Word: sidi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Home for the Hopeless. In the Legion's headquarters at Algeria's Sidi-bel-Abbès, which looks like a set from Beau Geste, Legionnaires speak often with scorn and sometimes with hatred of the nation that hires them. Lili Marlene, sung in German, is heard on their lips more often than La Marseillaise. The 35,000 men of the Foreign Legion offer their lives to France and keep their loyalty for each other. Ask a soldier in Sidi-bel-Abbès his nationality and he will usually reply, "I am a Legionnaire...
Time & again the Legion has been bled white, but the world's hopeless and desperate have always poured in to swell its numbers. The recruit applying at Sidi-bel-Abbès needs no identification papers, and may, if he chooses, keep his past to himself. If he is over 5 ft. 1 in., well set up and seemingly aged between 18 and 42, he will be accepted. Czarist refugees from Russia, Spanish Communists fleeing Franco, ex-members of Rommel's Afrika Corps, embezzlers and down-and-outs from all parts of the globe have sought sanctuary...
...World War II. In Tunisia, since the bloody riots last January, he had seen sabotage flicker over the country like heat lightning. Eleven post offices, seven bridges, 15 trains, 646 telephone poles had been blown up. Every time De Haute-cloque tried for a man-to-man interview with Sidi Mohammed el-Amin, the Bey of Tunis, whom Tunisians regard as their ruler, he found the 70-year-old Bey flanked by nationalist cabinet men. Finally, his patience worn thin, De Hautecloque ordered the Bey to throw the cabinet out. When the Bey appealed over the Resident's head...
...other bases, at Sidi Slimane and Nouasseur are already "operational," though not yet equipped with the amenities of life. The remaining three are supposed to be finished by July...
...Stirring Peoples. The leaders of Istiglal, the independence movement, are on the whole moderate men who prefer pressure to violence. Yet the ferment of Moslem nationalism is reaching west toward Morocco. Last autumn there were election riots. Last week the Sultan, Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef, who was once mistakenly thought to be a safe man for France, dispatched a letter to President Vincent Auriol demanding more local rule...