Memoirs of the Foreign Legion by Maurice Magnus

I WAS but a few days in the Legion before I realized that I had come to the wrong place. First of all there were no contingents of different nationalities with their respective officers, as Mr. Stadel and others had told me. French was spoken --bad French by Germans, Greeks and Spaniards. There was one Englishman, one Dane, one American nigger, a few Armenians, a number of Spaniards and Greeks, two Corsicans, a few Turks, Russians, Egyptians, Portuguese, Servians, Italians, Arabs, Negroes, many Algerians, some Jews, very few Frenchmen, and the rest Germans.

The marches, the desert, the shooting, the Arab encounters on the Moroccan railway, the watch-fires, was it all a dream of Mr. Stadel? The officers of different nationalities? One Danish lieutenant, two Greek lieutenants, a Corsican captain--the rest Germans.