Eon was twenty and serving in the army when he wrote  "Tire au Flanc", a comedy so successful that, by 1950 it had been  played 20,000 times in France. Corrected and slightly modified by  André Sylvane (who downplayed the anti militarist tone of the third  act), the play was first produced at Théâtre Déjazet in Paris in  November 1904. 45 years later Mouëzy