Legionnaire - Review

Cover at by Paul Lowe

The latest title from Sarob Press is a rare - perhaps unique - publishing event. This is the first ghost story novella by C.E. (Clive) Ward, one of the stalwarts of the M.R. Jamesian scene. And what a little cracker it is. Legionnaire ticks all the Jamesian boxes, but also offers a central scenario that pays tribute to that other British author, C.P. Wren, author of Beau Geste and other ripping yarns of the French Foreign Legion.

As with all traditional ghost stories, this one begins at a leisurely pace, with an English narrator describing his acquaintanceship with an elderly French dealer in militaria. The 'slight haze of distance' is produced when we learn the narrator met Armand Lucette in the 1969s. Lucette, it transpires, served in the Foreign Legion during the First World War, when France was forced to withdraw most of its troops from its North African domains. As a result, Lucette's small company was sent out to handle a difficult situation in a remote desert fort in Morocco. 

Ward sets up the situation with meticulous skill. We get the customary multinational group of Legionnaires, plus a new commanding officer who drinks and is bad for morale. The local tribesmen are restless and the fort at Seni-Bebrou has a dodgy reputation. When they arrive, there are ominous signs that they may face more than tribal insurrection. Voices are heard at night...

Clive Ward is an expert on military history and it shows in the way he handles the small, everyday details. Men are of course fixated on bodily comforts, long for decent grub, yearn for a soft bed and so forth. His characters are, by and large, good soldiers and not easily spooked. But as things escalate it becomes clear that no amount of mere physical courage can prevail in this situation. 

There are Berber attacks, and the order to retreat is given. Then begins the long march across the desert. Strange figures are seen in a whirling sandstorm, men glimpsed marching where no me could be. We know, of course, that Lucette survived. But there is a coda that suggests that what he encountered in the desert never really left him.

Suffice to say that this longer tale is every bit as inventive as Ward's short stories, and will certainly please his legion of admirers.