Book on French AF 1939-40?

[Brian]

Wise Owl aka Yves

I give up! Surrender! White flag! I can't keep up with your rhetoric! Perhaps I am too simple, as implied, to understand.

I trust you will excuse me but I must get back to writing my latest effort. I will endeavour to be kind to the French (if you have read any of my books you will note how I have always expanded favourably on those French airmen who did manage to reach British lines (see 'Hurricanes over Tobruk', for example).

Best

Brian (aka Brian Cull)

Originally Posted by Brian

Wise Owl aka Yves

- OLD not wise! You can stuff me soon.

I give up! Surrender! White flag!

- This is probably the sole French victory on England (except in rugger/rugby of course). What a triumph!

I will endeavour to be kind to the French

- No please don't be kind. Just simply tell the truth, not any invented horror stories about French fighter pilots taking shelter under concrete instead of fighting the Hun bombers.

(if you have read any of my books you will note how I have always expanded favourably on those French airmen who did manage to reach British lines (see 'Hurricanes over Tobruk', for example).

- No! Please! We are discussing the 1939-1940 FRENCH (not Free-French) Air Force here! I respect the Free-French (and Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Belgians etc.) very highly, they were morally very brave (far from their homeland and their families, from their children in some cases) and physically too but Tobruk (1942) is not the French Campaign (1940). How can a discussion make any sense if we mix up entirely different periods? Nobody in England ever criticized or libelled the Free-French. To British aircrew the Free-French and the others (Poles etc.) were comrades who flew and fought together with them and took the same risks, or more. Of course they liked each other.

OF COURSE all Britons really LOVE the Free-French (and the other nationalities) who managed to escape to England or Egypt - it wasn't that easy! - and fought side by side together with them from the BoB on. We need no explanation on these obvious feelings.