This story is taken from Charles Glass’ history, Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation. It’s told in my own words because it’s a long and complicated story, too long for this small space.

In 1940 as the Germans advanced on Paris, Eugene Bullard, a black man, walked toward the front lugging a knapsack of sausages, crackers and canned food, along with a two-volume history of the American contingent of the French Air Corps during the First World War, the Lafayette Escadrille.

Bullard was intent on joining the 170th Regiment in holding back the enemy. His march took him to Chalons. There refugees told him the Germans had already blocked the way. So he walked back to Paris.

There he learned that another infantry regiment had engaged the Germans near Orleans. He trudged south to join them.

Bullard marched 50 miles in 28 hours. He stopped at Chartres where he had good luck when he met up with Bob Scanlon, a black boxer and old friend.

The Germans dive-bombed Chartres, but Bullard survived.

Eugene Bullard’s entire life was a journey. He was born in Columbus, Ga., in 1895. His parents were of mixed African and Creek Indian stock, and his father had been a slave. His mother died when he was 6.

His father supported the family as a laborer. When the foreman struck him, his father struck back. That night a white mob showed up to lynch him. Bullard and his brothers convinced them he was not at home.

This traumatic experience caused Bullard to leave home and later to leave the country. He stowed away on a tramp steamer. When he was discovered, the ship’s captain gave him $20 and dropped him off at Glascow. After working various odd jobs, he became a professional boxer. A 20-round bout in 1913 brought him to Paris, where he stayed.

He loved the city and later explained, “Nobody ever called me a n-----.”

It seemed to him that the French democracy, unlike the American, helped everyone to act like brothers. So when the French went to war with Germany in 1914, Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion. He became a machine gunner and was wounded and commended for bravery. Upon recovery, he joined the French Army Air Corps.

He qualified as a pilot in May 1917. The Americans formed what became the Lafayette Escadrille. Another American, Dr. Edmund Gros, did not want blacks in combat. Bullard ignored him and flew many combat missions. On the side of his plane he painted: “All blood runs red.” He flew more than 20 missions and had one confirmed downing of a German plane. His plane took bullets from German ground fire, but he always made it back to base.

When the American Air Corps arrived in France that autumn, the other 266 American pilots in French service became the U.S. 103rd Pursuit Squadron. Bullard was the only pilot excluded. He also was the only black.

U.S. Army commanders prevented the all-black 15th Infantry Regiment from serving at the front with the American army. The Harlem Hellfighters, as they were called, were put under the command of Gen. Henri Gouraud in the French Fourth Army. The French did not believe in segregated units and were grateful to have combatants of any color. The Hellfighters spent more time under fire than any other unit of American soldiers. They were the first regiment to reach the Rhine River, and they collectively earned the Croix de Guerre for valor.

At war’s end, however, the American commander, Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, did not permit them to participate in the Allies’ victory march through Paris. Many of the demobilized African–American doughboys stayed in Paris rather than return to the land of Jim Crow and lynching.

The army discharged Bullard in October 1919 after his distinguished tour of duty that included the rare achievement of service in the Foreign Legion, the regular army and the air corps.

Peacetime proved more eventful for Bullard than war. Back in Paris, he took up the drums in one of the popular jazz bands booking some of the finest jazz talent in the world.

In 1928, Bullard bought his own club, Le Grand Duc, that became the center of the Jazz Age scene that drew the likes of the prince of Wales and Ernest Hemingway. He also hired Ada Smith, whose red hair earned her the name “Brick-Top,” to sing. He gave Langston Hughes, then a struggling young poet, work as a dishwasher.

When the war came in 1939, Bullard decided it was time to leave France and get back to America. He said “the Nazis were more race-obsessed than the white ‘crackers’ I had grown up with in Georgia.”

He went to the south of France and was able to get a passport that allowed him to journey through Spain and arrive in Lisbon. On July 12, he boarded a ship with 700 other Americans on the liner Manhattan bound for New York.

Charlie Langdon is the Herald’s senior critic. He can be reached at langdons@gobrain storm.net.