Airman's Odyssey

Sometimes I read books for silly reasons. My first exposure to St. Exupery was reading The Little Prince in high school French class. At that time the teacher told us that St. Exupery was also famous for his book Wind, Sand and Stars , which is included in this trilogy. I was more interested in the last story in the book, Flight to Arras because I thought it would compliment my hobby of building model airplanes. And there is the silly reason for reading this book.

On several shelves in my baseme

Sometimes I read books for silly reasons. My first exposure to St. Exupery was reading The Little Prince in high school French class. At that time the teacher told us that St. Exupery was also famous for his book Wind, Sand and Stars , which is included in this trilogy. I was more interested in the last story in the book, Flight to Arras because I thought it would compliment my hobby of building model airplanes. And there is the silly reason for reading this book.

On several shelves in my basement lie approximately 50 unopened model kits that I bought on eBay ten years ago. Among them is a World War II French Bloch 174. I had read on one of my favorite time wasting model building websites that this kit was a model of the very aircraft St. Exupery flew in Flight to Arras. Naturally I suspected it wasn't true because the Internet was the source. In Flight to Arras St. Exupery recounts a dangerous reconnaissance mission while flying for the French Air Force Unit 2/33. He mentions 2/33 and its men several times. Curiosity compelled me to go down cellar and study the unopened box for the Bloch 174 model more closely. It is a French kit and most of the box is printed in French. It offers options to build two aircraft, one of which was from "Groupe de Reconnaissance II/33". I realized that "II/33" was Roman numeral two, hence "II/33" was actually "2/33 "and was elated to learn that the model plane which has been waiting to be built since 2006 is truly the one from St. Exupery's story, Flight to Arras. French model kit of a French airplane flown by a famous French author; what else could it be?

If you don't like war stories you won't like Flight to Arras. However, I actually found it useful in my everyday life. I help teach an adult religious education class and cited it in one meeting. I thought the members would all appreciate a break from the Bible and Roman Catholic catechism. We were discussing charity and St. Exupery wrote a beautiful sentiment about charity in Flight to Arras. To paraphrase: Charity is a gift that man gives to God. Everyone one in the class perked upon hearing that. Also, it made me look smarter too by dropping a mellifluous name like Antoine de Saint Exupery -even if they had never heard of him.

My high school French teacher did well by dropping the title of the first book in this trilogy, Wind, Sand and Stars, so many times. It is a captivating tale of St. Exupery's exploits as an airmail pilot in the 1920s and 1930s. He survives flying through cyclones over South America and then a crash in the Sahara Desert. But the story gets even better as he, like many of his contemporaries, journeys to Spain to witness the Spanish Civil War.

The second part of the trilogy is a novella entitled Night Flight. I hated the main character. He was jerk who enjoyed sending men to their deaths under the pretense that fear would make them better pilots and that although he actually loved them he must never let them know.

I will probably be the last person ever to borrow this book from the Boston Public Library. It was published in 1942 and is not the edition pictured above. It is hardbound and the blue dye on the frayed cover stained the cuff of my coat sleeve in a rainstorm. Ultimately the brittle binding broke and the cover came off in my hands.