Book Review: "Flight to Arras" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Suddenly an absurd image comes to me: stopped clocks. Every clock, stopped. Church clocks, station clocks, Mantelpiece clocks in empty houses. The clock-maker has fled: in the window of his shop, an ossuary of dead clocks. It's war...no one winds the clocks. No one gathers the beetroot. No one repairs the carts. And the water, captured and piped to quench thirst or to whiten fine Sunday lace for village girls, runs into a spreading pool outside the church. And we die, in summer..."

- "Flight to Arras" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine de Saint-Exupery is probably most famous for writing one of the greatest children's books of all time. The Little Prince is quite the achievement of literature and each time I recommend it to someone, no matter their age (there was once a human who was only six years' old but a very good reader) they have absolutely loved it (and in the case of the small child, refused to give the book back because it was so beautiful). Flight to Arras is another beautiful book which showcases Saint-Exupery's writing again, at its best.

It's set during the year 1940 and during the French collapse under Germany in World War 2. The author recounts his time in the air force and seems to know that there are missions that are inexplicably doomed. More than often, we see him meditate on duty, thinking about whether he is going to come back home or not. This I found quite chilling because as we all know, Antoine de Saint-Exupery did disappear in his aircraft one day and never returned. However, his mission in this book revolves around the northern city of Arras and is basically suicidal. He writes it with a deep meditative philosophy, often wondering about the here and there, whether he will come back, wondering what it means to serve his country. It is written quite beautifully.

Throughout the book, we are reminded about this suicidal mission as the author flies low and unnarmed. He becomes afraid of above and afraid of below, he notices how the sky is both a friend and a foe - he often speaks of it as it is a tomb. It can get rather dark in there as the author notices the mission is dangerous even though he also acknowledges his duty (and its futility). He talks about the way death may be meaningless and the terror of that meaningless opposite what he knows he must do, regardless of how he feels about it. This is a very serious book from a man who once wrote about meeting a small child wearing a crown in the desert.

Looking down from the cockpit, he sees the collapse of an entire civilisation. Villages burn, columns of refugees clog the roads, and the French army retreats in disarray. Yet he writes with compassion, not despair. The destruction becomes a symbol of the fragility of human achievement, the way centuries of order and culture can be erased overnight. Honestly, it's quite sad and he definitely defines what it means to be a soldier with a conscience. He makes the experience very real through these images blended with his comments and philosophies. These images are interspersed with the brotherhood of the pilots - their dry humour and their shared horrors are integrated into the experience of the war through the eyes of this troubled author.

During his mission, mechanical failures and enemy fire push him to the brink of death. Yet instead of panic, he feels an almost mystical calm. He describes moments when danger strips life to its essence, revealing what truly matters: loyalty, compassion, and the miracle of consciousness itself. I am not going to lie but only Saint-Exupery can make a near-death experience look so serene. There's something about the way this guy writes that draws you into the atmosphere of the story and here we have one of the ways he does that. The panic that sets in is overtaken by the mysticism of life - like when you're entire life flashes before your eyes. It's quite grounding and intriguing to read about the feelings of people who get this close to the end without dropping over it.

All in all, I found this book to be a profound look at war. It isn't gory or dark like other books about war, but instead investigates the troubled mind of someone having to go on a mission where they are nearly certain that they are going to die.