Word: exup
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Flight to Arras is the most important book yet written about this war. Like all Saint-Exupéry's books, it is a description of a flight-a pilot's reflections borne upon the arc of a few hours' intense action. But this particular flight, in which Saint-Exupéry faced death, he transmutes into a magic text, at times almost Biblical, of why men fight, and how they feel in the presence of death...
...afternoon in late May 1940, when the French collapse "was so entire that death itself seemed to us absurd," Pilot Saint-Exupéry, his observer Dutertre and his young gunner were ordered to make a reconnaissance sortie over Arras. They were one of 50 reconnaissance crews in all France. Of the 23 which comprised their group, 17 had already perished. Their chances of survival even on a good day were one in three, and this sortie was an "awkward"' one. The information, even if they brought it back, would be useless, even if it were to reach...
...Dying. While he got ready for the flight, a deep longing possessed Saint-Exupéry to survive into the night, wherein "I might discover why it is I ought to die." He felt "like a Christian abandoned by grace." He knew he was about to do a job "honorably," but "as one honors ancient rites when they have no longer any significance...
...with the controls frozen (it was 60 below zero), and with a village "a handful of gravel" beneath them, Dutertre sighted six enemy planes a quarter of a mile, ten seconds, below, and these planes swept upward. With an effort which at that altitude left him gently fainting. Saint-Exupéry freed the frozen rudder and lost his enemies...
They flew over the chaotic tragedies of a landscape which from that height was as unpeopled as if it were in a museum case: "All that I see is the bric-a-brac of another age exhibited under a pure crystal without tremor." Saint-Exupéry, in his mind, revisited strange depths of his childhood; and meditated upon death, defeat, victory, treachery...