As an élite body it still enjoyed the best food in the army and was accompanied wherever it went by its own mobile brothels — "le puff". But discipline was rigid, and punishments — with refractories made to kneel hours long in the beating sun — almost as savage as in the days of Beau Geste or Ouida. On the other hand, extraordinary tolerance could be shown when a Legionnaire, suffering from a bout of the notorious cafard, took a shot at an officer (provided he missed). By the end of 1955 the Legion already had 20,000 men, two-thirds of its effectives, in Algeria.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 510