MERMOZ Jean (1901-1936) aviateur.

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  4. Lot n° 188 
Lot n° 188
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Result : 1 318EUR
MERMOZ Jean (1901-1936) aviateur.
Autograph manuscript, L'École, [ca. 1927-1928]; 16 and a quarter pages in-4 with erasures and corrections (small trace of rust on 1st f., slight marg. crack on last). Autobiographical text recounting his apprenticeship as a pilot at the École d'aviation militaire in Istres in 1920. The arrival in Istres. "One October evening in 1920, I set foot for the first time on the soil of Provence without any hesitation: I felt like a conqueror and in fact, my assignment as a student pilot at the Istres Aviation School gave me enough importance, in my eyes, to make it so. He arrived by train at night and met two other soldiers at the station. The three of them walked in the night towards the air force camp, in the mistral wind: "And then there was the Crau, a sort of desert groaning in the wind, populated by olive trees and stunted pines that cut themselves out in black skeletons on the grayish horizon. We said nothing, bent under the gusts, jumping over the ruts of the broken and endless road. When they arrived at the camp, they had to share the straw mattresses of the other soldiers who were already asleep: "I dreamed for a long time of spirals, of propellers, of loops and spins on an ideal plane of which I was the marvelous pilot. It was my first aeronautical night. Installation. The next day, he was assigned to a room. "I was given two regulation outfits, two jackets and two patched blue canvas pants, a pair of shoes dating back to at least 1913 or 1914, but it was with real happiness that I was given the leather helmet, the glasses, the gloves and the flight suit. A little later, my joy was complete when I received the silver student badge. I was only beginning to believe that now I was definitely taking a place in aviation and no longer despaired of becoming an ace!" Commander Voisin's speech: "He was an old man of aviation, a pilot in his decline but with an unbelievable amount of guts and who set an example by continuing to fly every day at the age of 52. He was to die as a true apostle two years later from a fifty meter fall in a spin. Suicide...one might ask? Probably pilot error at an age when reflexes are significantly weakened". Then the chief warrant officer Costa, "fierce and furious Corsican", reminds us about the clothes... "I fell asleep that night impatient of the next day which was necessarily to be for me a revelation, ready to the fight but confident in the future ". My first lesson. I woke up with a bugle call at 6 a.m., had to clean up the "square", and "a new bugle call brought us together in rows in the courtyard with helmets and glasses under our arms. Once the call was over, we made our way to the track. My heart was beating rapidly. I was finally going to make my first contact with the "zinc"! The anxiety that every apprentice pilot feels at the beginning. I was assigned to a team, to a monitor. The Caudron G.3s, embedded in each other, looked like birds at rest. One by one we brought them onto the runway and soon there was the humming of the engines at idle, then their joyful and hectic song as they turned at full throttle, the cracking of the tail of the planes ready to leap stopped in their tracks by the chocks, then their light leaps as they finally took off, eager for space, light and infinity! Motionless, I contemplated without getting tired of this superb release and slowly intoxicated myself with the smell of oil and burnt gasoline that since then I have never ceased to smell with delight on all the airfields that I have haunted. But the dream is interrupted by the order to take a shovel and a broom to clean the oil stains in the hangar. "From time to time, weary of this thankless task, I watched with an envious eye as the planes landed, departed, and rested again, and as helmeted students successively took their places in the cabin, so that, taking advantage of a moment of inattention from the corporal-mechanic who had called me out earlier, I grabbed my helmet and ran off to the runway. He managed to get into a plane with an instructor: "I grabbed the stick, put the throttle on. I grabbed the control stick, put the throttle on and while I kept my feet on the aircraft in the direction of departure, I pushed on the stick to raise the tail as instructed. Everything was going well, the plane was rolling fast and smooth, tail up, so in one movement I brought the stick to me. The plane literally ripped off the ground, pitched up, and climbed the nose to the sky. I heard the monitor shouting animal names. With a movement no less ample, I pushed immediately on the stick what had for effect to make the aircraft dive at full speed towards the ground and to make redouble of intensity the crescendo of the invectives of my monitor", who succeeded in making a forced landing on the pebbles of Crau. After a
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