Portrait of a Warrior (standard:non fiction, 2109 words)
Author: J P St. Jullian	Added: Nov 08 2002	Views/Reads: 3522/2424	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
It was his country too, and though he was not allowed to defend it on his own ground, he still found a way.

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his chances of achieving his goals were better there.  He had stowed 
away on a German ship that left Norfolk, VA and carried him to 
Scotland.  From there, he moved to England and took up boxing as a 
welterweight and boxed in England, France and North Africa.  After his 
20th birthday, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion, in October 
1914. 

He survived the murderous Battle of Artois, where 170,000 Frenchmen were
killed.  He later transferred to the crack French 170th Infantry 
Regiment.  He was also a veteran of such battles as those at Frise, 
Artois, Alsace, Champagne and Verdun under the Legion's Moroccan 
Division, where he received several decorations for bravery. 

The Battle of Verdun stands in history as the longest and bloodiest
battle of World War I.  It was the grand assault intended to destroy 
the French army and end the war in the German's favor.  A total of 
650,000 men were either killed, missing or wounded at Verdun.  Bullard 
himself was badly injured there.  While recovering from his wounds, he 
volunteered for and was permitted to enter the then renown French 
Flying School.  After his training was complete, he was assigned to the 
famed Lafayette Flying Corps. 

It was there that Bullard proved that blacks did indeed possess the
aptitude to fly competently.  He flew a blue Spad VII fighter at the 
front and was credited with 75 flying hours over enemy territory.  By 
today's standards, 75 hours may not seem much, but then, it was 
considered a major accomplishment. Bullard often flew with his pet 
Rhesus monkey, Jimmy.  Bullard and Jimmy were inseparable, and the 
monkey was soon known around the field as Bullard's "son."  Although 
Bullard himself joked about the term, its racist subtext was not very 
subtle, then or now. 

Bullard's flying skills were well documented, though his kills could not
always be confirmed.  His prowess and skill in the air earned him the 
nickname, "The Black Swallow of Death."  His motto, "All Blood Runs 
Red," was written on the side of his plane. 

When the United States entered World War I, American pilots from the
French Flying Service were permitted to transfer to the U.S. Army.  
These Americans were advanced in rank as commissioned officers. Though 
the white American pilots were accepted, Bullard was not selected.  In 
Eleanor Roosevelt's popular "My Day" column, Bullard asked, "Was it my 
flat feet or was it the color of my skin?" that kept him from flying 
for his country. 

But Bullard was to find that although he had enjoyed an enormous amount
of success in the French Military, the prejudice he fled from in 
America was just as evident in France.  On top of his many decorations 
and honors, he was also a hero of Croix de Guerre.  He was permanently 
grounded on charges of insubordination because of an altercation with a 
French Colonel.  He was demoted, and served the remainder of his time 
as a motorcycle dispatch rider, a victim of the same prejudice he tried 
to leave behind in Georgia. Bullard had been on leave and, like all 
enlisted men in all wars in this century, was trying to hitch a ride 
back to his airfield.  It was dark and raining.  A French truck passed, 
loaded with troops, and Bullard called out for a lift.  The truck 
stopped, and Bullard ran to the back and started to climb in.  Someone 
pushed him back into the mud.  Bullard tried again to climb in, and 
again was pushed back.  By now Bullard was furious, and when, on a 
third attempt, someone in the truck tried to kick him in the chest, 
Bullard grabbed the booted foot and pulled the man out of the truck.  
Bullard threw the man into the muddy ditch alongside the road and 
cracked him square on the jaw.  Confusion followed as  the other 
soldiers pulled Bullard away and fumbled for a flashlight.  The torch 
revealed that the man was an infantry officer who, when he came to, 
preferred charges against Bullard.  Although Bullard managed to escape 
a full court-martial,  his flying days were over.  His service as a 
pilot officially ended on November 11, 1917, exactly one year before 
the Armistice ended the war. 

When he was free to leave the service, he operated two nightclubs and a
gymnasium for prizefighters in Paris.  His nightclub, Le Grand Duc, 
became very famous for entertainers like Dooley Wilson and Mabel 
Mercer.  The great writer, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fatty 
Arbuckle, Horace Dodge, Gloria Swanson, and the legendary Rudolph 
Valentino were among his most frequent and distinguished clientele.  
His personal friends included such notable persons as the Prince of 
Wales, tobacco magnate Richard Reynolds, Valentino, Sophie Tucker,  
Nora Baynes and silent screen star Pearl White. 

Bullard married the Countess Marcelle Eugenie Henriette de Straumman in
July of 1923. The marriage caused considerable gossip in Paris -- not, 
Bullard claimed, because he was Black and she was White, but because 
she was from a wealthy, well-established family and he was, by 
comparison, poor and unknown, whose only civilian accomplishments were 
in decidedly un-cultured areas. Together, they had two daughters, and 
one son who died six months after his birth.  But their marriage was 
doomed to fail. Gene and Marcelle had a falling out.  As Catholics, 
they could not divorce, but they separated in about 1930. Upon their 
separation, Bullard got custody of his two daughters without a fight 
from the Countess. Marcelle died several years later. 

Bullard's days as a patriot were not over.  Between the major wars, he
joined the French underground and worked as a spy with Cleopatre 
Terrier among others.  At age 45, he fled Paris in search of his old 
World War I infantry regiment.  After making contact, he was accepted 
and assigned to a machine gun company.  Soon after rejoining the 
regiment he was badly injured from the blast of a German shell.  He was 
issued a safe conduct pass by his commanding officer, and escaped the 
country, nursing his wounds.  He made his way to Spain, where the 
American Ambassador granted him a passport to New York. 

Bullard was now penniless, having fled Paris, leaving all his wealth and
his children behind.  He sailed from Lisbon in 1940, forced to leave 
his two daughters behind in Paris with friends.   American diplomats 
intervened and helped him to arrange for his daughters to join him in 
New York.  Bullard worked a variety of jobs to support himself and his 
daughters.  During the war he worked first as a security guard at a 
military base in Brooklyn and later, through the intervention of a 
sympathetic FBI agent, as a longshoreman on Staten Island.  After the 
war he worked as a salesman for various companies, traveling throughout 
New York State.  One of Bullard's last jobs in the 1950s was as an 
elevator operator at Rockefeller Center in New York.  One wonders how 
many visitors to Rockefeller Center scratched their heads at the crazy 
old "colored" elevator operator who claimed to have been a French 
fighter pilot from World War I. 

Bullard lived his last years in Harlem. He developed stomach cancer and
died at the age of 67 in 1961.  His two daughters and two grandchildren 
survived him. Bullard did live, however, to receive some of the 
recognition he deserved.  The French, in particular, honored Bullard on 
several occasions, culminating with his being made a Knight of the 
National Order of the Legion of Honor on October 9, 1959.  In the end, 
Bullard was perhaps more proud of his 2-year service with the Foreign 
Legion than any of his other, many accomplishments. 

Bullard had requested that he be dressed in the uniform of a French
Legionaire and buried in the French war veteran cemetery in Flushing, 
NY.  The tricolor of France was draped across his brass coffin. 

Eugene Jacques Bullard is yet another Black man on a long list of Black
Americans who wanted to succeed so badly that they took matters into 
their own hands, and made their dreams come true.  Throughout his whole 
life the desire to live free and equal must have been the driving force 
behind his accomplishments.  It is so ironic, that today, with all the 
opportunities we have for education and advancement, that so many of 
our youth squander their lives and end up as casualties of the system, 
a statistic on the establishment's role of dishonor.  I say that if men 
like Bullard, Latimer, Armstrong and Rillieux could achieve greatness 
in a country that gave them nothing to start with, then surely our 
children can use the system we have today which is, by comparison, very 
generous, to prepare themselves to meet the challenges of tomorrow. 


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