Read "Memoirs of the Foreign Legion" by Maurice Magnus online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
All Bel-Abbès lived on the Legion as far as I could make out. Of course there were agriculturalists, but the townspeople had no other customers than the Legion's soldiers. The Spahis went to the Arab quarter. The countless drinking shops, restaurants, and tobacconists were all for the soldiers--no one else entered them. And yet these people were indescribably rude to the soldiers. It was sufficient to wear a Legion's uniform to be insulted. No one trusted them. No matter how courteous one might be to the people, they were rude and intended to be rude. It was an antagonism which they cultivated, and which was not to be forgotten for an instant. I had my photograph taken in uniform; the photographer was more or less civil, but the woman who gave the receipts and attended to the business part was personified rudeness to every soldier. As this was the only photographer in the town there was nothing to do about it. My own experience was that the pictures were not ready when promised, and I asked, as I could not come the next day, that they should send them.
"Send them to you--a soldier in the Legion? We cannot send them--you can come here to-morrow and get them."