Premier de cordée

First illustrated edition, with photographs by Georges Tairraz. The text had previously appeared alone, in a small printing, in February 1941. This first printing is rare: it appeared while the author was serving as a war correspondent alongside the Allies on the Tunisian front. Taken prisoner by the Germans, he was held in Naples, where he spent a month in a cell for prisoners condemned to death, before being transferred by the Gestapo to the Fresnes prison, then to Vichy. He obtained permission to return, under surveillance, to Chamonix, then occupied by the Italians. He escaped from there in 1943, when German troops arrived, and went underground in the Beaufortain, serving as a liaison officer with the FFI and later on the staff of the 5th Chasseurs Alpins demi-brigade.