Saint-Exupéry, the Airmail and Cape Juby

Also called: Aéropostale

Saint-Exupéry became a pilot on the mail route linking Toulouse and Dakar and took charge of Cape Juby, a tiny base on the Saharan coast, where he wrote his first novel, Southern Mail.

In 1926 Saint-Exupéry joined the Latécoère airline (later Aéropostale) as a mail pilot flying letters from Toulouse to Casablanca and Dakar. Engines failed often in those days, forced landings in the desert were common, and downed pilots were sometimes seized by desert tribes.

In late 1927 he was made chief of Cape Juby, a small airfield on the coast of Spanish Sahara. Living in a shack beside the fort between sea and sand, he befriended the tribes and ransomed captured airmen, and at night wrote his first novel, Southern Mail (1929).