in its
loveliness that it shakes us like an explosion or a cataclysm.

This is the passage where the squadron, coming back from a mission, is suddenly surrounded in the darkness by exploding rockets and machine-gunned by enemy fighters, which shoot the heavy bombers down one by one. “New fires were born with the flapping of the heavy gasoline flames as they were flattened by the wind; the bombers rolled over a little, then caught fire from the fuel tanks in the wings, floated on a little longer and exploded like stars.”

Published in L’Arche, February 1947

1 Jules Roy was born in Algeria in 1907. From 1927 to 1953 he was an officer in the French air force, and served with the R.A.F. during World War II. In 1960 he dedicated his book La Guerre d’Algerie to Camus’s memory, but disagreed with his friend’s refusal to take sides in the Algerian conflict. —P.T.

The end