Saint-exupery: A Biography

by Stacy Schiff

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  Toward the end of February 1944 John Phillips, a young Life magazine photographer and journalist, arrived in Algiers. Phillips was an unusual American in that he had been born in Algeria and spoke perfect French; he had long admired Saint-Exupéry, whom he telephoned directly. “Colonel,” he began. “Major,” Saint-Exupéry corrected him. Otherwise the older writer was entirely welcoming, preparing drinks for his visitor in Pélissier’s kitchen. Into a frying pan he poured muscatel and a harsh, distilled wine; he then lit the concoction with a match, producing delectable results. Much of the available liquor in North Africa was undrinkable; Phillips thought his host ingenious. Saint-Exupéry lost no time in telling the war correspondent that he was the sole survivor of a bygone era: “I’m the last one, and I can assure you that it’s a very strange feeling,” he said, glancing moodily out the window. In the living room he described the grave injustice the Americans had committed on his account. When his visitor asked if he was writing he replied that he did not have the right to, as he had no role in the war. He went on to make Phillips a casual proposal: “I want to write, and I’ll donate what I do to you, for your publication, if you get me reinstated into my squadron.” The American, who had every reason in the world to sympathize with the balding legend before him, promised to do his best. A few weeks later he returned to Naples, where he kept an apartment, and where he met with Colonel John Reagan (“Tex”) McCrary, then in charge of the photo press in England and all air force press in Italy. McCrary reported to General Ira Eaker, the commander of the Mediterranean air force, with whom he in turn pursued the subject of Saint-Exupéry. Eaker, who was the head of the world’s largest air command and who had just lost a society-page American flyer, handed down no immediate decision, however, and when Phillips returned to Algiers he did so empty-handed.

  He found Saint-Exupéry in a state of high dudgeon. In Phillips’s absence the pilot’s old Brest instructor, Lionel-Max Chassin—a colonel who had been powerless to help his former student although that winter he was personnel director at the air ministry (he had played a great deal of chess with Saint-Exupéry instead)—had taken command of a bomber squadron in Villacidro, Sardinia. Chassin had seen to it that Saint-Exupéry was assigned to the 1/22, where he was meant to co-pilot a medium-sized bomber, the B-26. In the weeks since Phillips had seen him the writer had stopped grousing about the “imbecilic Americans” and begun to grumble instead about his new assignment. He could not possibly serve as a co-pilot, he explained, as he suffered from air sickness. (The truth doubtless had more to do with the fact that—feted though he was by the 1/22—he wanted to return to his own squadron, whose reconnaissance work he considered a more noble pursuit than bombing work.) Convinced that he could himself persuade Eaker, probably tempted, too, by the fact that the 2/33 had been based in Pomigliano, outside of Naples, since January, Saint-Exupéry flew back to Italy with Phillips late in April. He crammed a mass of papers and his treasured Parker pens into his Mark Cross bag for the trip. To ensure that it would not be lost he entrusted his inkwell to Phillips. (To ensure that he and his manuscript would not both be lost he generally saw to it over the next months that he and his bag flew separately.) So far as Phillips could tell, the pilot, who was now officially a member of the 1/22—he had begun to collect his army pay again as of April 1—made the trip AWOL.

  In Naples Phillips took Saint-Exupéry to his apartment, where the two ran into the assistant managing editor of Life. Phillips made the introductions. “The Saint-Exupéry?” asked the editor, who was startled to learn from Phillips that the Frenchman was to contribute something to the magazine. “We’ve tried for two years to get him to write a piece for us and he never has,” he explained; the publication had clearly never offered the proper form of payment. At the bar of a Naples officers’ club a few days later the writer met McCrary. Phillips handled the translating, speaking as if he were Saint-Exupéry. His new friend was relentless on this point, admonishing his broker throughout the meeting to do his job well. “Look, Saint-Ex, I’ve done a beautiful job, an eloquent job,” Phillips finally objected. He clearly had—McCrary felt that the Frenchman had been “hugely selling”—and Saint-Exupéry underestimated the simple power of his presence. He made a deep impression on the American colonel, who had done his homework for the meeting but had not previously been in the writer’s thrall. With Phillips as his spokesman Saint-Exupéry voiced all of his habitual arguments, mentioning his shame at not being able to serve his country, citing his Book-of-the-Month Club honors. As Phillips knew, the two were preaching to the converted; McCrary was already of the opinion that any man who wanted to fight in the war should be allowed to do so. “I was charmed and respectful and quite frankly I, too, was jealous of the young men who flew not out of a sense of guilt or out of a sense of adventure but because they had to,” remembered McCrary. He had his own pound of flesh to exact, however: Saint-Exupéry was to write a chapter about the Allied air forces for the book McCrary was putting together. The Frenchman agreed—there was no escaping the propagandists—and McCrary called Eaker to report on the meeting. “It’s a hell of a deal for the air force,” he advised the general, who did not immediately concur, but who was generally making it his business to reequip and retrain the French pilots. They would, he had noted in an admiring March memo, “cut a German throat probably with more relish than anybody.”

  On April 23 in Pomigliano, Saint-Exupéry visited with the 2/33, which was at the time applying its aerial talents to photographic forays over an erupting Vesuvius. A Swiss geologist was visiting as well; at the officers’ table he and Saint-Exupéry enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion. The Frenchman spoke at length about molecular physics, the philosophical implications of which most interested him; he stunned his colleagues with the news that an atomic bomb was in the making and with the prediction that it would be deployed before the end of the war. According to Phillips, with whom he lodged, he spent the rest of his time in Italy “watching Vesuvius erupt, reading Kafka, and being a good winner at chess and a poor loser at word games.” A game of chess with the writer required particular grace on his opponent’s part: no one forgot the sadistic pleasure he took in winning. Phillips was repeatedly disarmed by Saint-Exupéry sweetly chanting, “I’m going to checkmate you, I’m going to checkmate you,” as he played.

  At the end of the month he was back in Algiers, tending to another front of his campaign. Henri Frenay, a Resistance hero who now held a CFLN post, arranged a lunch at which he might introduce the writer to Fernand Grenier, a former Communist deputy who had recently become head of the provisional government’s air commission. (De Gaulle was now supreme military commander as well as the French civilian authority, having finally succeeded in stripping Giraud of all power; the cabinet was again reshuffled in the process.) On one of the last afternoons of the month, Grenier, Saint-Exupéry, and two of Frenay’s Resistance friends gathered at Frenay’s apartment outside Algiers. They fell instantly into a discussion of the underground movement’s activities, its arrests and its tortures, the fraternity that it instilled in its members, a war experience utterly foreign to Saint-Exupéry’s of the previous three years. He listened to these tales with a wide-eyed fascination, one which must have bordered on jealousy. Before long the atmosphere was thick with emotion; by Frenay’s account the tears began first to roll down Saint-Exupéry’s cheeks. The five men soon joined hands around the table, from which they discreetly disappeared by turns to collect themselves. ” ‘Ah, France,’ we sighed,” one of them recalled, “and she was there among us, wounded and shorn, bloodied and miserable.”

  The afternoon worked its magic in more ways than one. Shortly afterward Frenay wrote to Grenier to remind him of the lunch and to report more fully on Saint-Exupéry’s plight. The pilot was naturally dissatisfied with his present assignment, and would be “follement heureux” to rejoin his own squadron, with which he had so brilliantly served in the campaign of 1940. Eaker, who was to meet with Bouscat that week, had let i
t be known that he would reconsider the posting as long as the French air force voiced no objection. (McCrary had heard the news earlier: “You win, I’m going to do it,” Eaker had informed him by telephone.) Frenay felt compelled to add two small disclaimers to the end of his May 2 letter. He knew that Saint-Exupéry’s past actions had won him much criticism but reported—a long limb on which to venture out—that he could personally vouch for the writer’s present sympathies. Moreover, he added, he was by no means seeking preferential treatment for a friend. He wanted only for a man determined and qualified to fight to be granted permission to do so. Once again, Saint-Exupéry’s career advanced not through favoritism but through exception. On the twelfth Grenier okayed the request.

  Four days later corks popped in Alghero, on the northwest coast of Sardinia, to which Saint-Exupéry and Phillips were flown in a B-26. In the months since the pilot had left his squadron most of the kinks in the Franco-American enterprise had been ironed out, at least on the military level. (The CFLN would not be recognized as the legitimate French government until October, and the Americans—both in Washington and in the field—continued to wring their hands over their allies’ constant squabbling over politics.) Dunn and Gray had moved on; Colonel Karl Polifka had replaced Elliott Roosevelt and had seen to it that the 2/33 was equipped with spanking-new Lightnings. Spirits had improved overnight and, in Polifka’s words, “the arrival of Saint-Exupéry put the 2/33 in the clouds.” The squadron had taken over a villa on the rocky Sardinian coast eight miles from the airfield; the newcomer was moved into the best room in the house. The signs of his arrival were unmistakable. The following day the 2/33’s logbook reported that its wayward member had “inoculated all the officers with the dangerous word-game virus, a formidable disease that immediately decimated the villa.” He was soon discoursing brilliantly on spiritualism. On May 24 he took up a P-38 for an hour-long training flight. He had not been at the controls of a Lightning for nearly nine months; one flyer who had not seen him in the interim noted that he moved more slowly and with infinitely more trouble than he had in 1943. Nonetheless the man who had written his wife at Christmas that he had aged 100 years while in Algiers now reported that he felt twenty years younger, that follicle by follicle his hair was growing back, that his flowing white beard had fallen off overnight. He made no further mention of cancer, Eaker’s intervention having miraculously cured him of all his ills.

  Phillips, who had by now come to know well the Algiers entertainer who could keep friends locked in heated conversation on a street corner until 3:00 a.m., stayed on with the 2/33 for two weeks; he was thus able to observe and to photograph the reconnaissance pilot in action. Though few of Saint-Exupéry’s colleagues admitted as much it was a poignant sight. He grimaced and growled as he was dressed for his flights; his boots were laced for him, as he could not bend over. He had to be fitted into and extracted from the cockpit. Wedged into a P-38 he was a heavy consumer of oxygen; some colleagues estimated that he used as much as twice the norm, partly because of his size, partly because he had a habit of turning on his oxygen before takeoff. It was difficult work, a fact the veteran acknowledged in his own way: “I have enough to worry about with my flying, my navigation, my radio work, and my photography,” he told Jean Leleu, the 2/33’s new operations officer. “I’m not going to waste my time watching out for the Krauts [les Boches].” Six hours at high altitude in a nonpressurized cabin left a twenty-three-year-old feeling limp the next day. Saint-Exupéry could only have felt worse, but did not dare mention this distress to his colleagues. He was doted on anyway. He was the pride of the 2/33, a squadron to which new pilots had been added but which was still recognizably the group immortalized in Flight to Arras.

  There was no civilian life at Alghero—as one pilot put it the men lived “in the middle of nowhere”—but Saint-Exupéry in his baggy American fatigues and faded French air force cap more than compensated for the posting. He hauled out his intoxicating stories, of the Spanish Civil War; he offered a minute-by-minute re-creation of the Libyan adventure (he never talked about the Guatemalan crash, from which less poetry could be extracted); he overwhelmed the squadron’s American colleagues with his sleight-of-hand. From his seat at the head of the table in the mess he delivered captivating talks on his favorite topics. Two that obsessed him at this time were brothels, which he vehemently argued should be closed, and the penal system, for which he proposed a dramatic reform. Gleefully he shared his recipe for a lion hunt: “You go to the desert with a sieve. You sift the sand. On the sieve, you will find the lions.” With relish he shared in one of the squadron’s favorite pastimes—fishing with dynamite—although he was reportedly never trusted with the explosives, only with the net with which to collect the victims. Once again he was, as he had been to his Aéropostale colleagues in the 1920s, a little bit the group’s Queen of England.

  The missions the 2/33 flew from Alghero were undertaken to map southern France for an eventual Allied landing. They were highly dangerous but not all-consuming; the pace of life in Sardinia was leisurely. Either for a liaison or a training flight Saint-Exupéry was in the cockpit of a P-38 nearly every day between May 24 and June 6, when he attempted his first mission, but these flights rarely lasted more than two hours. This allowed him ample time to torment Phillips with the word game he had invented the previous year, his infamous “game of the six-letter words.” Each player wrote down a word consisting of six letters; the winner was the first to guess his opponent’s choice. This was accomplished by systematically proposing other six-letter words and noting how many letters of the suggested word fell in the same places as in the word in question. For hours, often with an audience, Saint-Exupéry kept Phillips at this pursuit, at which he was expert. One day the room fell uncomfortably silent when it became clear that the American was about to win. He had chosen “zigzag.” “In the name of God, Phillips,” Saint-Exupéry exploded when the inevitable came to pass, ” ‘zigzag’ is not a French word!” Evidently he had been able to do little more than sputter when on another occasion a young lieutenant bettered him with “St-Cyr”; he was very nearly driven to homicide by an opponent who wrote down six random letters.

  “I seem happy when performing card tricks,” Saint-Exupéry had written Madame de B from Pélissier’s, “but I can’t amuse myself with card tricks, only others.” In the privacy of his room he remained as alone and as despairing as ever. He was disgusted by “this civil war between civilized peoples.” In his letters he protested again and again that he was indifferent to calumny. Where he was once elegiac he was now bitter; where he was once nostalgic he was now desperately homesick, longing for a time, a place, and an ethos that were more remote than Cape Juby or Patagonia had ever been. Much though he felt isolated and alone among his squadron not all of his colleagues were fooled by his merrymaking. “Saint-Ex was done for and he knew it, but he never mentioned it to anyone,” observed one pilot. Nonetheless he specialized in good cheer, which he spread around generously. To Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, Gide’s hostess in Algiers, he cabled: “Prepare mayonnaise and court-bouillon. Am arriving from Sardinia with seven lobsters and will be with you in one hour.” (This at a time when Heurgon-Desjardins was reduced to bartering her illustrious house guest’s presence for several grams of butter or a bottle of oil.) He dropped in on the 1/22, of which he was still officially a member; he flew regularly to Tunis. His high spirits were much in evidence on the night of May 28, when he arranged for a huge barbecue in Phillips’s honor. A group of Sardinian shepherds roasted ten lambs for the squadron and their American colleagues; for a group of Frenchmen whose stomachs had begun to rebel against a steady diet of Sardinian lobsters and doctored Spam the meal was heaven-sent. Having arranged for the 230-liter belly tank of a P-38 to be filled with wine in Algiers, Phillips spent the evening scampering over the villa’s rooftop, photographing the results of his largesse.

  The next night was Phillips’s last in Sardinia, and Saint-Exupéry returned to his room with the Ame
rican in tow. He was finally to produce the promised article. Phillips watched as he fitted himself into a wicker chair, lit a cigarette, and—with loud sighs—proceeded to fill several pages of a writing pad that he balanced on his knees.* Evoking the same images on which he had relied since the 1930s, Saint-Exupéry essentially added his new concern to the message he had sounded in Wind, Sand and Stars, a book he now claimed he had written “in order to tell men passionately that they were all inhabitants of the same planet, passengers on the same ship.” Technological progress had shrunk the globe to a point where humankind now constituted one vast organism, yet as he saw it that living entity so far lacked a soul. The world’s greatest Luddite aviator at the same time gloried in some of the engineering advances of which he so despaired: he offered his American readers a thrilling sense of what it was like to overfly one’s country as the enemy at 35,000 feet, though he had yet to fly a mission in 1944. After two drafts of the piece he stepped out on the villa’s terrace for a breath of air; Phillips imagined that he gazed through the cool darkness with longing, trying to make out the contours of France. At dawn the American was greeted by Gavoille, with whom he was sharing a room. “Well, did he write, or did you play chess all night?” asked the squadron leader. Phillips offered him Saint-Exupéry’s six half-legible pages. “Damned Saint-Ex,” declared the energetic captain, who had risen through the ranks, “five spelling mistakes.”