Scorched Sand - 1949
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The route to Indochina ran through Sidi bel Abbes, Algeria, the home of the Legion. Here the desperate, the lost, the disgraced came to enlist in a place where they could start anew, albeit in a spartan and dangerous life. Here, in the desert sun of Africa, they drilled and sweated, learning the harsh discipline of the Legion...as taught by veterans of the Wehrmacht. It was continually amusing to Saul that he never heard the cadence being counted in German, and he was learning French like the others. He hid that he knew certain languages -- if they'd known that he'd been in the Desert before, that he knew Arabic, he'd be permanently assigned here. If they knew he spoke Hebrew, he'd have blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hun killers trying to slit his throat.

The blame died hard with them. They'd lost their country, lost their dream of Blood and Honor. Their madman blew his brains out in the bunker and they were humiliated. The Soviets overran them and they were forced to throw themselves at the knees of the Yankees and the Brits to save themselves from Stalin's mercies.

From there, the French, vengeful but lusting to regain their pride, took what they could in the way of experienced combat troops, because the war lit a match to the fuse -- the colonies were no longer content to be such. He knew the burn, because he'd fought for the Holy Land. A fight in the Galilee in 1948 against Arab Liberation Army troops commanded by a German mercenary. The "advisor," an ex-SS man set him on the trail. He'd blown the man's brains out coldly at midday among the bodies after he'd made the man talk and tell him what he knew of Bergfalk. He'd gotten lucky, the man knew Bergfalk. 

The Sabra officer in command of his platoon had been amazed at the efficacy of the interrogation, the way Saul handed the man a cigarette and even found a beer for the German, treating him with Tommy-style civility as he asked him questions, in German, lightly about old acquaintances. His lieutenant was paralyzed by the sudden pull of the trigger, but unwilling to face the cold Pole that'd just done it, but he shrugged it off. The survivors of Europe had their reasons. No one particularly mourned the corpse in the desert, eyes staring up into the Holy Land's sun. Leaving the man alive would have created too many uncomfortable questions anyway. The UN was watching, after all, even if they were as powerless as the British Empire to really stop this.

He'd been in the desert many times. Here in Algeria, Jerusalem, the Galilee hills, the Libyan desert, and the heat did not harm him. He was still young, because he'd grown up in war, lying about his age to join it, but he was a veteran. He wasn't alone in that, and he adapted quickly enough to the French drill. He was complimented on his presentation, a legacy of Gordon Barracks' intense training in the manual of arms, and though he sweated through his khakis like the rest, he didn't burn in this sun like the newer recruits did. He'd come already tanned. 

The Germans were the senior NCO's now, but they spoke their accented French. The kids of the last war were coming of age in countries still devastated by it and were seeking a way out of places like Italy, a combat-wracked husk of a country that depended on food aid, or the East Bloc, where some had no home to go left to. The Germans did not entirely run the Legion, there were Spanish Republicans and other old guard types in the NCO ranks and French officers. The Gendarmes were not Germans, and they helped keep the order. They looked for reason to bust German Legionnaires and Legionnaires in general, when they were out on leave in Sidi bel Abbes or Algiers.

But there were no questions asked and old disputes were carefully and studiously avoided. He endured the training and bided his time, because he'd asked questions of the Germans here about Bergfalk, describing him rather than naming him, and got quite a bit from that. He knew where to go, the 4th Regiment, and he went about securing a billet there. The training Captain, Dubois, was going to be taking command over there, and he was impressed with Saul and Saul, in turn, told him stories of Oosterbeek and the Sicily when they were off duty; they were Allies, in more than one sense of the word. It earned him a promise to be promoted to corporal as soon as possible and an ally among the French officer corps...

"Deux! Présenter les armes!"

He could drill in the merciless sun for another month before being shipped off. The German NCO's that'd been there told tales of how it was. He noted the tactical advice and took the threat seriously, but he was more fatalistic about the fighting, but so were most of the recruits who'd tasted the second world war growing up. He'd been to Hell before. He knew what it was like.

Whatever it took to find the man responsible for killing his family. 

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Water helped, but the injection into his IV line helped more.

With the shot of morphine came the mish-mash of words when he went back under from the sleep. The muttering was disjointed, but the memories came through in snippets of conversation. He talked in his sleep -- lots of people relived their trauma in their sleep in this generation. People who had been in camps, in wars. 

"Wo ist er?" he murmured. [i]Where is he?[/i] At least he spoke clearly now, but he was out of it, disjointed conversation simmering up from the opiate warmth, his respite from the pain.