I am not familiar with the circumstances of Captain Pouyade's capture, or the events which followed that led to their utilization of his talents as a pilot, but when I met him on October 2, 1942, he had been towing targets for Japanese gunnery practice out of Gia Lam Airport.

At the time I was Operations Officer of the 23rd Fighter Group, with headquarters in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. The 23rd had been formed on July 4th of that year from the assets of the American Volunteer Group, more popularly known as the Flying Tigers, and was carrying on the reputation they had so proudly earned under General Claire Chennault's leadership. He was still boss man for the United States air effort in China, and the 23rd Fighter Group of four squadrons of P-40s constituted the lion's share of his early tactical resources.

Our communication facilities were of the same caliber at that time as most of our other wherewithal, and could perhaps be best described as spartan, antiquated, and quasi-reliable. We tried to control radio traffic with priority codification and essentiality scheduling, but with only marginal success; and on the morning of October 2nd most everything else was disrupted with a steady stream of messages coming in from Mengtsze, a small outpost station about twenty miles north of the Indo China border. This traffic concerned some kind of a crisis, and involved the capture of a suspected spy, a possible smuggling ring, the urgent need for a P-40 escort for an old Fleet aircraft and requests for immediate assistance to handle a very touchy development. To say the least, the situation was unclear, but the messages were coming from Capt. Guy Williams, an intelligence officer on temporary duty at Mengtsze who obviously considered that he had a critical state of affairs, so I was directed to go down there and see what was going on.

A P-40 reconnaissance flight had been scheduled for that day for Lao Kai, the first town of any consequence on the railroad south of the border, so I decided to run this myself and stop at Mengtsze on the way back. What I found was a French officer in a white uniform, two very excited Americans (Captain Williams and radio operator Ernst), an ancient but colorful biplane, and several Chinese officers who had been contesting the Americans' custody of "the prisoner."

The "prisoner" was Captain Pouyade. He was resplendently dressed in the tropical whites which the French officers habitually wore in Indo China, complete with decorations that included the Croix de Guerre, and with several ribbons denoting service in other areas.

The aircraft was a POTEX 25, a biplane of about 1926 vintage with a 12 cylinder liquid cooled engine of the W type, or three banks of four cylinders each. It was at least as colorful as any airplane I have ever seen, with several bright hues of red, blue and yellow splashed all over in what one might call an anti-camouflage pattern. Presumably this was done not so much to distinguish the tow plane from the target, but to discourage captive pilots (or any other kind) from attempting to defect.

It only took a few minutes to size up the situation as most probably one of opportunity rather than crisis. There had been no capture as had been intimated in the radio messages. Captain Pouyade had simply and calmly turned himself over to our people after making a courageous escape from the Japanese. I told them to release him for a few words in private, shook hands, and inquired (en francais) whether the Captain spoke English. It was an "un peu" situation: his English and my French, but we managed well enough to assuage any doubts I may have had that he was genuine and wishedto work with us.

That morning at the end of the tow mission, Captain Pouyade had headed north rather than returning to the base and somehow managed to escape without detection. The weather was not good a necessity made all the more important by virtue of the bright colors and slow speed of his old biplane. The distance from Hanoi to Mengtsze is about 230 miles, and I don't remember how he managed the fuel problem but he had planned his escape for some time, and may have stashed some extra fuel in portable cans before starting the mission. I just do not know, but he made it, was undetected, and Mengtsze was not attacked by the Japanese afterwards. As I recall, he had also managed to carry a couple of bed sheets along which he trailed out as streamers to show his peaceful intent after turning onto the downwind leg at our field.

It was late afternoon by the time we had finished our little interview. Everyone had calmed down somewhat by then, and I was trying to decide what to do next. All I had was the single seat P-40, and although occasionally we would stuff somebody in the small baggage hole in the aft fuselage, it was strictly an emergency and unsafe practice, so I ruled that out. The Chinese had retired for tea or something, so I asked Captain Williams to make Pouyade comfortable overnight until I could return the next day with a transport aircraft to take him to my leader. There was, of course, a distinct risk in this in that the Chinese might insist that he was their prisoner, take him off and refuse to let us see him again. After all, it was their country. This seemed rather unlikely however, and worth the risk, since General Chennault was very popular, and a powerful influence with both the central and local governments, as well as the Commander of the most effective fighting force in China at the time. I figured they would not care to cross him.

The following day, after making some supply deliveries, I returned to Mengtsze with a C-47 Gooney Bird Crew to pick up Captain Pouyade. It was about noon, and things were going so well the dramatic spirit arose and prompted me to let the crew take him back to the reception in Kunming, while I played "Rover Boy" by flying his POTEZ 25 up there myself. Fortunately, we could not get it started, but about that time something else happened anyway that brought me back to sensibility with a sharp jolt. A Chinese general showed up.

The General paid his respects, and with a big smile announced that Captain Pouyade should be turned over to him. I invited him to have some tea, which he accepted, and tried frantically to determine the best course of action, or more descriptively, diplomacy. We exchanged some small talk, and I asked how long it had been since he had visited Kunming. He smiled, and brushed that aside as of no consequence, so I then tried a tack of name dropping, mentioning a party that the Governor of Yunnan had given in General Chennault's honor. This only brought another inscrutable smile, so I resorted to the direct approach and asked the General to accompany me to Kunming, whereby we could jointly escort Captain Pouyade to our respective higher headquarters for determination of his future.

Surprisingly, and without further deliberation, he agreed. He then left for about twenty minutes, presumably for a phone call to higher authority, and upon returning announced that he could not accompany me, but that two of his subordinate officers would do so as his personal representatives. We all smiled, shook hands, and as thereby confirmed, Pouyade, the two Chinese officers and I proceeded to Kunming.

I rather expected that upon arrival I would be ordered to turn him over to somebody: U.S. Intelligence, Chinese Intelligence, Free French Consul, or perhaps our own Generals. No such thing. I was told to keep him as my guest that night, find someone fluent in French, interrogate him without any special security, and make sure that he had comfortable quarters. This was a most welcome surprise, because I had already decided that I liked Captain Pouyade.

Lieutenant Bert Cornoyer, a pilot recently assigned to the 74th Fighter Squadron, was requested to join us. I was unable to judge whether he should qualify as fluent in the language, but certainly he was several orders of magnitude better than I, and the conversation flowed smoothly, steadily and warmly for about three hours that night. I detected no difficulty at all in expressing thoughts or communicating questions, answers and gratuitous information.

Captain Pouyade dispelled any doubts that might have remained in our minds as to his authenticity and his political and patriotic alignment. He had brought along many papers from his official records, to include the last tactical order he had received, dated June 17, 1940 and marked "tres secret", ordering him on some mission in Corsica. Extracts from hid service record showed that he had graduated from Saint Cyr in 1933, number 15 in a class of 435; and that he had been decorated with the Croix de Guerre three times in France in 1939-40. I questioned him on several things of which I knew all or part of the answer. Everything tallied. He confirmed four Japanese aircraft that we had claimed destroyed over Hanoi on a September 25th raid, and said that as soon as they crashed the Japanese rushed out and painted white stars on the wreckage. He knew what had happened to an A.V.G. officer, Mr. Bishop, who had bailed out over Lao Kai on a May 16th strafing raid. He had his flying log, and many pictures of his old squadron in France, the Quatrieme Avion Escadrille Legere. It was a fascinating evening spent with a totally unexpected ally in that part of the world.

Arrangements had been made for Captain Pouyade to be interviewed next morning by the Free French Consul prior to his release and transfer to the U.S. Theatre Commander's headquarters in Chungking. I should have known by then to stick with him like a leech, but after meeting two members of the consulate I left for 15 minutes to see Chinese Colonel Wang about some rescue arrangements, and upon departing found Pouyade and the two consulate representatives sitting in Wang's outer office. The Governor had been notified of their presence and wanted to conduct an interview of his own. Three hours later after a lot of pilikia, and acquiring a letter from the regional administrative office and another from the China Air Task Force Headquarters, he was again released. I put him on the plane for Chungking and breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction.

Editor's (American Society of French Legion of Honor) Note:

The subsequent history of this gallant French officer is to be found in the volume "Who's Who in France, 1979-1980". Late in 1943, Pierre Pouyade joined the Normandie Niemen Escadille, a small group of French fighter pilots who volunteered for service against Hitler's forces on the Eastern front. He stayed with them throughout 1944, when they were reorganized as the Normandie Niemen Regiment, and he returned to France in 1945. In 1947, he was promoted to the rank of colonel in the French Air Force. After serving as military attache at the French Embassy in Buenos Aires, he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in 1955.

At his request, General Pouyade was given an extended leave of absence from the military service in 1955 in order to enter politics. He was elected a member of the French National Assembly in 1995 and was reelected several times. In the National Assembly, he served as Vice Chairman of the Committee on National Defense and the Armed Forces. From 1967 to 1973, he was a member of the central committee of his party (the U.D.R., the party of General de Gaulle until his resignation in 1969).

After retiring from politics in 1973, General Pouyade divided his time between his home near Paris (at Bonnlere Seine) and his home at Bandol, a small town on the Mediterranean near Toulon, the region that he had represented in the National Assembly. He did not return to military service, but he served as a special consultant to the President of the French Aeronautical and Space Industries Group. He died at Bandol in 1979.

General Pouyade was awarded the rank of Grand Croix, the highest rank in the Legion of Honor. He was a Compagnon de la Liberation and had numerous other distinctions, including the Medaille de la Resistance. Madome Pouyade was kind enough to write us that she was sure her late husband would have no objection to our publishing this account of the extraordinary adventure that he had as a young officer escaping from the Japanese in 1942.