Flight to Arras
New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, [February] 1942.
1 vol. (140 x 210 mm) of 255 p. and 1 fol. Bradel blue half-chagrin, spine ribbed, gilt title, front cover and endpapers illustrated in colour by Bernard Lamotte, gilt head, publisher’s slipcase with title-piece on front cover (publisher’s boards).
First edition.
It appeared before the French edition, also published in New York by Éditions de la Maison française in the same year.
One of the first 500 copies signed by the author and illustrator (no. 163).
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
On 23 May 1940, Captain Saint Exupéry flew an aerial reconnaissance mission over the town of Arras. He was flying the Bloch 174 N°24. Lieutenant Dutertre was the observer and Sergeant Mot the gunner. They were flying at low altitude when suddenly they came under attack from German anti-aircraft fire. Their plane was riddled with bullets and an oil tank was punctured by a shell. However, Saint-Exupéry managed to return to the base of the 2/33 group with his passengers unharmed. For this feat he was awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm and mentioned in the French Air Force Order on 2 June 1940. This mission provided him with the title of his book Flight to Arras. During the two years following the expedition to Arras, Saint-Exupéry worked on his account of the mission from the United States, where he had gone into exile. He wanted to pay tribute to the courage and strength of the young pilots: Gavoille, of course, but also Sagon, Pénicot, Dutertre, Hochedé, Major Alias and Lieutenant Israël. He tried to explain the situation in France and its capitulation. He tried to encourage the United States to enter the war. He had been living in New York since December 1940, where he met up again with Pierre Lazareff and Bernard Lamotte, a former Beaux-Arts classmate. When Pilote de guerre was completed, the text appeared as a pre-original, in English, in January 1942 in the magazine Atlantic Monthly, with illustrations by his friend Lamotte. These were retained for the volume edition, with magnificent endpapers painted by Lamotte for the deluxe edition. At the same time, the French text was published by Éditions de la maison française, without illustrations.
‘In truth, this book is a great and beautiful book, perhaps the real book of the 1939 war’ wrote Pierre Mac Orlan in the newspaper Les Nouveaux Temps on 8 January 1943. As soon as it was published, it was a great success in the United States: ‘This account and Churchill’s speeches constitute the best response that the democracies have ever found to Mein Kampf ’ (Edward Weeks, in L’Atlantique, quoted in Schiff, p. 363). Americans were bowled over by the story and for six months the volume topped the bestseller lists, helping to rectify France’s image in the eyes of public opinion and politicians.
Saint-Exupéry’s voice seemed to be heard. John Barbeen declared in The Chicago Herald on 29 March 1942: ‘The critics are not only praising the writer’s talent. They are bringing home to the press the idea of a France profonde, different from the staff in perpetual retreat […]. They show the absurdity of flying, pursued by German fighters, when in nine months it has not been possible to obtain aircraft that can withstand the cold of the upper atmosphere’. In France, Éditions Gallimard submitted the book to the German propaganda service, which authorised its publication, but not without deleting a short passage of four censored words: ‘Hitler is an idiot’. It continued to be distributed clandestinely, in two editions (in Lille and then Lyon).
