Pilote de guerre

In June 1940, the Groupe de grande reconnaissance 2/33 had lost seventeen of its twenty-three crews on futile missions. Saint-Exupéry, a captain and pilot, and his observer, Lieutenant Dutertre, are in turn summoned by Commandant Alias. Their task: to fly over the tank parks of the Arras region at an altitude of 700 meters. “That’s most unfortunate…,” the commandant says. “A sacrificed mission,” those concerned think. They will obey: “the meaning of death must balance death,” and here death means nothing.
What is the meaning of this civilization? The plunge into the Apocalypse of Arras, from which the crew emerges miraculously unharmed, provides the answer.

This exceptional edition of the text, published on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the French defeat of June 1940, is illustrated with the wash drawings by Saint-Exupéry’s close friend Bernard Lamotte, created for the first edition of the book published in the United States in February 1942 under the title Flight to Arras. The first French edition, published by Gallimard in December 1942 and withdrawn from sale by the German authorities as early as January 1943, was not illustrated.