Notes d'un pilote disparu (1916-1917)
Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1918. Octavo, original printed wrappers, vii, 228 pp. (including table of contents at the end of the book). An excellent unopened copy. Jean Marcel Eugène Béraud, known as Lieutenant Marc, was a law and political science student when war broke out in 1914 and joined the army as a pilot from 1916 to 1917. Throughout his time as a pilot during World War One, he wrote a collection of notes which, for the longest time, had been considered the posthumous memoirs of a young aviator lost in the air above France. However, Villars' long anonymity can be easily explained. Indeed, Béraud-Villars was so critical of the French military and of the manufacturers who supplied the aircraft he and his fellow pilots had to fly with that, when Notes d'un pilote disparu (1916-1917) was first published in 1918, he could not afford to have his name affiliated with his work. Fifty years after the publication of Lieutenant Marc's memoirs, Jean Béraud-Villars reclaimed his authorship.
Notes d'un pilote disparu brings forth the character and life of French reconnaissance and pursuit pilots from the time of Verdun to August 1917, providing the reader with one of the first first-hand accounts by a combatant written during the fighting of the Great War.
Jean Marcel Eugène-Béraud was awarded the Legion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. He became a historian and published several books including Timour (1936), L'Empire de Gaô - Un État soudanais aux XVe et XVIe siècles (1942), Les Normands en Méditerranée (1952), Le Colonel Lawrence ou la Recherche de l'absolu (1955). Item #2524
Price (AUD): $750.00