Luftwaffe

The Luftwaffe is the German air force in the memoir, where it enters the narrator’s story through a personal warning and a wartime air raid. Its presence links his mother’s calm certainty about his survival to the actual danger of the air war, which wounded him during the campaign in France.

An Implied Threat

Before the events at Tours, Romain Gary’s mother draws attention to the open cockpits of the aircraft he flies and worries that the cold air will harm his throat. He answers that a sore throat would be a fortunate outcome if the Luftwaffe were to attack him. His mother dismisses the danger and assures him that nothing will happen to him. The exchange makes the Luftwaffe an anticipated threat, while bringing into focus the contrast between her confidence and the risks of his service.

The Raid at Tours

On June 13, 1940, Gary was returning from a bombing mission in a Bloch-210 and landed at Tours to refuel. German Heinkels and Junkers bombed the airfield at that moment, and he was wounded in the leg. He considered the wound minor and left a fragment in his thigh, imagining that his mother would take pride in it when he next went on leave. The air raid thus turned the danger previously discussed between them into a concrete consequence of the campaign.

Role in the Memoir

The Luftwaffe’s appearances are brief but consequential: it figures first in the mother’s protective reassurance, then in the attack that wounds her son. These moments sit alongside Gary’s initially confident belief that Germany’s rapid advances would not defeat France. The contrast between expectation and events gives the Luftwaffe narrative force without making it the focus of a sustained account of military operations.