Hi I'm the History Guy, I have a degree in history and I love
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The world is currently remembering the 100th anniversary of the war to end all wars, more
than 16 million people died in the First World War fought between July of 1914 and November of 1918,
and there are many forgotten stories of that war that deserved to be remembered, but one of the
more interesting one is the little known fact that one of the greatest heroes of the French army in
the first World War was in fact an American, and while he was a great hero in France he was barely
acknowledged in the United States, and that's too bad because not only is his a story worth
remembering but it's a story from which America could certainly learn. And so today we are going
to remember the extraordinary story of Eugene Jacques Bullard, The Black Swallow of Death.
Eugene Bullard was born in 1895 in Columbus Georgia, the son of William Bullard who had
come from the French island of Martinique and spoke French in his home. The family history was
interesting, they had been slaves in the French colony of Haiti and had been moved from Haiti
to Martinique to avoid the slave rebellion in Haiti. Eventually his family had escaped
and moved to the United States where they found refuge with the Creek Indians. Bullards mother
was a Creek Indian although she died while he was young. At the age of 12 he stowed away on
a German freighter bound for Scotland he was trying to escape racial hatred in the United
States where he had seen his father nearly lynched. His goal was to move to France where
his father had told him that people were accepted regardless of the color of their
skin. In Scotland he became a successful boxer and eventually earned enough money to fulfill
his dream and move to Paris. When the Great War came to France he was too young to enlist
but on his 19th birthday he signed up with other Americans to join the famed French Foreign Legion.
With the French Foreign Legion he saw some of the most terrible fighting of that terrible war,
including the horrible Battle of the Somme and the bloody Champagne Offensive. What was really
surprising at the time was that he survived in some of these battles his regiment took as much as
80% losses. By the end of 1915 the losses couldn't be replaced and his regiment was dissolved but the
surviving volunteers were allowed to join French Metropolitan Army units, and so Boulard chose to
join the 170th Infantry, one of the most elite units of the French army. The unit symbol was a
Swallow and they were known as the Les Hirondelles De La Mort, “The Swallows of Death”, and as the
only black man in the regiment he therefore got his famous nickname, The Black Swallow of Death.
With the 107th he saw a new definition of war, as he was taken to the Battle of
Verdun. A veteran of some of the worst fighting in history he said of Verdun,
“No one has ever seen anything like Verdun. Not ever before, nor ever since”.
In march of 1916 he took a terrible wound at Verdun, so terrible that they thought
he might never walk again. He was awarded two of the highest military honors in the French
army the Croix de Guerre and the Medal Militare, he was a bona fide war hero.
You might think that as a veteran of the Somme and Verdun and having won to the highest awards
in French history and having taken a grievous wound that Bullard had done his bit for the war,
especially considering that he wasn't even a French citizen,
but he was not the sort of person to give up. No longer fit for the infantry he signed up for
the French Flying Corps and on May 5th 1917 he earned his wings. He was the first known
black fighter pilot in the world and one of only two known in the First World War.
He flew with over 200 other American volunteers in the famed Lafayette Flying Corps and flew
over 20 combat missions, but then he would again see the flaws in the country of his
birth. While he was always accepted in the French military when America entered the war
he with other Lafayette pilots tried to join the American Flying Corps. The other pilots
were accepted but Bullard was not because it seemed America would not stomach a black pilot.
Later he got into an altercation with a French officer and was booted from the French Flying
Corps back to the 170th regiment where he finished the war. When he finished he was one of France's
most decorated warriors, a national hero and yet still virtually unknown in the United States.
After the war he worked in a famous French nightclub and eventually started one of his
own called the L’Escadrille, he became friends with some of the most famous people of his day
Josephine Baker, F Scott Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong. He married a countess and they
had two daughters although that eventually ended in divorce. It was a good time but
in 1940 war again came to France. As he was fluent in both French and German he
would gather intelligence for the French in his nightclub from the German people
that would still patronize his nightclub but as the German army approached Paris
he escaped with his daughter south to Orleans and joined the French 41st regiment. There in
a brave attack where every other member of his unit was killed and he was grievously wounded,
his friends realized that if he was captured by the Gestapo they would kill him, and so
they managed to smuggle he and his daughters through neutral Spain back to the United States.
Unlike France, in the United States he wasn't famous and his wound was serious and took a long
time to recover. It was difficult to find work but eventually he found employment as an elevator
operator in New York's Rockefeller Center. Still unknown and unacknowledged to the United States
he was still a great hero in France, and in 1959 his service in two wars was recognized when France
made him a Knight of the Legion Honor, the highest award for service to the country of France. It was
only then that he received some notice in the United States being interviewed on NBC's Today
Show, he wore his uniform as an elevator operator because of course he operated the elevator in the
same building in which the Today Show was filmed. When he passed away in 1961 he was buried under
the tricolor flag with French full military honors by the Federation of French War officers. What
is maybe most amazing about Eugene Bullard is that he never stopped loving the United States,
this is a country that he had to flee for fear for his life because of racial hatred a country that
had denied him the right to fight on their behalf, and yet in 1959 when he was awarded the Legion of
Honor he said “America is my mother, and I love my Mother, but as far as France is concerned, she is
my mistress and you love your mistress more than you love your mother, but in a different way”.
America finally showed him a little of that love back when in 1994 they posthumously made
him a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, acknowledging that they had erred when they had
denied him that right 77 years earlier. That honor came 33 years after his death, a late
acknowledgement from the country of his birth, and the country that he never stopped loving.
I’m the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, five minutes of history
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