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of General Henri Gouraud in the French Fourth Army. The French did not believe in segregated units and were grateful to combatants of any colour. The Hellfighters became the 369th Regiment and spent more time under continuous fire, 191 days, than any other unit of American soldiers. They ceded no ground, and none surrendered. They were the first regiment to reach the River Rhine, and they collectively earned the Croix de Guerre for valour. At war’s end, however, General Pershing did not permit them, or their popular regimental band under James Reese Europe, to participate in the Allies’ victory march through Paris. Many of the demobilized African-American doughboys, unsurprisingly, stayed in Paris rather than return to the land of Jim Crow and lynching.

The army discharged Bullard in October 1919 at the end of a distinguished tour of duty that included the rare achievement of service in the Foreign Legion, the regular army and the air corps. He had also been awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the Médaille Militaire, Croix de Guerre, Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Guerre and many other medals for bravery and for his wounds. There was no decoration for being the first black combat pilot and the only African-American to fly for any army in the Great War.

Peacetime proved more eventful for Bullard than war. Back in Paris, he returned to boxing but also took up the drums in one of the increasingly popular jazz bands. Montmartre became home to new jazz ensembles and to the demobilized black American soldiers who elected not to return to the United States. Some had played in James Reese Europe’s famous Harlem Hellfighters’ orchestra. Bullard became artistic director at Joe Zelli’s nightclub in Montmartre after helping the Italian to obtain the first Parisian licence to open after midnight. He booked some of the finest jazz talent in the world to play at Zelli’s.

In 1923, Bullard married Marcelle Eugénie Henriette Straumann, daughter of a rich industrialist and his aristocrat wife. To Bullard’s delight, the Straumann parents welcomed him into their family. Eugene and Marcelle had three children, a son who died in infancy of pneumonia and two daughters, Jacqueline and Lolita. In 1928, Bullard bought his own Montmartre club, Le Grand Duc, at 52 rue Pigalle. It became the centre of a jazz age scene that drew the likes of the Prince of Wales and Ernest Hemingway to Bullard’s champagne-laden table. Bullard hired Ada Smith, whose red hair earned her the name ‘Bricktop’, to sing. He also gave Langston Hughes, then a struggling young poet, work as a dishwasher. This was an exciting time in Montmartre, when jazz lovers could hear trumpeter Arthur Briggs in one club and celebrated pianist Henry Crowder in another. Eugene Bullard dominated the Parisian scene as impresario, restaurateur and benefactor of Americans in need. Clarinettist Sidney Bechet, who played in the club and became Bullard’s friend, wrote:

If someone needed help, he did more than any Salvation Army could with a whole army; and what he wanted to do for himself, he could do in a smooth, smart way. He’d made himself the kind of man people had a need for. The cabarets, the clubs, the musicaners–when there was some trouble they couldn’t straighten out by themselves, they called on Gene. He was a man you could count on.

Bullard opened another club, L’Escadrille, at 5 rue Fontaine, and a gym, Bullard’s Athletic Club, at 15 rue Mansart in Pigalle. Marcelle wanted him to give up his Montmartre life and become a country gentleman. ‘Like most American men,’ Bullard wrote, ‘who aren’t sissies, I could not stand the idea of being a gigolo even to my wife. So I told her she could lead the life of a full-time society woman if she liked but to count me out during working hours because I was not going to give up earning my living. Soon we were seeing so little of each other that we decided to part company.’ She may have wearied of the occasional scars he carried home from fights in and out of the clubs, as well as of his all-night hours. They divorced in 1935, and he was awarded custody