Modestly, I smile. Pénicot comes up and puts his arm across my shoulder.

“What do you say, old boy?”

How tenderly peaceful all this is!

A school usher—is it an usher?—opens the door and summons two among us. They drop their ruler, drop their compass, get up, and go out. We follow them with our eyes. Their schooldays are over. They have been released for the business of life. What they have learnt, they are now to make use of. Like grown men, they are about to try out against other men the formulas they have worked out.

Strange school, this, where each goes forth alone in turn. And without a word of farewell. Those two who have just gone through the door did not so much as glance at us who remain behind. And yet the hazard of life, it may be, will transport them farther away than China. So much farther! When schooldays are past, and life has scattered you, who can swear that you will meet again?

The rest of us, those still nestling in the cosy warmth of our incubator, go back to our murmured talk.

“Look here, Dutertre. To-night—”

But once again the same door has opened. And like a court sentence the words ring out in the quiet schoolroom:

“Captain de Saint-Exupéry and Lieutenant Dutertre report to the major!”

Schooldays are over. Life has begun.

 

“Did you know it was our turn?”

“Pénicot flew this morning.”

“Oh, yes.”

The fact that we had been sent for meant that we were to be ordered out on a sortie. We had reached the last days of May, 1940, a time of full retreat, of full disaster. Crew after crew was being offered up as a sacrifice. It was as if you dashed glassfuls of water into a forest fire in the hope of putting it out. The last thing that could occur to anyone in this world that was tumbling round our ears was the notion of risk or danger. Fifty reconnaissance crews was all we had for the whole French army. Fifty crews of three men each—pilot, observer, and gunner. Out of the fifty, twenty-three made up our unit—Group 2-33. In three weeks, seventeen of the twenty-three had vanished. Our Group had melted like a lump of wax. Yesterday, speaking to Lieutenant Gavoille, I had let drop the words, “Oh, we’ll see about that when the war is over.” And Gavoille had answered, “I hope you don’t mean, Cap tain, that you expect to come out of the war alive?”

Gavoille was not joking. He was sincerely shocked. We knew perfectly well that there was nothing for us but to go on flinging ourselves into the forest fire. Even though it serve no purpose. Fifty crews for the whole of France. The whole strategy of the French army rested upon our shoulders.