Robert Merle [SEP] native language
Robert Merle
Robert Merle (; 28 August 1908 – 27 March 2004) was a French novelist.
Biography.
Merle was born in 1908 in Tébessa, French Algeria. His father Félix, who was an interpreter "with a perfect knowledge of literary and spoken Arabic", was killed in 1916 in the Dardanelles. Young Merle and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended three lycées and the Sorbonne.
A professor of English Literature at several universities, in 1939 during World War II Merle was conscripted in
Hay's death in 2017, Glidden native Eric Schumacher published an original composition, "The Ballad of Merle D Hay," in Hay's honor.
The first American military casualty in World War II was also an Iowa native. Andrew, Iowa, native Robert M. Losey, a military attache, was killed on April 21, 1940 during a German bombardment of Dombås, Norway. Captain Losey had been attempting to complete the evacuation of the American diplomatic delegation from Norway to Sweden in the wake of the German invasion.