Wartime author mystery 'solved' {St-Exupery}

[eppur_se_muova]

Source: BBC

A former Luftwaffe fighter pilot may have ended the 64-year-old mystery surrounding the death of French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

The author of The Little Prince disappeared during a wartime aerial reconnaissance mission in July 1944.

In 2004, wreckage from his plane was found off the coast of Marseilles, but there was no indication of how he died.

Now former German pilot Horst Rippert says he fears he may have shot down the author - though he cannot be sure.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7300489.stm

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edit for disgraceful misspelling

[xchrom]

1. oooh -- now that's interesting.

i love the little prince -- and have followed the attempts to solve what happened to him.

[libbygurl]

2. Fascinating! Thanks for posting this! nt

[libbygurl]

3. Ironic-ex-pilot Rippert, who thinks he shot down St Exupery's plane, was a fan of the French...

...aviator-writer! He was afraid the press would 'massacre' him if they knew he'd done it!

How sad. And he had to keep this secret with him all these years.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Such is what war does to people ...

The Man He Killed
by Thomas Hardy

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."

[Judi Lynn]

5. For more information on this story, see my thread in "editorials" here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x345664

Also posted a couple of photos of the author.

[catnhatnh]

6. Cute story but more truthy than truthful....

I read another thread yesterday that identified the book "The Little Prince" as being published in 1943 and this pilot having shot him down in the middle of 1944....it sounds more like retrospective regret the contemporaneous...at the time he shot St. Eupery down I doubt he had heard about, much less read him....

[AP]

7. St. Exupery (44 when he died) was famous before '43

His first story L'Aviateur (The Aviator) was published in the magazine Le Navire d'Argent. In 1929, he published his first book, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail); ... In 1931, Vol de Nuit (Night Flight)—the first of his major works and winner of the Prix Femina—was published and made his name. (It covers, in concentrated and dramatized version, his experiences with the Aeroposta.) ... Saint Exupéry continued to write and fly until the beginning of World War II, part of a small number of aviator-authors of the time that also included James Salter, James Dickey and Randall Jarrell.


Books:

L'Aviateur (1926)
Courrier Sud (1929) (translated into English as Southern Mail)
Vol de Nuit (1931) (translated into English as Night Flight)
Terre des Hommes (1939) (translated into English as Wind, Sand and Stars)
Pilote de Guerre (1942) (translated into English as Flight to Arras)
Lettre à un Otage (1943) (translated into English as Letter to a Hostage)
Le Petit Prince (1943) (translated into English as The Little Prince)
Citadelle (1948) (translated into English as The Wisdom of the Sands), posthumous
Lettres de jeunesse (1953), posthumous
Carnets (1953), posthumous
Lettres à sa mère (1955), posthumous
Écrits de guerre (1982), posthumous
Manon, danseuse (2007), posthumous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exupéry

[nodehopper]

10. not true

S.E. had been publishing since 1929, and was quite renowned. I doubt Little Prince would have been read in schools anyway--maybe kindergardens--while his aviator books probably were on the curriculum for schools.

[nodehopper]

8. I read about this years ago in a Soviet journal

I grew up in the former USSR, and when I was, like, 12, there was an article in a Soviet literary/culture journal about a German pilot who was a big fan of Exupery's work, and how he accidentally discovered that he was the one who shot him down. I am so confused as to why it seems to be like it's a news story just coming out now.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Interesting. Wonder if they're actually the same guy or not?

There's still a little room for uncertainty, it seems to me.

[burrowowl]

9. K&R

Wrestling with that he might have shot down St Ex must be damn hard!