Portrait photographique

On 25 March 1945, Colonel Coustey wrote his report on Lieutenant Romain Gary, recommending his promotion to the rank of reserve captain: “A fine airman. On the front line since 1940. He served with the FAFL from the heroic period of the 1940 and 1941 campaigns. Cultivated, refined, intelligent, somewhat bohemian but without excess, he is eminently likeable. He speaks several languages and is capable of rendering great service both in a unit and on a general staff. A brilliant subject. Gary de Kacew is an officer who, kept from combat against his will after January, has brilliantly proven himself. He has shown himself to be a valuable officer, giving full satisfaction in his duties as head of the Chancellery office on the general staff. He deserves to be made captain without further delay.” This report earned him a bronze palm on the Croix de Guerre and the Croix de la Libération.

By March 1945, Forest of Anger had already been published in London (December 1944), thanks to his first wife, Lesley Blanch, who ran the cultural pages of Vogue magazine. It was published in France by Calmann-Lévy, in a translation by Viola Gerard Garvin, daughter of the editor of the weekly The Observer, herself long responsible for the literary column of that emblematic title of the English liberal left. It met with immediate and considerable success upon publication in the summer of 1945, crowned by the Prix des Critiques in November.