"The sections for the reformation of incorrigibles" is the official name for this battalion, and deportation to the Zephyrs is the severest punishment which can be put into execution without the authority of a court-martial. The official grasp of the meaning of the word incorrigible is, however, a trifle strange sometimes. Under the strictest surveillance these unfortunates carry on pioneer work in the far south. They make roads, they dig wells, they build new stations in the most unhealthy parts of Algeria, far removed from all civilisation. They have to work as even a légionnaire, to whom the hardest work is so familiar, would only work under the sternest compulsion. And if extra pioneer work is needed in the south, if, for instance, a new road is to be built, the battalion's numbers increase with amazing rapidity. It is really astonishing how the number of incorrigibles in the Legion increases just when the military administration needs men--for work! "Much work--many Zephyrs!" says the Legion's proverb. The scale finishes with the heavy military punishments, from penal servitude to the death sentence, and here the decision of the Algerian court-martial in Oran is final. Its sentences are renowned for their pitiless severity. To be brought before this court-martial the légionnaire need not have committed any very grave offence. It is enough if he has lost some part of his uniform. In a well-known French historical work on the subject of the Foreign Legion, Roger de Beauvoir writes: "Each of the two discipline sections is 150 men strong: of these 300, 200 at least are in the penal section for selling part of their kit. It used to be the custom to 'let the stomach pay' for this offence, _i.e._, the offender was put on bread and water till he had replaced the lost equipment from the mess allowance that was saved. This punishment was finally considered too barbarously old-fashioned, and the court-martial took its place, which passes sentence of six months' imprisonment. The légionnaires long for the old régime!" And thereby hangs a tale. A very sad story, too.... No sensible man will attempt to dispute the fact that iron discipline is essential for the lurid mixture of human material in the Legion. If the justice of the Foreign Legion was in practice what it is in theory--stern but just--one could not say a word against it. It is, however, only just in theory, in the intention of the military law-makers. In reality it is the justice of unlimited tyranny; made so by the individual tyranny of officers and non-commissioned officers in individual cases, and in general by an obstinate tenacity to the letter of the law.