Jules Roy
Jules Roy was a notable figure born on October 22, 1907, in Ravigo, Algeria, during the period when Algeria was a French colony. Initially educated in Algiers and preparing for the priesthood, he shifted his path at twenty by joining the French army. His political beliefs underwent significant evolution, particularly during World War II; initially, he supported collaboration with Nazi occupiers but later denounced this stance after a transformative encounter with writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Roy fought as a pilot in the British Royal Air Force, participating in bombing missions over Germany, which he later depicted in his war novel, "La Vallée heureuse." After resigning from the French army in 1953 in protest of the Indochina War, Roy settled in Vézelay, France, where he produced a six-volume series of historical novels focused on Algeria. He passed away on June 15, 2000, in Vézelay, where his former home is now a museum dedicated to his literary legacy. His life reflects a complex interplay of moral conviction, military service, and a passionate connection to his homeland.
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Jules Roy
Writer
- Born: October 22, 1907
- Birthplace: Rovigo, Algeria
- Died: June 15, 2000
- Place of death: Vezelay, France
Biography
Jules Roy was born on October 22, 1907, in Ravigo, Algeria, when Algeria was still a French colony. He was educated in Algiers. While he was a teenager, he prepared for the priesthood in the Catholic seminary in Algiers, but at the age of twenty he decided to leave the seminary and joined the French army.
Roy consistently believed certain moral positions to be right and others to be completely wrong, but his moral and political positions definitely evolved over the years. When France was conquered by the Nazis in June, 1940, he was serving in his homeland of Algeria. He then took an extreme position by arguing in a pamphlet, La France sauvée par Pétain . . . (1941), that Marshall Philippe Pétain, the head of the Nazi-controlled government in occupied France, and other collaborators such as Charles Maurras, who headed the viciously anti-Semitic movement called French Action, had saved France from moral decay by collaborating actively with the Nazis. In 1942, however, he met the French writer and military hero Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who revealed to Roy the inherent evil of collaboration with the enemy. Roy then escaped to England, where he became a pilot in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and flew military bombing missions over Germany for the combined air force of the RAF and the Free French Forces. This change in allegiance transformed Roy from a collaborator into a military hero.
In his 1946 war novel, La Vallée heureuse (The Happy Valley, 1952), Roy described bombings of the Ruhr Valley in Germany in which he and other RAF pilots had participated. The adjective “happy” in this novel’s title is meant to shock readers into realizing that there was no choice but to destroy this military heartland of Germany in order to make possible the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. Roy remained in the French army until 1953, when he resigned his commission in order to express his disagreement with the French war in Indochina.
He eventually settled in the Burgundian town of Vézelay, famous for its beautiful Romanesque basilica. Between 1967 and 1972, he wrote a six-volume series of historical novels about his beloved homeland of Algeria. He died in Vézelay on June 15, 2000. His house there has been transformed into a museum that admirers of his novels can now visit.