Eugene Bullard

Eugene Jacques Bullard
Bullard, as a French army corporal
Nickname(s)	Black Swallow of Death
Born	(1895-10-09)October 9, 1895 Columbia, Georgia, United States
Died	October 12, 1961(1961-10-12) (aged 66) New York City, United States
Buried	Flushing Cemetery 40°45′6″N 73°47′58″W
Allegiance	France
Service/branch	French Foreign Legion French Air Service
Years of service	1914–1919, 1940
Battles/wars	World War I World War II
Awards	Légion d'honneur Médaille militaire Croix de Guerre Croix de Guerre Croix du combattant volontaire 1914-1918 Insigne des blessés militaires Médaille Interalliée 1914–1918 Médaille commémorative de la guerre 1914-1918 Médaille commémorative de la guerre 1939–1945 Insignia for the Military Wounded

Eugene Jacques Bullard (9 October 1895 – 12 October 1961), the first African American military pilot, was born Eugene James Bullard. His life has been surrounded by many legends. Bullard was one of only two black combat pilots in World War I (the other being Ahmet Ali Çelikten).

Early life

Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, one of the 10 children of William O. Bullard, nicknamed "Big Chief Ox", and his wife Josephine Thomas, a Creek Indian. He was a student at Twenty-eighth Street School in 1901-1906, where he learned to read and write. As a teenager, Eugene Bullard stowed away on a ship bound for Scotland, seeking to escape racial discrimination (he later claimed to have witnessed his father's narrow escape from lynching). Bullard arrived at Aberdeen before making his way south to Glasgow. He became a boxer in England and also worked in a music hall.

War experience

Eugene Bullard, posing in uniform with his pet monkey Jimmy (1917)

Bullard's exhibit at the National Museum of the United States Air Force

On a visit to Paris, Bullard decided to settle in France. At the outbreak of World War I, according to his personnel file at the Ministry of defense of France, he enlisted on October 19, 1914 in the 1st regiment of Foreign Legion (1st Etranger). As a machine gunner he was in combat at Somme in April 1915, when three Foreign Legion regiments were decimated and converged into one, and also at Arras and Champagne the same year.

Due to the high rate of casualties in 1915, the Foreign Legion was put in reserve. As for American volunteers, they were allowed to transfer to regular French Army units, including the 170th Line Infantry Regiment. 170th had a reputation of crack troops and was nicknamed Les Hirondelles de la Mort, or The Swallows of Death. Bullard opted to serve in the 170th Regiment to which fact testifies his collar military insignia.

After hearing about the horrors of the trench war in France, Bullard's father wrote to the U.S. secretary of state pleading for help in order to bring his son back home. He said that Eugene was born in October 1895, not 1894, and simply added himself a year when he enlisted. However, the French government officials decided that Bullard was old enough to enlist. As a part of the 170th Infantry, Bullard fought and was wounded in 1916 during the Battle of Verdun.

After recovering from his wounds, Bullard volunteered on October 2, 1916 to join the French Air Service (Aéronautique Militaire) as an air gunner, and went through training at the Aerial Gunnery School in Cazaux, Gironde. Later, he went through flight training at Châteauroux and Avord and received his pilot's license number 6950 from the Aéro-Club de France on May 5, 2017. As many others, Bullard wanted to join the famous aero squadron N.124, the Lafayette Escadrille, but in the beginning of the 1916 having thirty-eight American pilots it has stopped accepting new flyers, and he joined 269 American aviators at the Lafayette Flying Corps of the French Air Service, which was a designation rather then a unit. American volunteers flew with French pilots in different pursuit and bomber/reconnaissance aero squadrons at the Western Front. Edmund L. Gros, who facilitated the incorporation of American pilots in the French Air Service, listed in October 1917 issue of Flying, an official publication of the Aero Club of America, Bullard's name in the member roster of the Lafayette Flying Corps.

On June 28, 1917 Bullard was promoted to the rank of corporal. According to the literature, on August 27, 1917 he was assigned to the Escadrille N.93 based at Beauzée-sur-Aire south of Verdun. The squadron was equipped with Nieuport and Spad planes that bore a flying duck nose art. Bullard's service record also includes the Escadrille N.95. He took part in about twenty combat missions, and is sometimes credited with shooting down one or two German aircraft (sources differ). However, it should be noted that French authorities did not confirm the shootings of the German planes by Bullard.

When the United States entered the war, the United States Army Air Service convened a medical board to recruit Americans serving in the Lafayette Flying Corps to the Air Service of the American Expeditionary Forces. According to the literature, Bullard went through the medical examination, but was not called in, allegedly since only White pilots were allowed to serve. As another story goes, while being on short break from duty in Paris, Bullard engaged in a fight with a French officer and was punished by being transferred to the service battalion of the 170th in January 1918. Indeed, Bullard was transferred to the 170th as a noncombatant and served past the Armistice being finally discharged on October 24, 1919.

For his service Bullard was awarded the Croix de Guerre, Médaille militaire, Croix du combattant volontaire 1914–1918, and Médaille de Verdun, among others.

Life in Paris

Following his discharge, Bullard returned to Paris. He found employment as a drummer and a nightclub manager in "Le Grand Duc" and eventually owned his own nightclub, "L'Escadrille". He married Marcelle Straumann from a wealthy family in Paris in 1923, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1935, with Bullard gaining custody of their two surviving daughters Jacqueline and Lolita. A popular jazz venue "Le Grand Duc" gained him many famous friends, including Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes and French flying ace Charles Nungesser. When World War II began in September 1939, Bullard, who spoke German, agreed to a request to spy on German agents thought to frequent his nightclub.

With the German invasion of France in May 1940, Bullard took his daughters and fled from Paris. He volunteered with the 51st Infantry defending Orléans when he met an officer whom he knew from fighting at Verdun. He was wounded again but was able to escape to neutral Spain, and in July 1940 he returned to the United States.

Bullard spent some time in a New York hospital and never fully recovered from his wound. Moreover, he found the fame he enjoyed in France had not followed him to the United States. He worked as a perfume salesman, a security guard, and as an interpreter for Louis Armstrong, but his back injury severely restricted him. He attempted to regain his nightclub in Paris, but his property had been destroyed during the war. He received a financial settlement from the French government, which he used to buy an apartment in New York's Harlem.

Peekskill Riots

Main article: Peekskill Riots

In 1949, a concert held by black entertainer and activist Paul Robeson in Peekskill, New York to benefit the Civil Rights Congress resulted in the Peekskill Riots. These were caused in part by members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion chapters, who considered Robeson a communist sympathizer. The concert was scheduled to take place on August 27 in Lakeland Acres, north of Peekskill. Before Robeson arrived, however, a mob attacked the concert-goers with baseball bats and stones. Thirteen people were seriously injured before police put an end to it. The concert was then postponed until September 4. The re-scheduled concert took place without incident, but as concert-goers drove away, they passed through long lines of hostile locals, who threw rocks through their windshields.

Eugene Bullard was among those attacked after the concert. He was knocked to the ground and beaten by an angry mob, which included members of the state and local law enforcement. The attack was captured on film and can be seen in the 1970s documentary The Tallest Tree in Our Forest and the Oscar winning documentary narrated by Sidney Poitier, Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist. None of the assailants was ever prosecuted. Graphic pictures of Eugene Bullard being beaten by two policeman, a state trooper and a concert goer were published in Susan Robeson's biography of her grandfather, The Whole World in His Hands: a Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson.

Later life

Bullard in his later years, wearing the croix de guerre fourragère on his shoulder, 170th regiment distinction

In the 1950s, Bullard was a relative stranger in his own homeland. His daughters had married, and he lived alone in his apartment, which was decorated with pictures of his famous friends and a framed case containing his fifteen French war medals. His final job was as an elevator operator at the Rockefeller Center, where his fame as the “Black Swallow of Death” was unknown.

In 1954, the French government invited Bullard to Paris to help rekindle the everlasting flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe. In 1959 he was made a chevalier (knight) of the Légion d'honneur. While this gained him some recognition, his last years were spent in relative obscurity and poverty in New York City.

He died in New York City of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961 at age 66. Eugene Bullard was buried with military honors in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery in the New York City borough of Queens.

Legacy

Eugene Bullard received fifteen decorations from the government of France. He became a knight of the Legion of Honor (Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur}, which is France's most coveted award. He was also awarded the Médaille militaire, another highest distinction in France.

In 1972, Bullard's exploits as a pilot were retold in a biography, The Black Swallow of Death.

On 23 August 1994, thirty-three years after his death, and seventy-seven years to the day after the physical that should have allowed him to fly for his own country, Eugene Bullard was posthumously commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

The 2006 movie Flyboys loosely portrayed Bullard and his comrades in the World War I Lafayette Flying Corps.

Decorations and awards

United States Award

Bullard's medals at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio

• Voluntary Enlistment Medal (World War I)
• American Volunteer Medal
• World War I Commemorative Medal
• World War I Victory medal
• Voluntary Enlistment Medal (World War II)
• World War II commemorative medal

France

Further reading

• Carisella, P. J., and James W. Ryan. The Black Swallow of Death: The Incredible Story of Eugene Jacques Bullard, the World's First Black Combat Aviator. Boston: Marlborough House; distributed by Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1972.
• Cockfield, Jamie. All Blood Runs Red . American Heritage, Vol. 46, No. 1, February-March 1995.
• Greenly, Larry W. Eugene Bullard: World's First Black Fighter Pilot. 2012.
• Gordon, Dennis. The Lafayette Flying Corps: The American Volunteers in the French Air Service in World War One. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military/Aviation History Pub, 2000. ISBN 9780764311086
• Harris, Henry Scott. All Blood Runs Red: Life and Legends of Eugene Jacques Bullard: First Black American Military Aviator. NOOK Book (eBook): eBookIt, 2012. ISBN 9781456612993
• Jouineau, André. Officers and Soldiers of the French Army 1918: 1915 to Victory. Paris: Histoire & Collections, 2008.
• Lloyd, Craig. Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz Age Paris. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8203-2192-3
• Mason, Herbert Molloy Jr. High Flew the Falcons: The French Aces of World War I. New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1965.
• Ribbe, Claude Eugène Bullard: récit. Paris, Le Cherche Midi, 2012.
• Sloan, James J. Wings of Honor, American Airmen in World War I: A Compilation of All United States Pilots, Observers, Gunners and Mechanics Who Flew against the Enemy in the War of 1914-1918. Atglen, Pa: Schiffer Military/Aviation History Pub, 1994.
• Smith, Mary. The Incredible Life of Monsieur Bullard. Ebony, December 1967, pp. 120-28.

External links

• Eugene Jacques Bullard on the US Air Force museum site
• American Volunteers in the French Foreign Legion, 1914-1917: Eugene Jacques Bullard
• Eugene Jacques Bullard at Find A Grave