Emile Reymond

Emile Reymond during his flight test in 1910

Emile Reymond (born April 2, 1865 in Tarbes , Hautes-Pyrénées department, † October 22, 1914 in Toul , Meurthe-et-Moselle department) was a French medic, senator and aviation pioneer.

The son of the MP in the French National Assembly and Senator Francisque Reymond attended the elite schools Lycée Hoche in Versailles, Lycée Condorcet and Lycée Henri IV in Paris in his youth . After studying mathematics and doing a short interlude in sculpture, he turned to medicine. After studying medicine in Paris, he quickly made a career as a surgeon. He comes to Nanterre via Sèvres. From 1903 he turned to politics. He took a seat in the council of the Arrondissement of Montbrison . In 1905 he became its president and was also able to take over the senate chair from his father, who died that year. As an avid aviator, having obtained his pilot's license in August 1910, he not only made a number of trips by plane through France and even into the Sahara , but also advocated the use of aviation for military purposes. When the First World War broke out in 1914 , he served his country not only as a doctor, but also as a pilot. On October 21, 1914, he was shot down on a reconnaissance flight in a Blériot double-decker to Chambley , Mars la Tour and Thiaucourt in the no man's land near the forest of Mort-Mare between the German and French lines. His observer Alfred Clamadieu was dead on the spot, Reymond was seriously injured and was able to drag himself as far as the French lines during the night. He was taken to the hospital in Toul, where shortly before his death he passed on his findings from the observation flight. He was buried in Toul and transferred to Montbrison at the end of the war.

Web links

• Biography on the website of the French Senate (French)