Airman's Odyssey (53 page)

 

When I took off for Arras I asked to receive before giving. My demand was in vain. We must give before we can receive, and build before we may inhabit. By my gift of blood over Arras I created the love that I feel for my kind as the mother creates the breast by the gift of her milk. Therein resides the mystery. To create love, we must begin by sacrifice. Afterwards, love will demand further sacrifices and ensure us every victory. But it is we who must take the first step. We must be born before we can exist.

I came back from Arras, having woven my ties with my farmer's family. Through the translucent smile of his niece I saw the wheat of my village. Beyond my village I saw my country, and beyond my country all other countries. I came back to a civilization which had chosen Man as the keystone in its arch. I came back to Group 2-33—that Group that had volunteered to fight for Norway.

I dressed this day for the service of a god to whose being I was blind. Arras unsealed my eyes. Like the others of the Group, I am no longer blind. It may be that to-morrow Alias will order me to fly still another sortie. If, at dawn to-morrow, I fight again, I shall know finally why I fight.

 

My eyes have been unsealed, and I want now to remember what it is that they have seen. I feel the need of a simple Credo so that I may remember.

I believe in the primacy of Man above the individual and of the universal above the particular.

I believe that the cult of the universal exalts and heightens our particular riches, and founds the sole veritable order, which is the order of life. A tree is an object of order, despite the diversity of its roots and branches.

I believe that the cult of the particular is the cult of death, for it founds its order upon likeness. It mistakes identity of parts for unity of Being. It destroys the cathedral in order to line up the stones. Therefore I shall fight against all those who strive to impose a particular way of life upon other ways of life, a particular people upon other peoples, a particular race upon other races, a particular system of thought upon other systems of thought.

I believe that the primacy of Man founds the only equality and the only liberty that possess significance. I believe in the equality of the rights of Man inherent in every man. I believe that liberty signifies the ascension of Man. Equality is not identity. Liberty is not the exaltation of the individual against Man. I shall fight against all those who seek to subject the liberty of Man either to an individual or to the mass of individuals.

I believe that what my civilization calls charity is the sacrifice granted Man for the purpose of his own fulfillment. Charity is the gift made to Man present in the insignificance of the individual.

It creates Man. I shall fight against all those who, maintaining that my charity pays homage to mediocrity, would destroy Man and thus imprison the individual in an irredeemable mediocrity.

I shall fight for Man. Against Man's enemies—but against myself as well.

We collected again at midnight to receive orders. Group 2-33 was sleepy. The flame in the fireplace had turned to embers. The Group seemed to be holding up still, but this was an illusion. Hochedé was staring glumly at his precious watch. Pénicot stood against a wall in a corner, his eyes shut. Gavoille, sitting on a table, his glance vacant and legs hanging, was pouting like a child about to cry. The doctor was nodding over a book. Alias alone was still alert, but frighteningly pale, papers before him under the lamplight, discussing something in a low voice with Geley. Discussion, indeed, gives you a false picture. The major was talking. Geley was nodding his head and saying, “Yes, of course.” Geley was hanging on to that “Yes, of course” by main strength. He was clinging more and more eagerly to the major's discourse, like a half-drowned man to the neck of a swimmer. Had I been Alias I should have said without a change of voice, “Captain Geley, you are to be shot at dawn,” and waited for the answer.

The Group had not slept for three nights. It stood like a house of cards.

The major got up, went across to Lacordaire, and pulled him out of a dream in which perhaps he was beating me at chess.

“Lacordaire! You take off at dawn. Ground-scraper sortie.”

“Very good, Major.”

“Better get some sleep.”

“Yes, Major.”

Lacordaire sat down again. The major went out, drawing Geley in his wake as if he were a dead fish on the end of a line. It was nearer a week than three days since Geley had been to bed. Like Alias, not only did he fly his sorties, but he carried part of the burden of responsibility for the Group. Human resistance has its limits: Geley seemed to have crossed his. Yet there they were, the swimmer and his burden, going off to the Staff for phantom orders.

Vezin, the skeptical Vezin, asleep on his feet, came teetering over to me like a somnambulist:

“You asleep?”

“I ...”

I had been lying back in an armchair (for I had found an armchair) and was indeed dropping off. But Vezin's voice bothered me. What was it he had said? “Looks bad, old boy.... Categorically blocked.... Looks bad....”

“You asleep?”

“I.... No.... What looks bad?”

“The war,” he said.

That was news, now! I started to drop off again and murmured vaguely, “What war?”

“What do you mean, ‘What war'!”

This conversation wasn't going to get very far. Ah, Paula! Had air squadrons been issued with Tyrolian nursemaids we should have been put to bed long ago.

The major flung open the door and called out, “All set! We move out to-night!”

Behind him stood Geley, wide-awake. He would put off his “Yes, of course” until to-morrow night. Once again he would somehow find a reserve of strength in himself to help him with the wearying chores of our removal.

The Group got to its feet. The Group said, “Move again? Very good, sir.” What else was there to say?

 

There was nothing to say. We should see to the removal. Lacordaire would stay behind and take off at dawn. If he got back he would meet us at our new base.

There would be nothing to say to-morrow, either. To-morrow, in the eyes of the bystanders, we would be the defeated. The defeated have no right to speak. No more right to speak than has the seed.

 

The End

A
NTOINE
DE
S
AINT-
E
XUPÉRY,
the “Winged Poet,” was born in Lyon, France, in 1900. A pilot at twenty-six, he was a pioneer of commercial aviation and flew in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. His writings include
The Little Prince, Wind, Sand and Stars, Night Flight, Southern Mail,
and
Airman's Odyssey.
In 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission for his French air squadron, he disappeared over the Mediterranean.