I’m so excited to share this post! This letter is so wonderful, I considered waiting to share it until Christmas. But waiting is all wrong when wonder is at stake.

Musical accompaniment by Joséphine Baker, Charles Trenet, and Fréhel.

 

In 1918,  a letter arrived at the French front. It appears it was not addressed to a particular soldier–perhaps it was part of a wartime program where civilians write a letter to Any Soldier to thank them for their bravery and hopefully cheer them up a little.  This initial letter was from a British, Canadian, or an American girl named Marian, and she had written in French.

That’s what we can deduce from the letter we do have, which is from a French airman named Pierre who responded to Marian. He does not know her but he’s very complimentary about her French letter and responds in perfect English. He writes to her like an old friend and gives a most interesting description of his daily activities. Even better, he painted delightful watercolor illustrations throughout the letter! The watercolors are beautifully done.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Archives doesn’t have the details of this letter. They only know that it was written by a French airman who was doing aerial observation in March of 1918. Pierre signed the letter, but his signature is a bit hard to read. The museum attributes it to “Pierre Savoy [spelling?]”

But– I think I’ve identified the real author of this remarkable letter!

Before I tell you, read the letter for yourself first. After the last image–where you can examine the signature for yourself–I’ll tell you who I think the author really is.

Source: National Air and Space Museum Archives | World War I Illustrated Letter

I couldn’t read the signature any better than the people at the National Air and Space Museum, but I doubted Pierre’s last name was Savoy. I found a list of World War I French flying aces but there was no obvious match. But when I looked more closely, I saw the name of the man I think wrote this letter: Pierre Le Roy de Boiseaumarié.

I’ll present my evidence and let you judge.

• During the war, Pierre Le Roy de Boiseaumarié was nicknamed Baron Le Roy.
• He was at the front from February 1917 until he was seriously wounded in June 1918. So the date of the letter fits.
• The first name is a match.
• The museum guessed his last name was Savoy, but there were no French flying aces whose last name was Savoy. Also the first two letters are a little distorted. Could they be L-E rather than S-A?

I couldn’t find another example of his signature, but let’s examine it. The first letter of his last name looks like an S but if you rotate it just a little, as I did on the right side of this image, it looks more like an L.

There are a couple of possibilities with the second letter (the center image). It’s probably a cramped version of an E. The way a person signs their name is often very different from the rest of their script. Fortunately Pierre had more Es in his signature for comparison. The left image is one of those Es. It could also be a distorted Greek E. I turned it upright in the image in the right image.

The last three letters are fairly clear: R-O-Y.

 

Le Roy would have been 28 when he wrote this beautiful letter.  Here he is during the war and later in life.

Baron Le Roy, by the way, was a brave airman.  During the war, he shot down two observation balloons and three enemy airplanes. He recovered and was awarded the Médaille militaire, Croix de Guerre, and Légion d’honneur.

In 1919, Pierre married Edmée Bernard Le Saint, heiress of the Château Fortia, a prestigious wine-producing estate. Pierre became quite a prominent figure in the world of French wine.

 

I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this wonderful letter and whether you think the author was the French flying ace and wine titan, Baron Le Roy!

 

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