Ian Sumner

One of my first posts was on the proposed dramatisation of Maurice Genevoix's novel Ceux de 14 , one of the great novels of the Great War. One of other famous novels of the war, Les croix de bois by Roland Dorgelès (1885-1973) has already been filmed, in 1932 . The book was an autobiographical novel. Dorgelès (real name Lecavalé - the English Wikipedia entry here is ludicrously short; the French one here is much fuller) served in the 74e and the 39e Infantry Regiments in the Argonne and in Artois in 1914-15. He transferred to Aviation, but never served with a front-line squadron, and there is no record of him in the files available online. In 1917 he began working for the satirical magazine Le Canard Enchainé and, with the novel written, rarely revisited his war in print. He published Les croix de bois , based on his experiences, in 1919. It won the Prix Femina, and only just missed out on the Prix Goncourt. You can read the French edition here , or the 1921 US edition ...

When dealing with the history of the development of the French Air Force before and during the Great War, you cannot go far without coming across the name of Charles Tricornet de Rose. A dragoons officer, he was the first man to get his military wings. He was immediately snapped up to work at Estienne's research establishment at Vincennes, where he worked on aircraft armament (even though the Minister of War thought it a waste of time), coming to the conclusion that the gun had to placed in the nose, firing forwards. The problem was the firing through the arc of the propellor, and, with Roland Garros, he was working on a synchronizer system when war broke out.  Garros went his own way, towards the dead end that were his deflector plates. Meanwhile, de Rose, the commander of Fifth Army's aviation, created the first all-fighter squadron, MS12, and filled it with the best pilots he could lay his hands on, including Jean Navarre. Until a viable synchronizer system was work...

This blog has now reached 7,000 page views, and has been in existence for just over twelve months. So I thought I'd take a look at which posts had proved the most popular in terms of page views. Bubbling under, as they say, are: Great War Touring Guide for the Artois Battlefields , Kings of the Air: Aces High , Blue for Remembrance , Mathurin Maheut: an artist at war , and Sources for French Military History . But the top five posts, in reverse order Pop Pickers, are: Around the First Battle of the Marne 1: the battle of the Ourcq The battle of Verdun Napoleon's soldiers Butte de Zouaves 1914 and 2013 2,000 views! Around the First Battle of the Marne was the first of a three-part post on the theme of What I Did On My Holidays in 2008. I was writing a book for Osprey on the battle, so went to see the actual countryside over which it was fought. I tried to include a few tips and hits on using public transport in the area, since that is how we got...

As I mentioned last time , following the end of the Great War, the former ace Charles Nungesser tried to earn a living in the USA, putting on displays and starring as an action hero in feature films. Whatever he took from this activity was apparently not enough - he abandoned film work and went back to flying. A venture into selling planes to the Cuban military ended badly. He decided to take on the Orteig Prize for crossing the Atlantic. Let me say at this juncture that this was not a prize for simply crossing the Atlantic - Nungesser, and Lindbergh after him, were not trying to be the first to cross the ocean, as some sloppy journalists assert. The crossing had already been achieved in 1919 by two Britons, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown. The Orteig Prize was for $25,000, put up by a New York hotelier, Raymond Orteig, for the first non-stop crossing between the two cities. Once he had crashed his aircraft, René Fonck had decided the whole project was too risky, so le...

Following recent posts on injury and death , one might wonder how the survivors managed after the war. And the answer is not always very well. Many pilots carried on doing what they did best - flying, but undoubtedly, many missed the adrenalin rush of combat flying. 'Deep down, in the calm that follows the storm, I sometimes rather regret that all danger is past,' admitted René Fonck. 'Constant peril can be particularly satisfying to anyone prepared to take on the challenge. Sometimes we really miss it and that's when we embark on some lunatic enterprise or other.'  And almost immediately, on 19 January 1919, Jules Védrines embarked on such a lunatic enterprise , landing his aircraft on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris in a feat of bravado and enormously skilful flying. On 21 April, whilst flying from Paris to Rome, his engine failed, and his aircraft crashed at Saint-Rambert d'Albon, near Lyon, killing him and his mechanic. ...

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything new, having been too busy actually completing the manuscript for Kings of the Air (and it still isn't done yet - only a couple of months late so far :-( ). But press on rewardless regardless. In the meantime, I missed celebrating one year of this blog's existence. I have also missed commemorating the milestone of 6,000 page views. It may not be a milestone compared with some, but it's still a pleasing thing to have reached so many over the twelve months that I've been going. So thanks to everyone who's taken a look at the pages over the past year, and here's to the next one. Since this is Oscars week, it immediately brings to mind the very first film to be awarded the Best Picture Oscar, in 1929 - Wings , directed by William Wellman , realeased in 1927, and starring Richard Arlen , 'It Girl' Clara Bow and Charles Rogers . The Wikipedia article on the film is here ; the IMDB page here . W...

So, what are we all doing for Mazagran Day? Mazagran is a small town 4km to the south of Mostaganem, in Algeria. On 3rd February 1840, a large force of fighters under Mustapha ben Tami, one of Abd el-Kadr's principal lieutenants, swept into the town. The size of ben Tami's force is unclear. One (French) account says 10,000 ('by the most moderate accounts'); another (also French) says 1,500-2,000. The French garrison consisted of 123 men from the 10th Company, of 1st Battalion, Infanterie Légère d'Afrique, commanded by Captain Hilaire Lelièvre. General Baron Guéhénec , the commander of the Oran Division, published an account of the action in an order of the day: 'On 3rd February, between 10 and 11 in the morning, a column of eight hundred men attacked the redoubt at Mazagran ... The town, unoccupied, was captured by the enemy in an instant; a lively fire broke out in several places; the enemy artillery opened fire. Night put an end to the fighting. ...