Les Cerfs-volants
This final novel bears the sober dedication “À la mémoire” (“To the memory”). Though it returns to the era of Nazism and the Occupation, this last love story is guided throughout by the love Gary had despaired of ever finding. As in Clair de femme (said to have been inspired by a discreet affair with Romy Schneider), Les Cerfs-volants dwells on this “illumination” of love, Gary confiding, on the book’s publication, that he “did not always manage to apply to his own life the precepts of his books, but this whole book is the story of people who do not know how to despair.” A few months later, on 2 December 1980, he took his own life, a little over a year after Jean Seberg.
A fine copy of the special printing for the Compagnons de la Libération: Gary, who had at one time agreed to write a book for the Musée de l’Ordre de la Libération, did not have the strength to do so, but offered instead to fund a special printing of his novel devoted to the Resistance — this very Les Cerfs-volants, then about to be published — for the Compagnons.
450 copies were printed — preceded only by 15 copies on Hollande paper and 25 on Arches paper — each nominatively inscribed for these surviving Companions.
Daniel Dreyfous-Ducas was one of them: a student engineer at the École centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he did his military service in the artillery in 1939, before being kept under arms following the declaration of war on Germany on 3 September 1939. As a lieutenant, he heard General de Gaulle’s call of 18 June 1940 and, without hesitation, set sail from Arcachon on a fishing boat bound for England, where he signed his enlistment in the Forces françaises libres on 2 July 1940; he volunteered for the expeditionary corps that left Liverpool on 31 August 1940 bound for Africa and, embarked on the Westernland, served on General de Gaulle’s staff.
“He faced the Afrika Korps for the first time before taking part in the defense of Bir-Hakeim from 27 May to 10 June 1942. He then showed the full measure of his courage and composure. During the breakout by force, in the night of 10–11 June, Daniel Dreyfous-Ducas was wounded in the leg by an explosive bullet. Despite his wound, he took the place of a severely wounded artillery tractor driver and brought a complete 75mm gun back to friendly lines. Barely recovered, he rejoined his unit in combat and was cited in army orders by General de Gaulle. He took part in the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942 before undergoing air support training in Algiers. A liaison officer with the infantry, promoted to captain, he joined the 1st R.A. in Italy before being appointed deputy to its commander, alongside whom he took an effective part in the liberation fighting in Provence, the Rhône valley, the Vosges and then Alsace. Demobilized in September 1945, he was finally able to complete his studies; he entered the École des Ponts et Chaussées” (Annuaire des Compagnons de l’Ordre de la Libération).
Daniel Dreyfous-Ducas was a Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, Compagnon de la Libération — by decree of 17 November 1945 — holder of the Croix de Guerre with 3 citations, the Médaille de la Résistance, the Médaille Coloniale, the Médaille des Services Volontaires dans la France Libre, and the Silver Star (USA) — one of the highest American military distinctions — awarded to only 471 French officers, for an “act of bravery” alongside American soldiers.