When Sartre Got Conscripted

Because of his exotropia, which he said caused him balance issues, and his partial blindness, he didn’t go to the front. Instead, they made him a meteorologist. In a letter to Simone de Beauvoir, he wrote that it was “extremely peaceful work; indeed I cannot think of any branch of the services that has a quieter, more poetic job—apart, that is, from the pigeon breeders, always supposing that nowadays there are any of them left.”

“My work here consists of sending up balloons and then watching them through a pair of field glasses,” he explained. “This is called `making a meteorological observation.’ Afterwards, I phone the battery artillery officers and tell them of the wind direction. What they do with this information is entirely their affair. The young ones make some intelligence reports based on it; the old school simply shove it in the wastepaper basket. In any event, since there is no shooting here at present, either course is equally effective. As for me, I am left with a huge amount of spare time on my hands, which I am using to complete my novel.”

Sartre was captured by German troops in 1940, and spent nine months as a prisoner of war, during which time he also wrote a great deal, and passed the rest of the hours by reading Heidegger’s Being and Time.

He had been suffering a great deal from his eye problems, thanks to all the reading and writing. Pleading for treatment, he procured a medical pass to visit an ophthalmologist outside the camp gates. Amazingly, he was then allowed to walk out, showing the pass, and he never went back.

Instead, he returned to Paris and got back to work.