A “Legendary Hero”
The Place in Fame to Which the French Assign Their Miracle “Ace”
In that charming French style of which he is a known master, Henry Bordeaux tells the story of a frail little boy, delicate as a girl and having the general appearance of one, with his long curls, his too pretty face, his pale complexion, his gentle manners. Because he was so frail of body and so uncertain of health he was closely looked after by the women of the household, which means, among other things, that he was quite thoroughly spoiled. The child looked like a little princess, as though adapted more to a future of effeminate surroundings, not like a boy in whose infant breast waited a great spirit.
One day, when the child was about six years old, it suddenly occurred to the father that they were taking a wrong course with the boy. After reflection he took the boy on his knee and said to him:
“I’ve a great mind to take you with me where I am going.”
“Where are you going, papa?”
“Where I am going only men go.”
“I wish to go with you.”
The father hesitated, but finally said:
“After all, it is better to be too soon than too late. Get your hat. I’ll take you.”
He took him to the hair-cutter’s.
“I’m going to have my hair cut,” said the father. “How about yours?”
“I wish to do as the men do,” the boy answered. And the beautiful curls were shorn.
There were tears when the mother folded her transformed darling to her breast, but the child stiffening proudly declared: “Je suis un homme!”
Bordeaux says here: “Il sera un homme, mais il restera longtemps un gamin aussi. Longtemps? Presque jusqu’à la fin—à ses heurs, jusqu’à la fin.”
It was Georges Guynemer, who not so very long after flamed out a boy hero of France, doing deeds that struck the world with wonderment, and while the world marveled vanished mysteriously, leaving no trace behind.
Small and feminine, educated chiefly by governesses and his sisters, later a day student at the Lyceum, afterwards for a time at Stanislas, he was not the stuff for a soldier, yet soldier he wished to be when France set out to repel the German horde. He was twenty years old then. He hastened to his father.
“I’m going to enlist.”
“You are in luck.”
“Ah! you authorize me!”
“I envy you.”
“Then as an old soldier you can help me. You can speak for me.”
“I will.”
But it was to no avail. He was not able to carry the equipment and endure the fatigue of a private, and the effects of a childhood’s illness made it impossible for him to serve in the cavalry. He was rejected—laughed at by some, be it said.
He made a second attempt to enlist with no better result. Says M. Bordeaux: “He returned with his father to Biaritz, pale, silent, mournful, in such a state of rage and bitterness that his face was distorted.” He wrote to his old preceptor at Stanislas: “If I have to lie at the bottom of an auto-camion I wish to go to the front; and I will go. I mean to serve, it doesn’t matter where nor how, it doesn’t matter in what branch, but go to the front, serve I will.”
That sort of spirit is not to be denied. Fate and circumstances make way for it.
He met the pilot of an airplane one day and in conversation with him asked: “How can one get into the air service?”
“See the Captain; you’ll find him at Pau.”