Through a long corridor we marched, until the corporal kicked a door open and led us into a big room, our future quarters. We looked about our new home. Twenty beds were in the room, ten on one side, ten on the other, perfectly aligned. In the middle of the room stood two big wooden tables and long benches, scoured gleaming white. Everything in the place was scrupulously neat and clean. A rack in the corner held our rifles. Suspended from the ceiling, over the tables, there was a cupboard--the "pantry" of our quarters. It struck me as very practical. Knives and forks, the men's tin plates and tin cups, our bread rations were kept there. Half a dozen légionnaires were sitting on bunks and benches, cleaning their rifles and polishing their leather belts--our comrades. Corporal Wassermann, lying in his bunk puffing a cigarette, took a good long look at us. He was little more than a boy. "Eh bien," he said, "I am your corporal. You will have to learn French as quickly as possible. That's very important. Keep your ears open and listen to everything that's said. That is the right way to go about it. We shall begin drilling to-morrow. To-day you will have to arrange your bunks and things. I shall arrange your bunks in such a fashion that each of you shall be placed between two old légionnaires. You've only got to watch how they fix their things and do the same. It is all very simple. When you have finished arranging your stuff, you can do what you please." Then he assigned a bunk to each of us and went off whistling. To the canteen, of course. * * * * * "Hallo!" said Smith. He had just come in. "That's all right. So you've not only been sent to the eleventh, but to my room as well. And that's all right. That's my bunk over there at the window. Take the one next. It's been given to a recruit already, you say? Oh, kick him out, kick him out. What do you suppose the corporal cares where you bunk. I'll fix it with him. And that's all right. I'm going to call you Dutchy. Now don't object, because I'm going to call you Dutchy anyhow, see?" He was evidently pleased. So was I. From the start I had taken a liking to this man with the sharply cut features and the curious air of infinite knowledge. The pasteboard card on his bed said: "Jonathan Smith, No 10247, soldat 1ère[1] classe." [1] The Foreign Legion and the French army in general make a distinction between first-class privates and second-class privates. The first-class private has the grade of a lance-corporal.