Memoirs of the Foreign Legion by Maurice Magnus

CAPTAIN B-----was the name of our captain, commonly called "the Telephone Captain" or "Captain Hallo-Hallo." During the Gallipoli campaign he was usually in the line of the second and third trenches, and whenever he thought his life in danger he fled to a telephone booth and found it necessary to telephone. He was a Corsican, medium in height, with long Kaiser-like moustaches, trying to look important, but on closer examination the air of importance was an actor's mask; he had a weak sensual mouth and a receding chin. He was a typical bully, who is always a coward. He shouted and shrieked at every one, thinking that necessary in his position of captain; he could not be civil if he tried, only when he was with the Colonel, and then he wasn't civil but seductively sweet, like a woman of the streets trying to gain her point. He had been a common soldier, worked himself up to sergeant, and then, for some inexplicable reason, he was made captain just before the Gallipoli campaign, where he proved such bravery!

One of the stories was that he shot his own men on the battlefield, when he suspected them to have seen some of his particularly cowardly actions. The Corsican corporal spoke of him quite openly as "that assassin." Fenet, the French sergeant, tried everything to get himself before the Council of War, in order to be able to get a hearing and denounce the Captain. But the Captain condemned him to all the penalties in his jurisdiction, but never sent him to the "Concile de Guerre."