allow?

Kline recalled speaking with Durado about whether the men in the Vichy Legion knew they were on the wrong side, the aggressor’s side, the invader’s side.

The snipers whom Kline had seen in windows and on rooftops—had they been merely firing but not aiming? Had they been looking for an honorable way to lose the fight?

Kline remembered turning in surprise as Rourke had hurried through the doorway into the wreckage of the room. Kline had shot him reflexively. Searching his memory, Kline sought to focus on Rourke’s rifle. Had Rourke been raising it, about to shoot? Or had Rourke been about to lower it and greet his friend?

There was no way to tell. Everything had happened too quickly.

I did what I was trained to do, Kline thought. The next instant, Rourke might have shot me.

But then again, he might not have.

Would our friendship have meant more to him than his duty as a legionnaire? Kline wondered. Or would Rourke’s training have made him pull the trigger?

Peering up toward the sky, Kline noticed that there were even more stars. Their glint was colder—bitterly so—as a new, more unnerving thought took possession of him. He remembered the many times that he and Rourke had talked about salvation.

“What do Baptists believe?” Rourke had asked.

“God punishes us for our sins,” Kline had answered.

Kline now suspected that manipulating him into killing his friend was another way for God to punish him.

“What do Catholics believe about being saved?” Kline had asked.

The former altar boy had replied, “We tell God we’re sorry for our sins and do penance to prove we mean it.”

Penance.

Thinking of his dead wife and daughter, thinking of the dead bank guard, thinking of Rourke, he murmured, his voice breaking, “I’m sorry.”

David Morrell

My Name Is Legion