Chapter 9: To hell and back

I opened my eyes. Daylight lanced through my skull so I closed them again. I lifted my hands to my head; it was bandaged, as was my chest. The pain in my side was equal to the pain in my skull but I had no way of turning that pain off. I had tubes and drips stuck in various parts of my body and could hear the beeping of a machine that I assumed was monitoring me. I gingerly opened one eye. The pain was not quite as bad so I opened the other. The monitor beeped quicker and I shut both eyes again but the beeping continued at the faster pace. I heard a door open and then a male voice.

“Back with us are you, Legionnaire?”.

I heard a rustle and then felt a hand on my shoulder. “Take this tablet,” the hand found mine and passed over a pill, “and have a drink.” I felt a straw at my lips. I swallowed the pill and then took a grateful sip of water.

“The pain will subside in a moment and you will be able to open your eyes. The pain in your side will ease a little as well.” The man, (doctor?), was correct. The painkiller worked almost immediately and I opened my eyes. The doctor, he had a stethoscope looped around his neck, smiled at me. “You have been in and out of consciousness for three days but I think this time you are here to stay.” He checked the monitor and nodded. “Yes, your vital signs are good. It will take time for the swelling on your head to subside and the wound in your side to heal. Give it about two weeks and you will be running about like a two year old.”

“Three days! I’ve been unconscious for three days?”

“Moving In and out of consciousness. We were more concerned with the head wound than the bullet wound.”

“Head wound?” I said.

“You hit your head on the edge of a wrought iron table as you fell to the ground after being shot.”

“What about Ferdi?” I said, although I knew he must have been killed taking the bullet meant for me.

“Ferdi?”

“The man who threw himself on top of me when that mad bitch du Plessier shot me.”

“I don’t know the full facts of how you became a casualty. All I know is our ambulances brought in one dead male, one male suffering from a head injury and a gunshot wound, and a female suffering gunshot wounds”

“Who is the female with the gunshot wounds?” I hoped it wasn’t Jeanette but had a premonition it might be.

“I have no idea. She is in ICU.” He saw my look of bewilderment. “The Intensive Care Unit.” He made some notes on the sheet of paper at the foot of my bed and turned to leave. “The painkiller will kick in even stronger in ten minutes or so and send you off to dream land. Tomorrow morning you will be fit enough to be questioned.”

He left the room. Questioned by who, or should that be whom? I was still deciding the correct grammar when I fell asleep.

“So Legionnaire Azarian threw himself in front of you just as Madame du Plessier fired her pistol?” The police Detective Inspector was sweating as he took notes. The hospital room where the interrogation took place was more broom cupboard than interview room.

I nodded. It seemed that when the bullet from Chardonnay’s pistol hit Ferdi it was deflected, probably off a rib. Consequently the slug did not travel through his body into mine but exited Ferdi’s body near his hip and then furrowed along my side, missing all my organs and intestines. Had it penetrated my body I would now be in ICU or the morgue.

“And you were Madame du Plessier’s lover?” The detective continued.

“Former lover.”

He glanced up from his notes. “So she shot you because you had spurned her, dismissed her?”

“It seemed that way at the time.”

“Hmm, she could claim it was a crime of passion.”

“Surely there’s no way she won’t be found guilty of murder?”

“That will be for a jury to decide, M’sieu – err -- Legionnaire, but I doubt it will come to a trial. She has three bullets in her. She was about to finish you and the women you were with off when the gendarmes arrived. She started shooting at them and they returned fire. She is not expected to last the week.”

So it was Chardonnay in ICU not Jeanette. I sighed in relief.

“I hope the bitch dies in agony,” I said. The Detective Inspector looked at me as if were the criminal.

Three days later I was transferred to the Legion Infirmary at Quartier Vienot. The bandage had been removed from my head but the wound in my side would need the stitching removed. I was to be under observation for the head wound and the Legion doctor would remove the stiches at the correct time. The other inmates in the Infirmary were a bit cagey with me at first. I was the legionnaire who hadn’t paraded on Camerone Day and they did not want to catch anything from me. However the half dozen or so of my fellow infirmerees had nothing so exciting as a bullet wound. One had cut hands, feet and face after he Kung Fu’d a mirror when drunk, thinking his reflection in the glass was an assailant. Another had haemorrhoids, another had broken a leg when falling out of bed when the husband of the woman he was with arrived home unexpectedly. Two had the pox, and one had infected blisters. Hardly the wounds of honour.

I remained in the Infirmary until the Legion doctor was sure I had no brain damage, other than any I’d been born with, and the furrow ploughed along my ribs had healed up. I was put on light duties; no fatigues or guards, and placed in the Regimental Orderly Room as a clerk. Commandant Vardas had interviewed me before putting me to work rearranging the regimental filing system that had probably been set up in 1831 when the Legion was formed.

“I know you are an educated man, Soissons, and expect you to have an efficient filing system in place by the time you finish your light duties in two weeks’ time.” He had said.

I really enjoyed the task, which had probably been given me as a punishment. I like devising procedures and systems, and solving problems. It is an exercise in logic and pragmatism, and although I may be inadequate with personal relationships – one dead friend, one dead ex-lover, and loathed by the Legion -- logic is ultra-impersonal. I was assisted in the task by Pierre Montesquieu who was also on light duties. He was the legionnaire who had Kung Fu’d his reflection in a mirror. As can be imagined, given his previous history, he took to logical thinking like a duck to concrete.

Ironically Ferdi being murdered by Chardonnay du Plessier had made the reason for my being absent on the Camerone Day parade more believable; even Commandant Vardas was taking my story seriously.

“A woman crazy enough to shoot someone in the full sight of witnesses would be more than capable of drugging someone,” He said. “And I have learned some interesting facts about your former lover. Did you know at least two of her lovers committed suicide?”

“Yes Commandant. One hanged himself and the other shot himself.”

“But did you know that the one who blew his brains out used Madame du Plessier’s Colt Forty Five pistol, probably the most famous of all automatic pistols, the same weapon used to kill Legionnaire Azarian?”

“Do the police know?”

“They do now, but to extrapolate from that piece of information that she drugged you would be mere conjecture. Did you discover where she might have obtained the substance she may have used on you?”

“No, Sir. But scopolamine could have been obtained by du Pleissier from any pharmacist with less scruples than money. She of course had more money than scruples. A match made in hell.”

“Well, until I can say without any doubt that you were prevented from attending the Camerone Day parade because you had been drugged by a demented female you will remain persona non grata to the Legion. However, I will let it be known within the regiment there may be mitigating circumstances for your non-appearance on parade. Life may become slightly more tolerable for you here, Soissons, but it will take time for the information to spread throughout the Legion.”

Later that week I met Stefan in a quiet bistro. I couldn’t face the usual haunts where I would be ostracised by legionnaires still not aware of my innocence. I was in a low, self-pitying, mood blaming myself for Ferdi’s death and the pain suffered by Jeanette due to me enraging Chardonnay du Plessier.

“I can’t stay in Aubagne,” I told Stefan. “Every moment I’m here I’m thinking of Ferdi and how I caused his death.”

“Du Plessier caused Ferdi’s death by shooting him, and he did what he did on his own volition. You have nothing to blame yourself for.”

“I deliberately goaded Chardonnay, knowing how volatile a temper she had. I wanted to really upset her.”

“But you couldn’t have known she had a automatic pistol in her bag,” Stefan said.

That was true, but I still blamed myself for Ferdi’s death.

The matter came to head at Ferdi’s funeral. I kept in the background during the ceremony, and as his body was laid to rest I had great difficulty in holding back my tears. The Legion had offered to lay him to rest in the Legion cemetery with full military honours but Jeanette wanted him in her local church yard. She saw me and came over, I was dreading what she would say. She must hate me for causing the death of her fiancé and the father of her unborn child, but I was blown away when she tenderly kissed me.

“Ferdi loved you like a brother, Philippe, and I know he would not want you thinking it was your fault he died. That mad woman is to blame and no one else.” She hugged me. “Ferdi wanted to call the child Philippe if it a boy and Philippa if a girl. I will carry out his wishes.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears and sobbed like a baby. Jeanette gave me another hug and then started back towards an older couple who I assumed were her parents. “We are holding the Wake in our house if you want to join us,” she said over her shoulder. But I was too stricken with grief and guilt to reply or attend.

A day after the funeral I applied for a transfer to another unit, any other unit. I had too many bad memories of Aubagne. My application landed on the desk of Commandant Vardas and I appeared before him.

“Are you a Catholic, Soissons?” He asked after reading my application.

“Err, lapsed, an ex-Catholic I suppose, Sir.” I had not attended mass or been to confession since starting university.

“There is no such thing as an ex Legionnaire and there is no such thing as an ex Catholic. You people, be they an everyday to church or never to church Catholic, carry guilt around like so much luggage. I saw how you reacted to the treatment meted out to you after not parading on Camerone Day. You took the humiliation and extra duties as the punishment you deserved for not attending the parade even though you were not to blame. Now you have added the guilt of Legionnaire Azarian’s death to that burden. Catholics seek absolution from sin through penance and atonement – in my lexicon both words mean punishment -- like a monk flagellates himself for any impure thoughts.” He paused and gazed at me as I considered what he had said. There was a kernel of truth in what he had said. I did welcome the punishment as a means of making good the bad I had committed. The Commandant saw I had taken on board his theory and he signed the paper.

“I know just the place for you, Soissons. I’m sending you for parachute training. You will suffer much physical and mental pain and that is the penance, punishment, you crave to achieve Absolution.”

I had a farewell drink with Stefan in the canteen that evening and told him I was going for parachute training at Pau. “That’s only a hop, skip, and a jump from Andorra. I’ll be able to see where I was supposedly born,” I said, laughing at my whimsy.

Stefan guffawed, although I hadn’t thought my whimsy that funny. “Pau is the French Army’s school for Parachutists,” he said. “The Legion has its own school –.” He paused, “ ... at Calvi.”

“Is that near Pau?” I asked; geography was never my strongest subject at school. This time Stefan’s guffaws had several faces turning to see what all the mirth was about.

“No, Professor. Calvi is in Corsica, the south of Corsica.”

I shrugged. “Well that’s OK. I survived the training regime last time I was in Corsica, and the parachute course only lasts eight weeks. It can’t be worse than the four months of basic training at Corte.”

How wrong could I be? It was worse, much worse.

Parachute training was carried out at Camp Fiume-Secco -- which is near Calvi in the south of Corsica -- by 2 REP (2ème Regeiment Etrange Parachute, 2^nd Foreign Parachute Regiment). The amount of blood, sweat, toil, and tears expended and the amount of pain I endured on the basic course at Corte was greater by a factor of four during the parachute training course at Calvi.

Factor I was the terrain around Calvi. It appeared similar to that around Corte but the gradients of the mountains were much steeper and there were more of them.

Factor 2 was my history. Commandant Vardas’ writ did not run as far as Calvi and on arrival I was tagged as the legionnaire who had been AWOL from the Camerone Day parade. My card was marked accordingly.

Factor 3 was my fitness, or rather lack of it. The time spent in hospital and on light duties, where I had done only minimal callisthenics, had me gasping for breath after only a few kilometres when we went running up the steep slopes of the mountains around Calvi.

Factor 4 was my build. I overtopped the majority of the others on the course, and more importantly several of the instructors, by at least a head. The height and weight of the average paratrooper are about 175 cms (5ft 9ins) and a stocky rather than hefty 78 Kilos (172lbs). I stood 190 (6ft 3ins) and weighed 90Kilos (198lbs). I thus became a packhorse and carried the heavier pieces of equipment like radios and/or spare batteries for the radio and extra ammo for the Chatellerault Light (?) Machine Gun, which I also carried.