Provenance

Though born into a fiercely traditional wine-growing family in the Bordeaux region of France, the author learned the meaning of independence at a tender age. Her mother, rebelling against the rigors of provincial life, left for Paris in search of a new career - and a divorce. Ilian's grandparents, not knowing quite what to do, placed her in a nearby convent. The nuns were kind, but as there were no other children her age, Ilian, then 4, spent her days playing by herself in the convent courtyard. Then life changed dramatically, when her mother re-married. Ilian's new step-father, a brilliant Hungarian-born intellectual, was to have a profound effect on her life. Together with her siblings, she began to experience the life of affluent Parisian society. Her parents were very much a part of the intellectual life of Montparnasse, while simultaneously creating a publishing empire. Unusual for those days, Ilian was sent for an interlude of schooling in England. Back in Paris, this protected teen-ager had only a brief time, however, before the war clouds began gathering over Europe.

When the German invasion of France finally came, Ilian's step-father, Paul, having published derogatory material about the Nazi leadership, was high on the Gestapo list. It became urgent for the family to escape. They joined a massive exodus, on congested roads, toward the south of France, being strafed by Italian warplanes on the way. They succeeded in escaping from France with the help of a courageous American vice-consul in Marseille. In the U.S. Paul, with renewed energy, set up an office ce in New York and wrote a regular column for The Washington Post. During their flight from France, the family had become confirmed Gaullists. This was reflected in Paul's writing - and in Ilian's decision three years later (after she had graduated from Barnard College) to join the Free French Air Force. She became a liaison officer between the French Air Force and the U.S. First Tactical Air Force, headquartered in Vittel and later in Heidelberg. Before being de-commissioned, she was assigned to the French Air Mission in Washington, where she dated an American naval officer whom she would eventually marry. In these memoirs she tells also of other suitors who came and went. But somehow, during all of these personal dramas and the upheaval of a World War, she and her contemporaries retained a quality of "innocence" which protected them throughout.