German pilot who killed Little Prince author says he is sorry

[Judi Lynn]

German pilot who killed Little Prince author says he is sorry


Mar 16, 2008, 16:32 GMT

Paris - The German pilot who shot down the plane carrying Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of the beloved book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), said he deeply regretted his act, the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday.

'If I had known who was in front of me, I would never have shot. Not him!' 88-year-old Horst Rippert says in a book to be published Wednesday. 'I did not shoot at a man I knew. I targetted an enemy aircraft.'

According to Rippert, Saint-Exupery was a model for many German airmen.

'He described wonderfully the sky and the thoughts and feelings of the pilots,' Rippert said. 'His work inspired many of us to become aviators.'

More:
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/news/article_1395612.php/German_pilot_who_killed_Little_Prince_author_says_he_is_sorry

[noamnety]

1. A person who still doesn't get it.

"If I had known who was in front of me, I would never have shot. Not him!'"

He entirely missed the point of the book, I think.

[mrbluto]

9. Give him a break.

Jeesh.

The guy's 88 years old - his expression of regret is quite a ways to come.

Imagine if the enormity of what he'd done hit him now.

I guess it's never too late for grappling with the truth, but I'd be tempted to spare him that at this late date.

Plenty of time in another life to iron that wrinkle out.

[BanzaiBonnie]

2. That one life is to be prized over another

is what keeps us mired in the slime.

To look at each with "God's" eyes will lift us all.

[FARAFIELD]

3. I mean snoopy and the Red baron share a drink

If you believe the song. My dad who was a marine would say thats the way war is.

[rock]

4. Why is Black Adder dressed as a pilot?

(Rowan Atkinson)

[louis-t]

8. "I am winning, now"

One of the funniest movies I have ever seen. "Rat Race" (2000).

[bluestateguy]

5. Anybody who fought for the Nazis ought to apologize

nt

[Judi Lynn]

6. More information on Saint-Exupery:

Wiki
Biography:

Antoine Jean-Baptiste Marie Roger de Saint Exupéry was born in Lyon to an old family of provincial nobility, the third of five children of Marie de Fonscolombe and Count Jean de Saint Exupéry, an insurance broker who died when his famous son was only four.

After failing his final exams at preparatory school, Saint Exupéry entered the École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture. In 1921, he began his military service with the 2nd Regiment of Chasseurs, and was sent to Strasbourg for training as a pilot. The following year, he obtained his license and was offered transfer to the air force. Bowing to the objections of his fiancée's family—the future novelist Louise Leveque de Vilmorin—he instead settled in Paris and took an office job. The couple ultimately broke off the engagement, however, and he worked at several jobs over the next few years without success.

By 1926, Saint Exupéry was flying again. He became one of the pioneers of international postal flight, in the days when aircraft had few instruments and pilots flew by instinct. Later he complained that those who flew the more advanced aircraft had become more like accountants than pilots. He worked on the Aéropostale between Toulouse and Dakar.

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); his career as aviator was also burgeoning, and that same year he flew the Casablanca/Dakar route. He became the director of Cape Juby airfield in Río de Oro, Morocco. In 1929, Saint Exupéry moved to South America, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company. This period of his life is briefly explored in Wings of Courage, an IMAX film by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Historical marker on the home where Saint Exupéry lived in Quebec.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.) That same year, at Grasse, Saint Exupéry married Consuelo Gómez Carillo (née Suncín Sandoval), a widowed Salvadoran writer and artist. It would be a stormy union, as Saint Exupéry traveled frequently and indulged in numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène (Nelly) de Vogüé. De Vogüé would become Saint Exupéry's literary executrix after his death, and also pen a Saint Exupéry biography under the pseudonym Pierre Chevrier.

On December 30, 1935 at 14:45 after a flight of 19 hours and 38 minutes Saint Exupéry, along with his navigator, André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert en route to Saigon. Their plane was a Caudron C-630 Simoun n°7042 (serial F-ANRY). The crash site is believed to have been located in the Wadi Natrun. The team were attempting to fly from Paris to Saigon faster than any previous aviators, for a prize of 150,000 francs. Both survived the landing, but were faced with the frightening prospect of rapid dehydration in the Sahara. Their maps were primitive, vague, and therefore useless. Compounding the problem, the duo had no idea of their location. Grapes, one orange, and a ration of wine (as he romantically wrote later in "Wind, Sand and Stars" ) were their sole supplies. What Saint-Exupéry himself told the press shortly after rescue was that the men had a thermos of very sweet coffee, chocolate, and a handful of crackers (see S. Schiff's excellent "Saint Exupery", New York,1994, p.258), enough to sustain them for one day; beyond that, they had nothing. They had visual and auditory hallucinations. Between days two and three, they were so dehydrated they ceased to sweat. Finally, on day four, a Bedouin on camelback discovered the aviators and administered a local dehydration treatment, saving Saint Exupéry and Prévot's lives. In The Little Prince, when Saint Exupéry speaks of being marooned in the desert in a damaged aircraft, he is making clear and bracing reference to these moments. Saint Exupéry also details the crash, wandering and rescue in his less poetic Wind, Sand, and Stars.

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. During the conflict, he initially flew with the GR II/33 reconnaissance squadron of the Armée de l'Air. After France's armistice with Germany he traveled to the United States. The Saint-Exupérys lived in a penthouse apartment at 240 Central Park South<2> in New York City and Asharoken, NY<3> on Long Island's north shore between January, 1941 and April, 1943, and also in Quebec City for a time in 1942.<4><5> He wrote The Little Prince in New York and Asharoken in the summer and fall of 1942; the manuscript was completed by October.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry

[wtmusic]

7. "The wreckage showed traces neither of shooting nor aerial combat."

The Lockheed P-38, dubbed "the Widowmaker", was a notoriously difficult plane to fly (because of the odd balance of the plane it was virtually impossible to fly on one engine).

[Judi Lynn]

10. For more information see thread in LBN, concerning "Wartime Mystery Solved" here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3231254

[Diclotican]

11. Judi Lynn

Judi Lynn

The little prince was one of my favorites when I was younger:-) And still today, the book are one of my more wonderfully books.. And i have a LOT of books...

I remember once, that some lady who was reading from the book aloud, and even that I am, my friends was over the "Reading to" age do sat down, and for a hour or two, was sitting silent and hearing to the woman who was reading from the book... And this book was one I just had to get a copy of.. I believe I still have it somewhere..

I believe I should find the book, or get a copy and maybe read it for my uncle kids someday. I know my oldest nephew like to be read to... Even that he is a "big" boy at age 10...


Diclotican

Sorry my bad English , not my native language

[Judi Lynn]

12. Reading that story to your young relatives would add something they'll never forget, just like your

first time hearing the book. It would be a tremendous time to share.

Truly a book in its own class. Nothing like it anywhere.