Kelly of the Foreign Legion: Letters of Légionnaire Russell A. KellyKelly, Russell Anthony
History
Kelly of the Foreign Legion: Letters of Légionnaire Russell A. Kelly
Kelly, Russell Anthony
France. Armée. Légion étrangère; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Nearly all the public buildings are used as hospitals, while the schools
have been converted into barracks.
The people are very pleasant and will go a great distance out of their
way to set a stranger in the right direction. They are light eaters;
bread, wine and cheese are their mainstays. A large amount of chocolate
is eaten; it is not as good as our milk chocolate.
The moving picture shows in Lyon are free for soldiers. The people like
the western cowboy pieces. I saw a string of six push-carts with
advertisements of films in which John Bunny appeared.
We are paid one sou, being the equivalent of one cent, a day and pay-day
every tenth day. Our dissipation on half a franc can be readily
pictured. But we are furnished everything we need, and there are no
charges here.
Market days are Tuesdays and Fridays, and on those days most of the
public squares are thrown open to the farmers who come to town with
long, narrow, two-wheeled carts, drawn by everything from a dog to a
horse. Small donkeys, about three feet high, are numerous. One
frequently sees a dog harnessed with a donkey; I saw an old woman teamed
with a dog drawing a fruit cart. There are some fine draught horses; the
animals work tandem, and the driver walks.
Four-wheeled carts are very scarce. Auto-trucks are used for
transportation; many are of the large, heavy type, but have steel tires.
Pleasure cars are numerous. The majority have been taken for military
purposes. They are all built low and make considerable noise.
I have not as yet seen many asphalt covered streets. Most of them are
paved with stone blocks, while in a great number of streets cobble
stones are used. Save in the main streets, the sidewalks are narrow. As
a rule the streets are well lighted at night. A great many places of
business have signs “English spoken,” but we have not yet come across
one store wherein English _was_ spoken. The stores are open on Sundays.
Monday is the poorest business day in the week.
The children have school, if soldiers are not using the building, from
nine to noon, and from two to four p.m. School is in session Saturdays
but closed Thursdays.
III
OFF TO THE FRONT
_Lyon,
February 5, 1915._
At last the order we have so anxiously awaited has come; we leave early
tomorrow morning, February 6th, for the front.
We were given a complete outfit, which consisted of one suit of
underclothes, two pairs of socks, a white cotton sleeping hat, two pairs
of shoes, a neck muffler and a jacket which resembles a smoking jacket.
These jackets are all the same size, which is small, so that a big
fellow has a hard time getting into one. There is no warmth in them, so
most of the fellows did not bother to pack them. I left mine with the
underclothes in Lyon, not having room in the sack for them. We got blue
overalls to go over the red pants. We also got a pair of mittens, but
they are not much good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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