France’s Defeat and Occupation

France’s Defeat and Occupation is recalled as a shattering reversal: Romain Gary entered the crisis convinced that France would recover, then discovered that the military mission he had undertaken over Bordeaux served a political story he had mistaken for truth. The episode carries the war from the airfields of France toward exile and continued service abroad, and leaves the narrator measuring his actions against the demands of a mother who expected resistance, not merely literary success.

Before the Collapse

Gary’s conviction survived even as the German offensive advanced. On June 13, 1940, he returned from a bombing mission in a Bloch-210 and landed at Tours to refuel; German aircraft attacked the airfield, and he was wounded. He regarded the rapid German advance as no proof of final victory. In his view, France had recovered from crises before, and its military leaders would turn the enemy’s progress into a trap.

That confidence was tied to a deep sense of belonging. Gary describes his faith in France’s destiny as inherited and instinctive, despite being born in Russia and having been naturalized only three years earlier. The question of belonging had already become tangible in his military career: after training, he learned that a recent naturalization could bar a man from becoming a flying officer, even though the rule was not consistently applied. He had been told that his marks justified a commission, so the explanation made the institution’s treatment of him seem not simply personal but discriminatory.

The Bordeaux Patrols

At Bordeaux-Mérignac Airfield, Gary and two other crews were assigned low-altitude patrols over working-class districts. Their briefing presented the patrols as protection for Philippe Pétain, who supposedly intended to continue fighting Germany and prevent a Communist seizure of power. Gary accepted this account. He flew with loaded machine guns, prepared to act against a crowd judged suspicious, and believed that the old Marshal embodied military honor.

The account later becomes an indictment of the deception. Gary came to understand that the supposed threat in the streets had diverted attention from the political surrender already taking shape. He remained convinced that the misleading explanation had originated with well-meaning colonels at Mérignac rather than as an order from the top. The distinction matters to his recollection: he identifies himself as a willing participant in the patrols, but also as someone whose loyalty and trust had been exploited. His retrospective recognition turns the patrol from an uncomplicated act of patriotism into evidence of how defeat could be made to look like continued resistance.

Escape and Continued Service

After the defeat, Gary sought a way to reach England and continue fighting. In Casablanca, he joined two former flying-school trainees, Forsans and Daligot, in searching for passage. The harbor was guarded, and they believed the ships carrying Polish troops had already left. Their prospects had begun to seem exhausted when a Polish corporal told them that the cargo ship Oakrest was due to sail at midnight with Polish troops from North Africa.

The three trainees used borrowed Polish clothing and Gary’s shouted Polish orders to get past the harbor guards and onto the gangplank, with help from Polish officers on duty. The escape marks a change in the direction of his wartime life: the collapse that had made service in France impossible did not end his effort to take part in the war. He reached a route toward England by joining a Polish contingent rather than through an authorized French posting.

Occupation and the Meaning of the Defeat

The consequences of France’s defeat continued to shape Gary’s sense of what he owed. While serving abroad, he received his mother’s increasingly brief letters, including assurances that she was well and taking insulin. Her expressions of pride did not lessen his sense that, while France remained occupied, she expected acts of war rather than recognition for his writing. When an English publisher accepted his novel, he imagined the news as a first victory for them both; her silence about it struck him as a reproach.

The memoir therefore places the political defeat beside a private test of loyalty. Gary had believed that France could not lose, had flown patrols under a false account of the danger, and then had to seek another way to fight. In retrospect, the decisive change is not simply the loss of territory or military position: it is his recognition that sincere devotion could be enlisted in the service of a deception, even as the same devotion impelled him to continue resisting from abroad.