by Stacy Schiff
A little after noon on April 13, 1943, Saint-Exupéry boarded the S.S. Stirling Castle, which in an apt metaphor was accomplished by walking over the hull of the Normandie, lying on its side in a bed of mud more than a year after having gone up in a blaze in New York harbor. Within an hour he turned up in the Stirling Castle’s sickbay, accompanied by a young naval officer. A small cinder had lodged in his eye, and was removed. Also while the ship was docked in New York Saint-Exupéry read The Little Prince to a French-speaking officer on board, a Jungian psychoanalyst named Henry Elkin. The book had officially been published on the sixth; its first major reviews had appeared that week. The critics were as befuddled as impressed. A winsome fairy tale was not exactly what America was expecting from the virile author of Flight to Arras. (In their advertisements to the trade his publishers had taken the coy way out: “Reviewers and critics will have a field day explaining to you just what kind of story it is. As far as we are concerned it is the new book by Saint-Exupéry.”) Few reviewers saw The Little Prince as a children’s book and not everyone recommended it for adults; when they did, the book earned its author comparisons with writers as different as Montesquieu and Hans Christian Andersen.
Among The Little Prince’s more astute readers were Anne Lindbergh and P. L. Travers. Both women immediately recognized the book as a bitter tale of lost childhood. Anne Lindbergh found it far sadder than Arras and was quick to see that Saint-Exupéry “must have been miserable and sick and lonely when he wrote it.” She thought he would “throw himself into self-sacrifice—war and death. Thinking that is the answer—and it is not.” Travers—who has said the book seemed to her a distillation of suffering—saw the crux of it in the line, “So I lived my whole life without anyone I could really talk to.” She greeted The Little Prince warmly in a front-page review in the New York Herald Tribune and, curiously, reminded readers that “all fairy tales are portents.” The book spent one week on the New York Times best-seller list in June and two months on the Herald Tribune list, not a hugely impressive performance for its author. By the fall it had sold only 30,000 copies in English and 7,000 in French. Some good things nearly happened for it: Orson Welles, who had adapted material from Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars for radio propaganda programs in November, discovered the work in May. He summoned his business partner to his home for a 4:00 a.m. reading, which the partner—yet another person to lose a night’s sleep to the Little Prince—attended in his bathrobe. He got no rest until he had secured a two-month film option for Welles, who wanted to bring the book to the screen with a combination of live action and animation. The project came to naught when Welles was unable to enlist the help of Walt Disney.*
The Stirling Castle sailed, part of a thirty-ship convoy, at nightfall. Saint-Exupéry spent the next three weeks playing excellent chess and revising his pages of The Wisdom of the Sands, the manuscript of which he had had microfilmed and now carried, along with his papers, in a beautiful pigskin Mark Cross bag Silvia had given him. (She had also given him a gold identification bracelet inscribed with his name and blood group, although she claims she never knew, at least on a conscious level, that he really meant to leave.) Later he remembered this crossing as having elicited in him “the joy of a crusade.” In the course of it he told Henry Elkin that as soon as the war was over he planned to enter the monastery at Solesmes. As if to press the point, he closed each of their conversations with a liturgical chant.
* During this time the U.S. government also expressed concern about Madame de B’s political leanings. As she was well acquainted with high-ranking ambassadors of all stripes, she traveled with seeming ease throughout wartorn Europe. This gave rise to speculation—based on evidence that was flimsy at best—that she was engaging in secret service work, under a variety of aliases, for Pétain.
* These may have indicated that the 1941 California surgery had not addressed the problem. (Some four months after Dr. Belt’s ingenious diagnosis, Saint-Exupéry had written the surgeon that his condition had improved but that he was not yet ready to declare the operation a perfect success.) Equally well, the cholecystitis that plagued him in Montreal and throughout 1942 may have been unrelated.
* It was originally A-612.
* Maritain advised the Gaullists but never considered himself a Gaullist.
* General Béthouart was only too well-qualified for the job: he had been jailed in Morocco for not having resisted the Allied invasion.
* He filled the remainder of the twelve-inch disk with music, singing several deeply felt refrains of “Vlà le bon vent,” an old French air he said he had rediscovered in Canada and found exquisite, which in his rendition it is.
* Acting like a character from the book, Disney failed to appreciate the attention Welles commanded when he outlined his plans for The Little Prince in a Disney boardroom. He walked out of the meeting and away from the project.
XVII
~
Into Thin Air
1943–1944
I shall see to it, if I can, that my death makes no statement that my life has not made already.
MONTAIGNE, Essays
Saint-Exupéry was not to set foot in mainland France in the last year of his life. North Africa and Corsica were as close as he was to come; he reported to Algiers, the only major French city not subjected to the Occupation, at the end of April 1943. It made for a curious kind of promised land. One young American diplomat posted to North Africa at the time found himself reminded, at various moments, of a Hollywood melodrama, of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and of The Pirates of Penzance. More often the Borgias were evoked. Nowhere was the political atmosphere thicker, or more sticky, than in Algiers, a city overrun by adventurers, diplomatic personnel, secret agents of all nationalities, the remnants of café society and its demimondaines, black marketeers, wealthy natives. Nothing went unnoticed; no rumor went unrepeated. Bitter enemies sat elbow to elbow on the terrace of the Hôtel Aletti or in the old Moorish palace that was now the Club Interallié; intelligence officers made overtures to the wrong people. The plots and counterplots hatched overnight. It was as if the political passions of France played themselves out all the more fiercely for being forced to do so in a hothouse climate on a small piece of atypical turf. A. J. Liebling tried to make sense of North Africa for his New Yorker readers by saying that the situation was a little like what would result if the United States were to extend statehood to Puerto Rico, then—finding itself occupied by a foreign power—were to allow the island, acting under the thumb of the powerful sugar companies, to carry on as the United States. Saint-Exupéry offered a few memorable descriptions of Algiers as well, but these were to come later.
It was not a city in which one had to announce oneself, but he lost no time in making his presence felt. For the most part his timing was good. Having dropped his bags at Pélissier’s he began flying a Simoun almost immediately, outside of Algiers. On May 1 he was officially reassigned to his old reconnaissance squadron. A few days later the 2/33 came through Algiers; they were on their way to Tunisia, where they were to join the American 3rd Photo Group under Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, then head of the Mediterranean Allied Photo Reconnaissance Wing (MAPRW). Gavoille, now in command of the 2/33, dropped in on Pélissier and to his amazement found Saint-Exupéry in the doctor’s living room. The two men fell into each other’s arms with much emotion. The same day Gelée, Saint-Exupéry’s commanding officer in Orconte, was named the head of General Giraud’s cabinet, an office of which Saint-Exupéry was happy to avail himself. He waited a few weeks before asking his friend if he did not think it high time he was promoted to major. When Gelée agreed that it was, the captain instructed him, “Well, see to it!” (Gelée did, though not without effort.)
Probably on May 5 Saint-Exupéry called on René Chambe, now a general and—more fortuitously yet—now Giraud’s minister of information. Chambe found the new arrival thinner but otherwise unchanged; he made no comment on the writer’s attire, which was without
equal in North Africa. “Here, per our agreement,” announced Saint-Exupéry, not having forgotten his Mamounia promise, “but six months late, for which apologies.” He wrote off his tardiness to the Gaullists, whom he said had done everything in their power to detain him. Chambe more than made up for any inconvenience, arranging for his friend to rejoin the 2/33 immediately in Laghouat, Algeria. This return conformed eerily to what Anne Lindbergh imagined when she had read of the writer’s departure and predicted that his greatest happiness would come in rejoining his squadron: “He will go back to them. He will walk in shyly, stooping a little. They will shout, ‘Saint-Ex!’ That will be his reward.” The following day he went up for a training flight in a Bloch 174; that evening he treated his colleagues to a lavish barbecue, at which he paraded out all of his card tricks. The neighboring squadron was beside itself with envy. For the first time in two and a half years he was back in the French-speaking world, aloft and among friends.
On two other counts his timing was exceptional as well. Saint-Exupéry’s return to the 2/33 coincided with the arrival of the squadron’s first Lockheed P-38’s (Lightnings), the remarkable twin-boomed fighters that had been adapted for reconnaissance missions and were among the fastest airplanes in existence in 1943. Capable of speeds nearly twice that of a Bloch 174, the rugged P-38 so much represented a new generation of aircraft that, in the words of one American officer charged with retraining the French, they made the Potez that Saint-Exupéry had flown in 1940 look like Wilbur Wright’s plane. The P-38 was not a temperamental machine—one pilot claimed he could practically fill out his paperwork as he came in for a landing—but it was a sophisticated one. Saint-Exupéry, who had learned to fly in an airplane with virtually no controls, was impressed by the 103 controls of a Bloch 174. A Lightning had 148. Strapped into his gear its pilot monitored two engines, eight fuel tanks, innumerable electric circuits, four cameras, and his oxygen supply while he piloted, navigated, photographed, and kept an eye out for enemy aircraft. As Saint-Exupéry was not authorized to fly a P-38 he was fortunate as well that in June Giraud’s star was still ascendant; no sooner had the pilot rejoined his squadron than he was off to Algiers. Possibly for this trip he made the departure that Jules Roy, then an aspiring writer assigned to a neighboring squadron, was to remember vividly. Saint-Exupéry having been fitted into a Bloch, the members of the 2/33 formed a sort of honor guard along the palm-lined Laghouat airstrip to see him off. He was to make his way west via Bou-Saada; as Roy was to lunch in the Algerian town that day he followed a few minutes behind him in a Simoun. On landing on the Bou-Saada airfield Roy noticed a Bloch lying on its side at the end of the airstrip, its landing gear crumbled. Its pilot had already continued on to Algiers in another aircraft.
In the capital Saint-Exupéry called on Chambe at the Palais d’Eté, where Giraud and his staff had their offices. The 2/33 was to begin its P-38 training; Chambe had to see he was added to the list. “How old are you, Saint-Ex? I can’t remember,” asked the information minister. “Forty-two,” answered the pilot, who would not have bothered Chambe in the first place had he been unaware that the age limit for P-38 pilots was ten years less than that. Chambe informed his friend that his quest was noble but futile; the Americans were intractable on this point. Saint-Exupéry insisted that Giraud intervene. Good-naturedly Chambe set up a meeting for him: the French commander-in-chief customarily received, in the company of his aides, at breakfast, and Chambe saw to it that Saint-Exupéry was accorded an 8:30 appointment. The captain, however, did not endear himself to the general, a man better known for his military mettle than for his political acumen, of which he had none. At the time Giraud was considering inviting de Gaulle to Algiers to share in the government. Saint-Exupéry thought the idea preposterous—was Giraud so naïve as not to know what de Gaulle’s men were saying about him in New York?—and lost no time in telling him so. Were de Gaulle to come to North Africa, he swore, Giraud would be finished. Giraud had some advice for the aviator, too. He had decided that Saint-Exupéry would be better off in his cabinet than in a cockpit, and let drop another word guaranteed to send the writer into a tirade: propaganda. Less than graciously, Saint-Exupéry declined the offer. The meeting ended badly. Rising abruptly to dismiss his guest, Giraud declared, “It seems you think me a complete idiot,” which was true.
Neither man was much impressed by the other but Chambe saved the day, arranging for Giraud to be able to announce to Saint-Exupéry over a second breakfast that he had seen to his request. (Chambe had convinced Giraud to telephone Eisenhower directly to obtain the favor.) Under the circumstances the pilot could hardly refuse to undertake a short propaganda mission throughout North Africa, in the course of which he was meant to raise the spirits of the French officers and NCOs moldering in training camps, waiting for the battle of liberation to begin. “Here I am, a traveling salesman in propaganda, and it’s your fault!” he grumbled to Chambe as he installed himself behind the controls of a Simoun. He was not encouraged by a tour he had undertaken half-heartedly in the first place and which confirmed that in North Africa, as in New York, Gaullist propaganda had made for what were effectively two French armies. What was more, his admiration for Giraud—the only ranking French leader likely to view him in a sympathetic light in 1943—had not survived this initial encounter. “A scarecrow who as such is not threatened by noise but who fears the wind” was how he later dismissed the man he wrote off now—while on a Giraud-sponsored propaganda mission—as “le mur élastique” (“the rubber wall”). Before the month was out de Gaulle was in Algiers, and in a matter of days the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN), a provisional government headed jointly by the two generals and hustled into being by the Allies, was formed. Within a week of his arrival de Gaulle had managed to rearrange that body so that his representatives outnumbered Giraud’s, two to one. So handily outdone was Giraud by his co-president’s machinations that he essentially voted against himself on the matter.
Feelings about this conflict ran as strong in Algiers that summer as those about the greater one. The Americans insisted that Giraud retain control of the French army under any circumstances. De Gaulle proved equally adamant that all French troops swear allegiance to him. The situation was not improved by the fact that the United States refused to recognize the CFLN as the reigning authority in metropolitan France, nor by the fact that most of the French barely respected it. Kenneth Pendar, the American diplomat who had been quick to see traces of Gilbert and Sullivan in North Africa, overheard a particularly bitter conversation between General Béthouart and Saint-Exupéry at the Interallié; the two men were heartsick about the divided state of the army. In a letter to Curtice Hitchcock Saint-Exupéry wrote of his continued distaste for de Gaulle, whose politics hardly represented a salvation for France; in a stern, un-mailed letter to Jules Roy, who had recently endorsed de Gaulle, he summed up his arguments with the line, “Sectarianism always leads one astray.” He was more vocal still with American diplomatic personnel. To them he compared Gaullism to National Socialism.
The skirmish on this front could not help but distract him from what should have been the greater battle. He officially rejoined the 2/33 as a P-38 reconnaissance pilot on June 4, taking up a Lightning four days later at the La Marsa airfield, outside of Tunis. Gavoille kept a close eye on him. Both the pilot’s age and his physical condition were handicaps at high altitude in a nonpressurized cabin, and he was hardly familiar with the P-38. The cold at 30,000 feet is formidable, as was the sheer weight of a reconnaissance pilot’s gear. Saint-Exupéry was not only ten years too old but nearly too large as well; the cutoff point for P-38 pilots was six feet four inches, and stiff as he was he practically had to be fitted into the cockpit with a shoehorn. Nor did his resistance to the English language facilitate his work; the control towers were now staffed by Americans, and the sky over Oujda was crowded. He came down from his first training flight less than impressed with the new aircraft; soon enough it was discovered that his discomfort
had had to do with the fact that—having been instructed to go up to 2,000 meters (6,500 feet), and having misread his altimeter—he had gone up to 20,000 feet without an oxygen mask. On another training flight he evidently marveled over how clearly he could examine Tunisia from 10,000 meters. He had been flying, this time with an oxygen mask, at 10,000 feet.
Gavoille kept an eye on Saint-Exupéry for all the reasons that had led him to be termed his equerry (and his nanny) in 1940 and then one: the Americans were watching over his shoulder. Not all of them thought highly of their allies, and some officers were openly hostile. One American major took delight in assembling the 2/33 to inform them that the French had lost the war and now that the Americans had come to bail them out they had best comport themselves as in the presence of a superior people. Fortunately the designated translator did not speak French; Gavoille gracefully thanked the visitor for his allocution. Matériel was not initially in great supply, and relations were impaired both by the French impression that they were getting the Americans’ castoffs and by the related American impression that the French were not properly maintaining their aircraft.* It was easier for the Americans to say that the French—who were in fact generally more seasoned pilots, and who knew the territory far better than their Allies—were incompetent, and it was easier for the French—who carried with them a certain sense of shame and frustration—to assume that the Americans were not treating them evenhandedly. Rearming the French had been as much a political gesture as a military necessity, a fact that created resentment on both sides. Sometimes the hostility was reflexive. When Gavoille was asked what call sign he would like for his squadron he asked for one without an “r” so that his men might be able to signal clearly to the control tower. He was given six choices, each with an “r.” (He settled on “Dress down,” the least difficult for a French speaker to pronounce.) More often the run-ins centered on questions of discipline, of which the Americans thought the French incapable. Leon Gray, who as MAPRW Operations Officer reported directly to Elliott Roosevelt, said he could make the French do everything except take off on schedule. Others held that the French were slow to adapt to P-38’s, aircraft with which the average American pilot had at least fifty hours’ experience before being sent overseas. They could not understand why the French were not applying themselves to the task, choosing to overlook the fact that they were being instructed in a foreign language and that a P-38 differed in many crucial respects from the aircraft to which the French were accustomed. Frustrated by his attempts to train the French to fly the equally new R-26’s, one officer was overheard to remark, “The quicker the SOBs kill themselves, the quicker we’ll get to France.”
