This is the French adaptation of a biography written by an American about a French aviation pioneer who was once forgotten.
Long before Hélène Boucher, Adrienne Bolland or Maryse Bastié, there was Marie Marvingt! While her name may resonate less today than that of the three pioneers mentioned above, her aeronautical and sporting exploits are enough to leave you breathless. Alas for the posterity of this exceptional aviatrix, they took place some fifteen years before the First World War, at the dawn of the 20th century.
Born in 1875, she obtained her driver’s license in 1899, before obtaining her free balloon pilot’s license two years later. An accomplished sportswoman (cycling, mountaineering, skiing, skating, etc.), she had logged 900 flying hours by 1914-1918! In the meantime, she developed an air ambulance, but was unable to bring the project to fruition due to lack of time and resources. When the Great War broke out, she was denied access to the French air force. No matter, she passed herself off as a “Poilu” and joined a battalion. Unmasked, she was nevertheless allowed to join another regiment, the Chasseurs Alpins, but as a nurse…
After the war, she became a journalist and lived in Morocco, where she became an army medical officer, continuing her involvement in aeronautics and rescue work, even organizing the first International Congress of Medical Aviation in 1929. During the Second World War, Marie Marvingt was an air nurse, developing a suture that minimized the risk of infection. In the evening of her life, at the age of 80, she was offered a flight aboard a supersonic fighter by the US government, before passing her helicopter pilot’s license four years later. The “Bride of Danger”, as she was known, died in 1963. The translation of this book, first published in English, offers a 528-page overview of a life spent flying close to the summits.
Book. “The intrepid Marie Marvingt, pioneer of a thousand exploits. Author, Rosalie Maggio. Éditions Edul Univeau Lorraine. Prestige Collection. ISBN: 2384511548