Page:Christopher Wren--the wages of virtue.djvu/199

Rh On tramped the Legion.

Gone was all pretence of smartness and devil-may-care humour—that queer macabre and bitter humour of the Legion. Men slouched and staggered, and dragged their feet in utter hopeless weariness. Backs rounded more and more, heads sank lower, and those who limped almost outnumbered those who did not. A light push would have sent any man stumbling to the ground.

As the whistle blew for the next halt, the Legion sank to the ground with a groan, as though it would never rise again. As the whistle blew for the advance the Legion staggered to its feet as one man. … Oh, the Legion marches! Is not its motto, "March or Die"? The latter it may do, the former it must. The Legion has its orders and its destination, and it marches. If it did not reach its destination at the appointed time, it would be because it had died in getting there.

On tramped the Legion.

With horrible pains in its blistered shoulders, its raw-rubbed backs, its protesting, aching legs and blistered heels and toes, the Legion staggered on, a silent pitiable mass of suffering. Up and down the entire length of the Battalion rode its Colonel, "the Marching Pig." Every few yards he bawled with brazen throat and leathern lungs: "March or die, my children! March or die!" And the Legion clearly understood that it must march or it must die. To stagger from the ranks and fall was to die of thirst and starvation, or beneath the flissa of the Arab.

Legionary Rupert blessed those "Breakfasts of the Legion" and the hard training which achieved and