Army of Shadows

JOSEPH KESSEL (10 February 1898 - 23 July 1979) was a French journalist and novelist. He was a member of the Académie française and Grand officer of the Legion of Honour.
He was born in Villa Clara, Entre Ríos, Argentina, owing to the frequent journeys of his father, a Litvak doctor. From 1905 to 1908, Kessel lived the first years of his childhood in Orenburg, Russia, before the family moved to France in 1908. He studied in Lycée Masséna, Nice and Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris, and took part in the First World War as an aviator. He was also an aviator during the Second World War, assigned to the Free French 342 "Lorraine" bomber Squadron of the Royal Air Force, with Romain Gary, who was also a talented French novelist.
Kessel wrote several novels and books that were later represented in the cinema, notably Belle de Jour by Luis Buñuel in 1967. In 1943 he and his nephew Maurice Druon translated Anna Marly's song Chant des Partisans into French from its original Russian. The song became one of the anthems of Free French Forces during the Second World War. He was elected at the Académie française in 1962.
Kessel died on in 1979 in Avernes, Val-d'Oise at the age 81. He is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
The Joseph-Kessel Prize (Prix Joseph Kessel), a prestigious prize in French language literature, was created in his honour.
HAAKON MAURICE CHEVALIER (September 10, 1901 - July 4, 1985) was an American author, translator, and professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley, best known for his friendship with physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom he met at Berkeley, California in 1937. Born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey to French and Norwegian parents, Chevalier also served as a translator for the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. He died in 1985 in Paris at the age of 83.