Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class. A production
Speaker 1: of I heart radio. Hello and welcome to the PODCAST.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy v Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We have
Speaker 1: gotten so many requests over the years for an episode
Speaker 1: on Eugene Jacques Bullard and for a while I was
Speaker 1: answering a lot of them because there were a lot,
Speaker 1: and my answer was like yes, he's on the list.
Speaker 1: There's one book I really want to read as part
Speaker 1: of the research. I can't get my hands on it
Speaker 1: right now because overwhelmingly the request that we got described
Speaker 1: Bullard as the first black American fighter pilot, which is true,
Speaker 1: but he also had this really full and fascinating life
Speaker 1: beyond that that isn't really touched on and like the
Speaker 1: viral facebook posts and stuff that people were sending us
Speaker 1: as part of their episode requests. There's one book that's
Speaker 1: focused mostly on that, though. It's called Eugene Bullard, black
Speaker 1: expatriate and Jazz Age Paris, but I could only find
Speaker 1: it in one library I had access to. That library
Speaker 1: stopped lending books at the beginning of the pandemic and
Speaker 1: once they started lending books again, getting to the library
Speaker 1: was a different pandemic issue and uh, then all of
Speaker 1: that was resolved and it took me another year plus
Speaker 1: to actually get back to looking at this because I
Speaker 1: had plenty of other stuff to do. Um. Also, a
Speaker 1: folks are about to send me a note about Inter
Speaker 1: Library loan. I know about Inter Library Loan. That was
Speaker 1: not an option for similar reasons during this stretch of time. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: all of this is resolved. My resource issues resolved, library
Speaker 1: access resolved, uh, and there are also new resources about
Speaker 1: him that have come out more recently. So we are
Speaker 1: finally getting to this much requested episode that people have
Speaker 1: been asking us to do for years, and actually we're
Speaker 1: doing two episodes because it turns out when you get
Speaker 1: more into all the stuff that's beyond being a combat
Speaker 1: pilot in World War One, it turns into a lot.
Speaker 1: So M you will get it all. Eugene James Bullard
Speaker 1: was the seventh of ten children born to William and
Speaker 1: Josephine Bullard, and most people called him Jean. Although some
Speaker 1: sources say his date of birth is unclear, it was
Speaker 1: recorded in the Family Bible as October. The bullards lived
Speaker 1: in Columbus, Georgia, which is in the western part of
Speaker 1: the state, right on the Chattahoochee River on the border
Speaker 1: with Alabama. William had been enslaved from birth and he
Speaker 1: had both African and Muskogee Creek Ancestry. Most accounts also
Speaker 1: described Josephine as creek, but it's not totally clear how
Speaker 1: many connections the family had to other indigenous people while
Speaker 1: Jean was growing up. The city of Columbus is located
Speaker 1: in the Muscogee nation's ancestral lands. It's in a county
Speaker 1: that was named for the Muskogee, but the federal government
Speaker 1: had removed many of the Muskogee from Georgia and other
Speaker 1: parts of the southeast over the eighteen twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: This removal is really a whole other story, but it
Speaker 1: was connected to a fraudulent treaty that had been negotiated
Speaker 1: without most of the Muskogee nations involvement and in violation
Speaker 1: of Muskogee law, and it was part of a bigger
Speaker 1: federal effort to remove indigenous peoples from the eastern us
Speaker 1: to land west of the Mississippi River. But intermarriages between
Speaker 1: people with African and Muskogee ancestry weren't uncommon during this period.
Speaker 1: The muskogee both enslaved people of African descent and accepted
Speaker 1: free black people as tribal citizens, and it's possible that
Speaker 1: William Bullard had been living amongst some of the Muskogee
Speaker 1: people who were still in Georgia when he married Josephine
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty two. Yeah, we really just don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of information about how he conceived of this
Speaker 1: as part of his identity, and most sources describe him
Speaker 1: as African American or black. As a large family of
Speaker 1: both indigenous and African ancestry, though, the bullards often really
Speaker 1: struggled financially. William mostly worked as a Stevadore or doing
Speaker 1: other labor, while Josephine took in laundry. They also took
Speaker 1: in borders to their home to try to make extra money.
Speaker 1: While they were doing all this to try to make
Speaker 1: ends meet, Josephine also tried to protect Jean and his
Speaker 1: siblings from the extreme and sometimes violent racism of the
Speaker 1: world they were living in. For example, two black men
Speaker 1: were lynched and their bodies were desecrated in the middle
Speaker 1: of town when Jean was just a year old, Jean
Speaker 1: started attending a school that had been founded by the
Speaker 1: Freedman's bureau in Nineteen O one, at which point it
Speaker 1: became a lot harder for his family to shield him
Speaker 1: from racism. His mother also died on August nineteen o
Speaker 1: two at the age of thirty seven. Jean was almost seven.
Speaker 1: Her cause of death is not noted anywhere, but taking
Speaker 1: in laundry was hot, exhausting work, and this followed a
Speaker 1: stretch of particularly hot weather in Georgia. Jean's last year
Speaker 1: at the Freedman's bureau school was in nineteen Oh six,
Speaker 1: when he was ten, and around that same time his
Speaker 1: father had a fight with the white foreman at a
Speaker 1: warehouse where he worked. This foreman had been harassing and
Speaker 1: abusing black employees, and William seems to have foreseen that
Speaker 1: this was going to end in violence and that when
Speaker 1: it did, his life would be at risk. Jean later
Speaker 1: related a conversation William had with him and his siblings
Speaker 1: who were still living at home, telling them that if
Speaker 1: something ever happens to him, he wanted them all to
Speaker 1: be good. Eventually, this foreman hit William with a hook
Speaker 1: that was used to unload bales of cotton, and William
Speaker 1: fought back, throwing him through a hole in the floor
Speaker 1: that dropped into a cellar under the warehouse. The foreman
Speaker 1: was badly injured but survived. William apparently had a good
Speaker 1: rapport with the owner of the warehouse, W C Bradley,
Speaker 1: and he had already told Bradley about the foreman's abuse.
Speaker 1: Bradley seems to have tried to keep this whole incident quiet,
Speaker 1: but words still got out about it. A mob of drunk,
Speaker 1: angry white men came to the Bullard House to kill William.
Speaker 1: William was inside the House with his shotgun aimed at
Speaker 1: the locked front door, and the children were all hiding
Speaker 1: when they couldn't get into the house, and it also
Speaker 1: seemed like nobody was home. The mob seems to have
Speaker 1: eventually given up. Jean was still a child, but at
Speaker 1: this point he decided it was time to leave. The
Speaker 1: first few times he tried, though, his father found him,
Speaker 1: brought him home and punished him for running away. Then,
Speaker 1: when Jean was eleven, he sold a goat and cart
Speaker 1: that belonged to him to another boy for a dollar
Speaker 1: in fifty cents, and he left again, this time managing
Speaker 1: to evade his father. For about the next five years,
Speaker 1: Jeanne traveled all over Georgia, living and working for an
Speaker 1: assortment of people, including Black Sharecroppers, white landowners and a
Speaker 1: group of Romani people from England. This particular group had
Speaker 1: a big influence on him. Jeanne stayed with them for
Speaker 1: several months. He helped care for their horses and learned
Speaker 1: to race them, and they told him that the racism
Speaker 1: he had been living through in Georgia didn't exist in England.
Speaker 1: When it became clear that they did not plan to
Speaker 1: go back to England anytime soon, Jeanne left, hoping that
Speaker 1: he would be able to make it there on his own.
Speaker 1: This took a while. He worked for a series of
Speaker 1: people in rural parts of Georgia before hopping a train
Speaker 1: to Atlanta. When he got to Newport News, Virginia, he
Speaker 1: stowed away on a ship that he thought was headed
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic, but it docked at the port in Norfolk,
Speaker 1: Virginia just a few hours later. In Norfolk he found
Speaker 1: a ship called the Marta Russ which was headed for Scotland.
Speaker 1: The crew spoke mostly German, but some spoke a little English,
Speaker 1: and they seemed happy to let Jean run errands for
Speaker 1: them while they prepared to leave in exchange for a
Speaker 1: little money. Jean used this money to buy himself some
Speaker 1: food and then he hid aboard the martyr roost before
Speaker 1: it departed on March fourth nine. About three days into
Speaker 1: the voyage, though, he ran out of that food and
Speaker 1: he came out of hiding. He was put to work
Speaker 1: in the boiler room, hauling cinders and ashes to be
Speaker 1: dumped overboard, and then he started learning some German from
Speaker 1: the crew. He was put ashore when they got to Aberdeen, Scotland,
Speaker 1: and the captain gave him five English pounds. He stayed
Speaker 1: in Aberdeen for a few months before making his way
Speaker 1: to Glasgow. Bullard described himself as feeling like he had
Speaker 1: been born into a new world. The people around him
Speaker 1: were mostly white, and it would be wrong to suggest
Speaker 1: that no one was prejudiced or that there was no racism.
Speaker 1: It would also be inaccurate to say that there was
Speaker 1: never any racist violence. As one example in Asgo in nineteen,
Speaker 1: a white mob chased down a group of predominantly black
Speaker 1: sailors and lay siege to their boarding house. But overall,
Speaker 1: people seemed to Eugene with curiosity, not with the malicious
Speaker 1: hostility he had been enduring from white people in the
Speaker 1: United States. Something happened during this period that really emphasized
Speaker 1: this difference. It's not clear exactly how or how much
Speaker 1: bullard was in touch with his family after leaving the US,
Speaker 1: but not long after arriving in Europe he got word
Speaker 1: that his oldest brother, hector, had been lynched. Hector had
Speaker 1: inherited a peach farm that had been passed down through
Speaker 1: their mother's side of the family and white squatters had
Speaker 1: tried to take it over. Hector had refused to give
Speaker 1: into them and they had murdered him. We'll get back
Speaker 1: to Eugene's story and what happened while he was in
Speaker 1: the UK. After a sponsor break in late nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: Eugene bullard moved to Liverpool. He'd been making ends meet
Speaker 1: through a range of odd jobs, including acting as a
Speaker 1: lookout for street performers to warn them if the police
Speaker 1: were coming. In Liverpool, he worked at a carnival attraction
Speaker 1: where somebody would put their face through a hole in
Speaker 1: a sheet and then they would try to dodge as
Speaker 1: customers through these soft rubber balls at them. In bullard's
Speaker 1: own account, he told the proprietor of this attraction that
Speaker 1: he would make a lot more money if bullard was
Speaker 1: the target instead of a white person. This turned out
Speaker 1: to be true. I find this whole idea deeply troubling, uh,
Speaker 1: but based on his own descriptions, this is another example
Speaker 1: of how he just felt a lot safer as a
Speaker 1: black man in Europe than he had felt in the
Speaker 1: United States. In Liverpool, Bullard also started performing with a
Speaker 1: Vaudeville company, something else that he saw differently in Europe
Speaker 1: than in the US. Black Vaudeville performers were expected to
Speaker 1: follow a lot of the same racist tropes in England
Speaker 1: as they were in the US, and white performers on
Speaker 1: both sides of the Atlantic performed in black face, but
Speaker 1: bullard saw this as flouting stereotypes and expectations, not as
Speaker 1: being subjected to them or reinforcing them. Bullard also made
Speaker 1: friends with a man named Chris Baldwin, who owned a
Speaker 1: boxing gym and started teaching Bullard how to box, and
Speaker 1: soon bullard was making connections with other black boxers from
Speaker 1: the United States who were in the UK. This included
Speaker 1: Jack Johnson and Aaron Lister Brown, who was known as
Speaker 1: the Dixie Kid. Brown invited Bullard to come with him
Speaker 1: to London so they could train together. And London bullard
Speaker 1: started living in a predominantly black neighborhood and a lot
Speaker 1: of the other residents there were also black expatriots from
Speaker 1: the United States. Own and Bullard traveled to cities around
Speaker 1: Europe to box, but it took a while for Bullard
Speaker 1: to get where he really wanted to go, and that
Speaker 1: was Paris. A lot of accounts of his life describe
Speaker 1: him as having family from Martinique and hearing through family
Speaker 1: lore that France was racially tolerant, although that doesn't line
Speaker 1: up with the historical record and it might be a
Speaker 1: backstory that he developed once he was in France to
Speaker 1: try to explain his affinity for the country. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: clearly got the idea from someone at some point that
Speaker 1: Paris was a place he would like to be, uh,
Speaker 1: but exactly who that was or how is a little fuzzier.
Speaker 1: Bullard did finally get to Paris for a boxing match
Speaker 1: in late nineteen thirteen, though, and as expected, he immediately
Speaker 1: fell in love with it. As soon as he was
Speaker 1: back in London after the match, he talked to Brown
Speaker 1: about wanting to go back to Paris as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: but the dixie kid already had a string of matches
Speaker 1: lined up in London. So bullard decided to make his
Speaker 1: way back to Paris on his own. He joined a
Speaker 1: menstrual troop that was starting on a tour, and then
Speaker 1: he quit as soon as they got to Paris. They're
Speaker 1: basically his ride, with him doing some work along the way.
Speaker 1: After settling in Paris, bullard started using the middle name
Speaker 1: Jacques as a nod to his love for his new home.
Speaker 1: I understand completely, Jean. However, on June nineteen fourteen, not
Speaker 1: long after bullard finally got to France, archduke friends Ferdinand
Speaker 1: of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenburg, were assassinated,
Speaker 1: sparking the first World War. Even though he was not
Speaker 1: French and the United States was not yet involved in
Speaker 1: the war, bullard wanted to serve the nation that he
Speaker 1: had fallen in love with and he joined the French
Speaker 1: Foreign Legion on October nine nineteen fourteen, which would have
Speaker 1: been his nineteenth birthday. Bullard was initially stationed along the
Speaker 1: sum river as a machine gunner, and he also did
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous work, like trying to retrieve bodies for no
Speaker 1: man's land and cutting through barbed wire and preparation for
Speaker 1: assaulting the enemy's trenches. Over the course of Nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: the foreign legions saw so many casualties in this area
Speaker 1: that units had to be merged together as they lost
Speaker 1: too many soldiers. Meanwhile, it doesn't seem like Bullard had
Speaker 1: any contact with his father since arriving in Europe, but
Speaker 1: somehow William Bullard had figured out where he was and
Speaker 1: what he was doing, and William was trying to find him.
Speaker 1: William Bullard wrote a letter to the U S State Department,
Speaker 1: apparently believing that at nineteen, Jean was too young to
Speaker 1: legally enlist, although that was not the case. Somehow William's
Speaker 1: attempts to find Jean got all the way to the
Speaker 1: U S Secretary of State and then the American Ambassador
Speaker 1: in Paris, William Sharp, although sharp does not seem to
Speaker 1: have taken any action on it. Okay, it's uh kind
Speaker 1: of heartrending the effort that he was going through to
Speaker 1: find his son, but also seemingly totally misguided about whether
Speaker 1: Jean had the legal right to be doing what he
Speaker 1: was doing, which he did by late Nineteen fifteen. Tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of men in the French Foreign Legion had
Speaker 1: been killed in action, and that included a lot of
Speaker 1: people among Bullard's unit at the battle of Champagna. At
Speaker 1: that point their numbers were just too far reduced to
Speaker 1: keep consolidating these foreign legion units, so survivors were transferred
Speaker 1: into the regular French army. Bullard was sent to the
Speaker 1: one Seventieth Infantry Regiment of the Moroccan division, nicknamed the
Speaker 1: swallows of death. When he got there, bullard continued to
Speaker 1: be a machine gunner. The Battle of their dome stretched
Speaker 1: through almost all of nineteen sixteen as Germany tried to
Speaker 1: capture the French fort city of their don't. There don't
Speaker 1: had both strategic and symbolic importance, and Germany hoped that
Speaker 1: France's efforts to defend it would turn into a war
Speaker 1: of attrition. They're done. was nicknamed the Meat Grinder because
Speaker 1: of its relentless deadliness, and that had been Germany strategy
Speaker 1: from the beginning. Bullard was seriously wounded at verdant on
Speaker 1: March Second Nineteen Sixteen, just a couple of weeks into
Speaker 1: a nearly year long battle. An artillery shell had exploded
Speaker 1: nearby him, knocking out most of his teeth and also
Speaker 1: killing several of the men who were with him. He
Speaker 1: continued fighting, though, and then three days later was seriously
Speaker 1: wounded for the second time, this time in the leg,
Speaker 1: while trying to deliver a message from one officer to another.
Speaker 1: That wound could have killed him. It barely missed his
Speaker 1: femeral artery and he had to be evacuated and taken
Speaker 1: to Lyon by Red Cross train. He was hospitalized for
Speaker 1: months and while in the hospital he was awarded the
Speaker 1: Quadriger for his heroism. This was one of fourteen honors
Speaker 1: that he would earn during the war. Yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the first one he received, but it was one of
Speaker 1: the most notable. Bullard spent about six months in recovery
Speaker 1: and physical therapy from his leg injury and while he
Speaker 1: did recover more function in his leg than doctors had expected,
Speaker 1: he still needed a cane to walk afterward. There was
Speaker 1: no way he could go back to being a machine
Speaker 1: gunner for the infantry. Apart from it being an infantry role,
Speaker 1: the machine gunners were like hauling these very heavy machine
Speaker 1: guns from place to place. He thought his skills as
Speaker 1: a machine gunner in the infantry might make him a
Speaker 1: good aircraft gunner, though. So he asked for a transfer,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that after a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Eugene Bullard had some leave and he went back to
Speaker 1: Paris until October of nineteen sixteen, and after that he
Speaker 1: went to CASILLAC, France, to train as an aircraft gunner.
Speaker 1: It's possible that he always thought this might be a
Speaker 1: way to move into training as a pilot, but at
Speaker 1: some point he heard about the Lafayette Esqua Drille. This
Speaker 1: was named for the Markete Lafayette and organized by Americans
Speaker 1: to give American pilots a chance to fly for France.
Speaker 1: It was also an effort to put some pressure on
Speaker 1: the United States to become involved in the war, kind
Speaker 1: of like hey, these Americans are already flying for France
Speaker 1: and they are making you look bad by not also
Speaker 1: stepping up. After learning about the Lafayette Escadrille, Bullard asked
Speaker 1: if he could move into pilot training instead of gunnery training,
Speaker 1: and he was transferred to aviation school in tour in
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen sixteen. Bullard earned his pilot certificate
Speaker 1: on May five nineteen seventeen. And then he went back
Speaker 1: to Paris for almost a week of leave. At some
Speaker 1: point previously he had made a bet with American expatriate
Speaker 1: Jeff Dixon, who was in Europe hoping to become a
Speaker 1: boxing promoter. Dixon had met Bullard two thousand dollars that
Speaker 1: he would never become a pilot. Bullard collect did his
Speaker 1: winnings and spent his leave treating everyone he knew to
Speaker 1: dinners and drinks and generally having a good time. But
Speaker 1: then Bullard didn't receive orders for where to report once
Speaker 1: his leave was over. That seems to have been due
Speaker 1: to the influence of Edmund Gross, who was a doctor
Speaker 1: who had helped establish the Lafayette Escadrille as well as
Speaker 1: the American Hospital of Paris and the American ambulance field service.
Speaker 1: Grows apparently didn't want a black man in the Lafayette
Speaker 1: ESCA drill and he seems to have pulled strings to
Speaker 1: try to keep bullard out of the service. Some of
Speaker 1: the accounts of all this described. The evidence of all
Speaker 1: of this is circumstantial, but they're sure is a lot
Speaker 1: of it. There are a lot of times where bullard
Speaker 1: was kept from doing something and Dr Gross seems to
Speaker 1: have been involved. Finally, Bullard was ordered to report for
Speaker 1: further combat flight training on August five nineteen. Ultimately, Bullard
Speaker 1: was assigned to ESCA drills, sp a nineties three, flying
Speaker 1: his first mission in September of nineteen seventeen, and he
Speaker 1: had a monkey named Jimmy with him, which he had
Speaker 1: brought back from Paris. It is not clear exactly how
Speaker 1: he got Jimmy, but bullard called him his co pilot
Speaker 1: and hid him in his flight jacket on missions. The
Speaker 1: fuselage of his plane was also decorated with a heart
Speaker 1: pierced with a dagger, in the words to lesson Quiku Rouge,
Speaker 1: or all blood that flows is red. been a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, bullard's day to day life as a pilot
Speaker 1: was better than it had been in the infantry. Just
Speaker 1: the basic living essentials were safer and cleaner and more predictable.
Speaker 1: He had regular meals and snacks and a clean place
Speaker 1: to sleep, and he wasn't in the trenches anymore. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, being a combat pilot was really dangerous.
Speaker 1: More than two hundred Americans flew for France during the war,
Speaker 1: both in the ESKDRILL and in other units and sixty
Speaker 1: eight of them were killed. Since they usually flew in
Speaker 1: these single seat biplanes, the men who were killed usually
Speaker 1: died alone. This was just a different kind of grief
Speaker 1: and trauma than what Bullard had been experiencing in the infantry,
Speaker 1: where the vast scale of death could become so overwhelming
Speaker 1: that it was almost numbing. So it was like both
Speaker 1: of them were really traumatic. In some ways, being a
Speaker 1: pilot felt more acute, if that makes sense. Bullard flew
Speaker 1: about twenty missions during his time as a pilot as
Speaker 1: part of ESKU DRILL SPA Ninety three and later Esqdril
Speaker 1: sp a eight five. He reported that he had shot
Speaker 1: down to German planes during that time. Those were not confirmed, though,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't have been unusual if the planes crashed behind
Speaker 1: German lines and nobody else was around to see it.
Speaker 1: Bullard also crashed at one point after his plane was
Speaker 1: hit from the ground. He hid from German troops until
Speaker 1: the French came to retrieve the plane. His time as
Speaker 1: a pilot did not last for very long, though. The
Speaker 1: United States became involved in world one in April of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, and once American troops actually started arriving in Europe.
Speaker 1: Months later, the American pilots and the Lafayette Esquadrille were
Speaker 1: transferred into the American military, but not bullard. There is
Speaker 1: some conflicting information around this. Bullard blamed Dr Edmund Gross,
Speaker 1: who definitely did write a letter laying out some flatly
Speaker 1: false reasons to keep bullard out of the American military.
Speaker 1: Gross said that Bullard had been imprisoned for ten days,
Speaker 1: which he had not, after an altercation with an officer.
Speaker 1: That altercation did happen in response to that officer's racism.
Speaker 1: Other French officers who had witnessed this had sided with Bullard,
Speaker 1: who was reprimanded but definitely not jailed. And this officer
Speaker 1: was in command of some of the troops that had
Speaker 1: been recruited from France's colonial territories, so those would have
Speaker 1: been people of Color, and apparently the officer was saying
Speaker 1: really disparaging things and Eugene Jack Bullard was not having
Speaker 1: it and other officers backed him up as being in
Speaker 1: the right. Gross also said that Bullard had been imprisoned
Speaker 1: for a further twenty days for wearing a forage air
Speaker 1: that was only allowed to be warned by members of
Speaker 1: the Foreign Legion, which gross implied Bullard was not one of.
Speaker 1: Bullard had been wearing this for a jaire because he
Speaker 1: earned it as a member of the French Foreign Legion,
Speaker 1: which gross had either overlooked in his record or just
Speaker 1: lied about in this letter. There was no twenty day
Speaker 1: jail term involved with all of this, because Bullard had
Speaker 1: not been doing anything wrong. He was wearing a decoration
Speaker 1: he had earned. Gross wrote back to captain W W
Speaker 1: Hoffman of the American Expeditionary Force that Bullard was being
Speaker 1: transferred back to the French infantry. For All these reasons.
Speaker 1: It's also noted that all the other pilots being transferred
Speaker 1: into the American military were officers and Bullard wasn't. And
Speaker 1: one source on Bullard claims that his physical exam didn't
Speaker 1: disqualify him from service, but did note that both his
Speaker 1: feet and his tonsils were too large and his name
Speaker 1: was last on the list of pilots whose physicals were acceptable. However,
Speaker 1: even without any of that, it is extremely unlikely that
Speaker 1: the US military would have accepted Bullard as a pilot.
Speaker 1: The US military was racially segregated and most black men
Speaker 1: served in labor battalions the ones who served in combat
Speaker 1: roles were in the ninety second and ninety three combat divisions,
Speaker 1: most famously in the three sixty ninth infantry, better known
Speaker 1: as the Harlem Hell Fighters. We have an episode on
Speaker 1: the Harlem Hell Fighters that we ran as a Saturday
Speaker 1: classic in June. Of the American military just would not
Speaker 1: have viewed to black pilot as an option. Gross had
Speaker 1: not wanted Bullard to fly for the Lafayette Esquadrille in
Speaker 1: the first place and had subjected him to a lot
Speaker 1: of petty slates, including paying him late and never giving
Speaker 1: him an honorary scroll that the French Ministry of war
Speaker 1: had presented to all the other pilots. So at this
Speaker 1: point gross seems to have taken the opportunity to end
Speaker 1: his service as a pilot entirely. In January of nine eighteen,
Speaker 1: Bullard was transferred back to the one infantry. Around this
Speaker 1: same time there was a brief mention of him and
Speaker 1: then double a CPS publication the crisis, mentioning that he
Speaker 1: had joined the French Foreign Legion, been wounded at ver done,
Speaker 1: earned the Quada gair and enlisted in the Aviation Corps.
Speaker 1: After leaving the hospital, following his injury. This did not
Speaker 1: have the most recent news involving him. Presumably the person
Speaker 1: who wrote this did not know that information yet, but
Speaker 1: this seems to be the only mention of Eugene Bullard
Speaker 1: in American media from during the war. Although bullard had
Speaker 1: been able to fly a plane, his earlier leg wound
Speaker 1: still affected his mobility and that he couldn't just move
Speaker 1: back into his previous role as a machine gunner. So
Speaker 1: he spent the rest of World War One in a
Speaker 1: service battalion. After the war, his service was seen as
Speaker 1: particularly heroic since he was one of the Americans who
Speaker 1: served in France long before the US entered the war
Speaker 1: and had been wounded more than once in the process.
Speaker 1: Because he had been wounded in service to France, Bullard
Speaker 1: was also eligible for French citizenship and later identified himself
Speaker 1: as a French citizen. After the war was over, Bullard
Speaker 1: went back to Paris. He doesn't seem to have had
Speaker 1: his monkey Jimmy with him anymore. According to some accounts,
Speaker 1: Jimmy died during the flu pandemic. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: bullard's life in Paris in our next episode. Will we
Speaker 1: talk about Listener Mail in the meantime, we will uh.
Speaker 1: This listener mail is from Heather, and Heather wrote. High
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. I hope this email finds you well.
Speaker 1: I started listening to your podcast after the start of
Speaker 1: the pandemic and I have to say it has been
Speaker 1: essential to my daily walking routine and general intellectual enrichment. Today,
Speaker 1: on my daily walk with our dog Zoro, I listened
Speaker 1: to the episode on Thomas Midgley Jr and his deadly
Speaker 1: inventions and the last part on the history of free on.
Speaker 1: You ended it by mentioning that the world's response to
Speaker 1: the science showing free once negative impact on the Ozon
Speaker 1: layer demonstrated what was possible when a substitute is available.
Speaker 1: What is interesting is that what eventually replaced free on
Speaker 1: and other CFCs used as a flat refrigerants, Hydrofluoro carbons,
Speaker 1: or h f CS, are now considered among the culprits
Speaker 1: of global warming and climate change, being accountable for about
Speaker 1: one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Recent years have
Speaker 1: seen the global community rally around initiatives to phase out HFCs,
Speaker 1: in a movement reminiscent of the global phase out of
Speaker 1: free on and CFCs and the U N, EU and
Speaker 1: many nations are legislating to reduce their usage. In the US,
Speaker 1: the bipartisan followed by two expl exclamation points in parentheses,
Speaker 1: twenty American innovation and manufacturing, or aim act mandates the
Speaker 1: eventual phase out of listed high global warming potential or
Speaker 1: G W P, HFCs. The irony in all of this
Speaker 1: is that the substitutes available and being promoted, ammonia, propane
Speaker 1: and carbon dioxide, are the very chemicals that were considered
Speaker 1: too toxic or flammable to continue to use the refrigeration
Speaker 1: back in the first part of the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: made free on a viable alternative back then. However, in
Speaker 1: the present day these chemicals can be used as refrigerants
Speaker 1: much more safely due to the advanced engineering of refrigeration
Speaker 1: equipment that prevents fires and leaks. In most cases, these
Speaker 1: natural refrigerants have zero or very low G W P. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought you might enjoy this Fitnte uh and then
Speaker 1: heather also included pictures of cat, Cathulu, the great old one.
Speaker 1: She's not actually that, but does sometimes embody her love,
Speaker 1: crafty and namesakes behaviors. Oh and the dog is cute too.
Speaker 1: So we have a dog picture. This dog is super cute.
Speaker 1: I do not know if this is a girl dog
Speaker 1: or a boy dog, but dog it's kind of rolling
Speaker 1: around with the mouth open, adorable posture. Um. And then
Speaker 1: also such a very cute cat making very cute cat faces. Um.
Speaker 1: It looks like this kitty cat has a tipped ear
Speaker 1: in one picture, so I wonder what the Kitty Cat's
Speaker 1: background is. Uh, that's a lot of Um. FERRELS and
Speaker 1: strays have their ears tipped after being vaccinated, spader, neutered
Speaker 1: and vaccinated and sometimes returned to their feral colonies. Yes,
Speaker 1: because they can test positive for things they have been
Speaker 1: vaccinated for. Yes, yes. Or you can have a cat
Speaker 1: like my now gone cat, Mr Burns, who tears his
Speaker 1: own ear in a way that makes people think that happened,
Speaker 1: but in fact he just got a claw cotton impulse.
Speaker 1: Oh No, he was for Mr Burn so thank you
Speaker 1: for all these cat pictures and for this footnote. Another
Speaker 1: thing that we did not mention in the episode is
Speaker 1: that new ozone depleting substances are being developed all the
Speaker 1: time and the progress towards the whole in the ozone
Speaker 1: layer in general. Ozone Depletion repairing itself only continues to
Speaker 1: work if we continue to not use those substances once
Speaker 1: they're known to be ozone depleting. We did not specifically
Speaker 1: say that in the episode, so I wanted to take
Speaker 1: the opportunity to say it now. Thank you again, Heather,
Speaker 1: for this note and all of the adorable animal pictures.
Speaker 1: If you would like to send us a note about
Speaker 1: this or any other podcast, we're a history podcast at
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Speaker 1: this has been the case wherever we're still between office
Speaker 1: is so still not a great way to send us
Speaker 1: any physical items. See what happens with that. Uh. You
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