Engaged at 19 in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War, he joined the field artillery in Lorraine and on the front of Artois.

[1] Back in Paris in 1919 and marked by war - he decided then for a wandering life in search of discoveries - Marc Chadourne was received first in the entry competition to the Ministère des Colonies.

In 1927 he published Vasco, a novel set in French Polynesia, in memory of his brother.

When the Second World War broke out, he took refuge in the United States and became a professor at Scripps College in Claremont in California then in the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

In 1950, the Académie française rewarded him with its Grand prix de littérature for all of his work.