Sands of Sahara by Robert Carse

Book Details

Sands of Sahara by Robert Carse contains three novelettes of the French Foreign Legion. From the Atlas mountains to the Sahara desert to the Syrian desert, the men of the French Foreign Legion fight for their honor and the honor of France.

Soldier’s Fortune (1930) – A Bright Little Hell Burns in the Syrian Desert When the Druse Tribemen Capture a Fighting Legionaire.

Recall to Arms (1940) – In a Riff hill-town Jean Hubert, Legionnaire, learned that men who fight only for their peace live happily. But the Legion trumpets were loud in his memory; and stronger than himself was the summons to a doubtful glory.

Sands of Sahara (1941) – These ancient and terrible sands have always been a battle-ground; and they are today. But they are, too, the last outpost of France’s liberty; shifting, they make unconquered land—where two Frenchmen, determined to prove their different kinds of courage, can find glory.

Robert Carse (1902-1971) was first published around 1928 and most frequently published in Argosy Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post. He was a prolific writer of French Foreign Legion stories as well as swashbuckling pirate stories.

Sands of Sahara has 11 illustrations

Files:

1. Carse-SandsOfSahara.epub

Excerpt: Soldier’s Fortune

FROM behind the black-rimmed cloud-scud the moon broke, a small but bright sliver of silver. Its light bathed the bleak expanse of the Syrian bled, fell across the slope where the Legion dead lay, piled blackly and stiffly as they had fallen. That light hit at Bregg’s closed eyelids, made them smart and quiver, finally open.

Then, very slowly, full consciousness returned to him. His short, strong body ached in every part. His right shoulder and side was a continual flame of pain, from the hours of shock while he had fired Lebels, auto-rifles, and then the one remaining Hotchkiss gun that had not jammed….

It was beside him now, that Hotchkiss. Over its rear tripod-foot hunched the tall and thin form of Thiers, the man who had been the captain of this company of the Legion…. “A company of the dead,” whispered Bregg, slowly and silently. For they were all dead. All dead but him….

Stiffly, he raised up a bit, to look more closely at Thiers, the captain. The man’s kepi was beside him, and in the moonlight Bregg could see the shattered skull and the service revolver Thiers clutched with the rigidity of death in his right hand….

The captain had killed himself—rather than let the Jebel Druse get him. But he, Bregg, still lived. “Why?”‘he asked himself numbly, for the Druse had been in here, had swept the slope. He remembered the first part of that final and terrific attack as the tribesmen had come up the slope and he had knelt with Thiers behind the Hotchkiss just before he had slipped off into that black, cool, deep void of utter exhaustion.

There was only one answer. The Druse, clambering fiercely up over this slope, had mistaken his sprawled and rigid form for that of a dead man’s; had not bothered to make sure. And now he mused, smiling as he thought it, an old soldier’s fortune was upon him, and he lived….

Fortune of war. Bregg huskily whispered the words to himself. Then he was silent and the smile left his cracked lips, and he stared off, down that dead-strewn slope and at the moonstruck expanse of the bled. He knew too much; had fought too much. And now he saw that the fear which had instinctively come to him had been well based.

The immense Jebel Druse rezzia had trapped Thiers and his company on this barren hill; wiped out the company, and retreated, out into the bled. All those things were true. But it was also true that the Druse fought for two things: hatred of the French roumi, and for French loot. The roumi, or so they thought, were all dead. But the loot was still here. Their emir had drawn them off into the plain again after the success of that final attack, to make sure of his own flanks and rear, and to see that no other French patrol was near. But now, with the silence and speed of desert jackals, the tribesmen were coming back—up slope, to search and loot the dead.

From where he lay, he could see them. The first of them were already at the bottom of the hill, the silver moon radiance bright on their hawk, savage faces, their blood and powder stained burnouses….

Under the lining of Bregg’s kepi, sweat beads started, trickled down his forehead, down his lean, leathery cheeks, to at last drop from his chin. His wide eyes took in the form of Thiers.

“I envy you, mon capitaine,” he muttered. “Not a pants’ button, not a cartridge pouch, will get past these boys. And for me——”

BENEATH him, but a bit to one side, was his own Lebel rifle, where he had dropped it just before that last attack, and turned to help Thiers with the Hotchkiss. He slid back the bolt: there was at least one cartridge there, which would do for him…. But then he shook his close-cropped head again.

“That stuff ain’t ever been for me,” he whispered to himself. “No, sir; I’ve packed a piece like this too long. Twelve years’ worth. Let ’em come and take me if they can. Let ’em have what I’ve got. Then, if they been sloppy an’ slow, let ’em put me on their anthill. ‘But, t’hell with that!”

He reached with sore fingers into his cartridge pouch; found the long, smooth, cool Lebel shells there. He slipped them into the gun, and lovingly sent forward and down the bolt. This gun, or a gun just like it, he had packed and fought with twelve years. It was as much a part of him as his right arm, or the crumpled, soiled Legion kepi on the back of his throbbing head.

The sweat that had run down his forehead had stopped now. He was very calm, lying there, one hand out along the muzzle to caress “la Rosalie,” the beloved and evil Legion bayonet. His narrowed glance, though, was fixed down-slope, on those dark and silent figures who were slowly working up the hill, from body to body, towards him in the moonlight. Around him, he knew, he could in all probability find better weapons: a Chauchat auto’ rifle, hand grenades, even a Hotchkiss gun with a belt yet unspent. But there were more than a thousand Druse in that rezzia which so grimly and surely ringed the hill, and he was alone. The Lebel and Rosalie were the weapons he knew and liked best. This, after all, was a gesture, the gesture of a soldier and a Legionaire….

Excerpt From: Robert Carse. “Sands of Sahara – Three Novelettes of the French Foreign Legion.”