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Last week, sprawled astride the main Red invasion route on the Ninety-Nine Hills beyond Indo-China's Bacninh, the men of the Legion's 3rd Regiment—the most decorated unit in the French army —could afford to joke about death for a change, instead of courting it. There was a lull in battle. Lithuanian Sergeant Rekstis' mortar was silent. At the siege of Quong Lam a few weeks ago, Italians, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Yugoslavs had taken bets on whether a Viet Minh sniper would get Private Mommaire (Belgian, perhaps, or Swiss). Now Mommaire was idly admiring the anchor tattooed on his left arm, and dreaming nostalgically of his years in the navy. Whose navy? No one in Bacninh knew—and in the Legion whose soldiers are meant to die, no one asks or cares.
*"It was marvelous," says one old Legionnaire, "how the crapaudine changed your ideas."