Marc Marie Edmond Armand Pourpe (17 May 1887 – 2 December 1914) was a French

aviation pioneer Aviation pioneers are people directly and indirectly responsible for the creation and advancement of human flight capability, including people who worked to achieve manned flight before the invention of aircraft, as well as others who achieved si ...

and stunt flyer. His mother was Anne-Marie Chassaigne, later known as the famous

courtesan A courtesan is a prostitute with a courtly, wealthy, or upper-class clientele. Historically, the term referred to a courtier, a person who attended the court of a monarch or other powerful person. History In European feudal society, the co ...

Liane de Pougy Liane de Pougy (born Anne-Marie Chassaigne, 2 July 1869 – 26 December 1950) was a French dancer, courtesan and novelist. She was a Folies Bergère vedette, and was known as one of the most beautiful and notorious courtesans in Paris. Later in ...

, and his father a young naval officer, Armand Pourpe. He made the first airmail flight in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

flying from

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

Khartoum Khartoum or Khartum is the capital city of Sudan as well as Khartoum State. With an estimated population of 7.1 million people, Greater Khartoum is the largest urban area in Sudan. Khartoum is located at the confluence of the White Nile – flo ...

. Pourpe died in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

on a reconnaissance mission over the Somme in December 1914.

Life

Marc Pourpe was born on 17 May 1887 in

Lorient Lorient (; ) is a town (''Communes of France, commune'') and Port, seaport in the Morbihan Departments of France, department of Brittany (administrative region), Brittany in western France. History Prehistory and classical antiquity Beginn ...

, France to the famous courtesan, Liane de Pougy, who was of Spanish and French descent."The Great War. Lorient aviator Marc Pourpe "resurrected". ''Le Télégramme'', December 3, 2014
/ref> His father was Armand Pourpe, a young naval officer who later became a senior officer in the Suez Canal Company. His parents' marriage was not a happy one. His mother, then known as Anne-Marie Pourpe, had run off with Pourpe when she was only 16, and they married once she became pregnant. She later claimed in her memoirs that her new husband took her violently on their wedding night, an event which left her emotionally scarred. When Armand Pourpe's naval career led him to a billet in

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

, Anne-Marie took a lover, Charles the 5th Marquis de MacMahon. Her husband found them in bed together and shot her. They divorced shortly thereafter. Anne-Marie went to Paris, leaving her infant son with his father. Armand sent his son to live with the boy's paternal grandparents, in

Suez Suez (, , , ) is a Port#Seaport, seaport city with a population of about 800,000 in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It is the capital and largest c ...

. Young Marc Pourpe studied at

Harrow Harrow may refer to: Places * Harrow, Victoria, Australia * Harrow, Ontario, Canada * The Harrow, County Wexford, a village in Ireland * London Borough of Harrow, England * Harrow, London, a town in London * Harrow (UK Parliament constituency) * ...

in anticipation of attending Cambridge or Oxford.Le Gall, Erwan. "A class driver Marc Pourpe", ''En envor''
/ref> In 1912, while

barnstorming Barnstorming was a form of entertainment in which stunt pilots performed tricks individually or in groups that were called flying circuses. Devised to "impress people with the skill of pilots and the sturdiness of planes," it became popular in t ...

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

in a Blériot, Pourpe met

Raoul Lufbery Gervais Raoul Victor Lufbery (March 14, 1885 – May 19, 1918) was a French and American fighter pilot and flying ace in World War I. Because he served in both the French Air Force, and later the United States Army Air Service in World War I, he i ...

, whom he later hired as his

mechanic A mechanic is a skilled tradesperson who uses tools to build, maintain, or repair machinery, especially engines. Formerly, the term meant any member of the handicraft trades, but by the early 20th century, it had come to mean one who works w ...

. The two then began traveling together, continuing Pourpe's tour of

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. Pourpe took part in an early "Aviation Week" held at in Heliopolis, near Cairo from 2 January through 12 January 1914. While there he made the first airmail flight in Egypt, flying the 1250 miles from

from 4 January to 12 January, with stops in

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

Wadi Halfa (, , ":wikt:esparto, Esparto Valley") is a city in the Northern (state), Northern state of Sudan on the shores of Lake Nasser, Lake Nubia near the Egypt–Sudan border, border with Egypt. It is the terminus of a rail transport in Sudan, rail lin ...

, and

Abu Hamed Abu Hamad (, ), also spelt 'Abu Hamed', is a town of Sudan on the right bank of the Nile, by rail north of Khartoum. It stands at the centre of the great S-shaped bend of the Nile, and from it the railway to Wadi Halfa strikes straight across t ...

. Lufbery was Pourpe's mechanic for the trip. A special stamp was issued to commemorate the event, and

air mail Airmail (or air mail) is a mail transport service branded and sold on the basis of at least one leg of its journey being by air. Airmail items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and usually cost more to send. Airmail may be the ...

delivery was announced. When

broke out, Pourpe joined the

French Air Service The French Air and Space Force (, , ) is the air force, air and space force of the French Armed Forces. Formed in 1909 as the ("Aeronautical Service"), a service arm of the French Army, it became an independent military branch in 1934 as the Fr ...

as a bomber pilot, serving with

Escadrille N23 ''Escadrille 23'' of the French Air Force was formed at Brie on 4 August 1914. History Escadrille 23 was equipped with Morane-Saulniers and forwarded to ''VI Armee'' of the French Army in September, and transferred to ''IV Armee'' in October 19 ...

. A soldier 2nd class, he had flown nearly eighty hours and thirty missions, when he and the mission observer, Lt. Eugène Vauglin, died on 2 December 1914 on a reconnaissance flight over the Somme. One account published in 1916 in the 4th edition of the illustrated ''Air War'' said his death was caused by an accident at the end of the flight, possibly due to the cold. Numbed by the very low temperature, Pourpe lost control of his aircraft, as he exited a cloud, before " sideslipping" and came crashing to the ground. This accords with both reports of the Escadrille N23 and the testimony of aviation volunteer Jacques Mortane who reported in December 1914 that, accustomed to colonial climates, Pourpe nonetheless took to the air in a cold mist that prevented other flyers from going out. According to Mortane, Pourpe came out of the clouds at 1200 meters completely "unbalanced"."Marc Pourpe", La Fédération Nationale des Combattants Volontaires
/ref> Marc Pourpe is buried in the cemetery of Carnel, Lorient. To mark the centenary of Pourpe's death a street was named in his honor in Carnel.

References

Sources

*Allaz, Camille ''History of Air Cargo and Airmail from the 18th Century'' *de Pougy, Liane ''My Blue Notebooks'' (''Mes cahiers bleu'', her memoirs), published in English in 1979. *Rodriguez, Suzanne ''Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris'' *Taylor, Irene and Taylor, Alan
''The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists''
Canongate U.S., 2002,

External links

Image of the 1914 commemorative stampImage of Pourpe and his Blériot ca. 1912
*

Life

See also

References

Sources

External links

Further reading