Georges Guynemer | Page 3

when we

heard that he was dead, we were as sad as if one of our own family had
died.
Roland was the example for all the knights in history. Guynemer
should be the example for Frenchmen now, and each one will try to
imitate him and will remember him as we have remembered Roland. I,
especially, I shall never forget him, for I shall remember that he died
for France, like my dear Papa.
This little French boy's description of Guynemer is true and, limited as
it is, sufficient: Guynemer is the modern Roland, with the same
redoubtable youth and fiery soul. He is the last of the knights-errant,
the first of the new knights of the air. His short life needs only accurate
telling to appear like a legend. The void he left is so great because
every household had adopted him. Each one shared in his victories, and
all have written his name among their own dead.
Guynemer's glory, to have so ravished the minds of children, must have
been both simple and perfect, and as his biographer I cannot dream of
equaling the young Paul Bailly. But I shall not take his hero from him.
Guynemer's life falls naturally into the legendary rhythm, and the
simple and exact truth resembles a fairy tale.
The writers of antiquity have mourned in touching accents the loss of
young men cut down in the flower of their youth. "The city," sighs
Pericles, "has lost its light, the year has lost its spring." Theocritus and
Ovid in turn lament the short life of Adonis, whose blood was changed
into flowers. And in Virgil the father of the gods, whom Pallas
supplicates before facing Turnus, warns him not to confound the beauty
of life with its length:
Stat sua cuique dies; breve et irreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae;
sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus. . .
"The days of man are numbered, and his life-time short and
irrecoverable; but to increase his renown by the quality of his acts, this
is the work of virtue...."[1]

[Footnote 1: Æneid, Book 10, Garnier ed.]
Famam extendere factis: no fabulous personage of antiquity made more
haste than Guynemer to multiply the exploits that increased his glory.
But the enumeration of these would not furnish a key to his life, nor
explain either that secret power he possessed or the fascination he
exerted. "It is not always the most brilliant actions which best expose
the virtues or vices of men. Some trifle, some insignificant word or jest,
often displays the character better than bloody combats, pitched battles,
or the taking of cities. Also, as portrait painters try to reproduce the
features and expression of their subjects, as the most obvious
presentment of their characters, and without troubling about the other
parts of the body, so we may be allowed to concentrate our study upon
the distinctive signs of the soul...."[2]
[Footnote 2: Plutarch, Life of Alexander.]
I, then, shall especially seek out these "distinctive signs of the soul."
Guynemer's family has confided to me his letters, his notebooks of
flights, and many precious stories of his childhood, his youth, and his
victories. I have seen him in camps, like the Cid Campeador, who made
"the swarm of singing victories fly, with wings outspread, above his
tents." I have had the good fortune to see him bring down an enemy
airplane, which fell in flames on the bank of the river Vesle. I have met
him in his father's house at Compiègne, which was his Bivar. Almost
immediately after his disappearance I passed two night-watches--as if
we sat beside his body--with his comrades, talking of nothing but him:
troubled night-watches in which we had to change our shelter, for
Dunkirk and the aviation field were bombarded by moonlight. In this
way I was enabled to gather much scattered evidence, which will help,
perhaps, to make clear his career. But I fear--and offer my excuses for
this--to disappoint professional members of the aviation corps, who
will find neither technical details nor the competence of the specialist.
One of his comrades of the air,--and I hope it may be one of his rivals
in glory,--should give us an account of Guynemer in action. The
biography which I have attempted to write seeks the soul for its object
rather than the motor: and the soul, too, has its wings.

France consented to love herself in Guynemer, something which she is
not always willing to do. It happens sometimes that she turns away
from her own efforts and sacrifices to admire and celebrate those of
others, and that she displays her own defects and wounds in a way
which exaggerates them. She sometimes appears to be divided against
herself; but this man, young as he was, had reconciled her to herself.
She