II A Visit to Guynemer
Sunday, June 3, 1917. To-day, the first Sunday of June, the women from the neighboring villages came to visit the camp. Nobody is allowed to enter, but from the road you can see the machines start or land. The day was glorious, and the broad sun transfiguring these French landscapes, with their elongated valleys, their wooded ranges of hills, and generally harmonious lines suggested Greece, and one looked around for the colonnades of temples.
Beyond the rolling country rose the Aisne cliffs, where the fighting was incessant, though its roar was scarcely perceived.
Why had these villages been attracted to this particular camp? Because they knew that here, in default of Greek temples, were young gods. They wanted to see Guynemer.
The news had flown on rapid wings from hamlet to hamlet, from farm to farm, of what had happened on the 25th, and on the next day Guynemer had been almost equally successful.
Several aviators had already landed, men with famous names, but the public cannot be expected to remember them all. Finally an airplane descended in graceful spirals, landing softly and rolling along close to the railings.
“Guynemer!”
But the pilot, unconscious of the worshiping crowd, took off his helmet, disclosed a frowning face, and began discontentedly to examine his gun. Twice that day it had jammed, saving two Germans. Guynemer was like the painters of old who, by grinding their colors themselves, insured the duration of their works. He resented not being able to make all his weapons himself, his engine, his Vickers, and his bullets. At length he seemed willing to leave his machine, and pulled off his heavy war accouterment, which revealed a tall, flexible young man. As he rapidly approached his tent, his every motion watched by the onlookers, a private turned on him a small camera, with a beseeching—
“You’ll permit me, mon capitaine?”
“Yes, but quick.”
He was cross and impatient, and as he stopped he noticed all the eyes of the women watching him ecstatically. He made a despairing gesture. His frown deepened, his figure stiffened, and the snapshot was another failure.
Hardly any of his portraits are like him. Does the fact that he was tall and spare, almost beardless, with an amber-colored, oval face and a regular profile, and raven-hair brushed backwards, give any idea of the force that was in him? If his eyes, dark with golden reflections, could have been painted, they might no doubt have given a more accurate notion of him: his capacity for surveying all space, and his prompt decision, were visible in them, as well as his carefulness and his courage. Their glance was so direct, almost brutal, that it could be felt, so to speak, physically; and yet it could suddenly express a cheerful, boyish nature, or disclose his close attention to the technical problems which everlastingly engrossed his mind.
Guynemer was very different from Navarre, with his powerful profile and broad chest like an eagle in repose, and different from Nungesser, the Nungesser before his wounds had so devastated his body that a medical board wanted to declare him unfit, a decision which he heroically resisted, adding to his thirty victories another triumph over physical disability. Guynemer differed from them mentally, too, possessing neither their instinct nor their intuitiveness. These he replaced with scientific accuracy based on study, by a passion for flying, by method allied to fervor, by violent logic. His power was nervous and almost electric. The vicinity of danger drew sparks from him.
His most daring exploits were prepared by meditation beforehand, and he never indulged in recklessness without having pondered and calculated. His action was so swift that it might seem instinctive, but under appearances the reasoning element was always present.
It was now late, but he was willing to talk to us about that wonderful 25th of May, for he had no objection to talking about his enemy-chasing; on the contrary, he would tell us details with the same amusement as if he related lucky plays at poker, and with the same knowing ways. There was not the least shade of affectation or of posing in his narrative, but he talked with the simplicity of a child. He told us that his third encounter had been the most enjoyable. He was coming back to lunch, had seen the impudent German soaring above the camp, had fired, and the man had gone down dead. After this exceedingly brief account he laughed as usual, a fresh laugh like a girl’s, and his eyes closed. He said he was sleepy; he had been out twice, and before he went again he wanted a little rest.
I remember how bustling the camp looked! It was half-past six, and the weather was wonderful, with not a cloud in the sky, for some floating white flakes in the blue could not be called clouds. But these white flakes began to multiply; they were, in fact, an enemy patrol, which had succeeded in crossing the lines and was now above us. We counted two, three, four machines, which the sparks of our exploding shells promptly surrounded, while three French Spads rose at full speed to meet them.
As we stood watching and wondering if the enemy would accept the fight, Guynemer suddenly appeared. He had been called, and now he and his comrades, Captain Auger and Lieutenant Raymond, came running to their machines. I watched Guynemer as he was being put into his leather suit. His whole soul was in his eyes, which glared at one moving point in space as if they themselves could shoot. Three of the German machines had already turned back, but the remaining one went on, insolently counting on his own power and speed. I shall never forget Guynemer, his face lifted, his eyes illuminated as if hypnotized by this point in space, his figure upright and stiffened like an arrow waiting to be released by the bow. Before pulling down his helmet he gave the order:
“Straight at him.”
The engines snorted and snored, the propellers began to move, the machines rolled along, and suddenly were seen climbing almost vertically. Up above the fight was beginning, and it seemed as if the three starting airplanes could never reach in time the altitude of four or five thousand meters at which it was taking place.
The attacking Spad was obviously trying to get its opponent within firing range, but the German was a first-rate pilot and dodged without losing height, banking, looping, taking advantage of the Frenchman’s dead angles, and striving to get him under his machine-gun. Round and round the two airplanes circled, when suddenly the German bolted in the direction of the Aisne cliffs. But the Spad partly caught up with him and the aërial circling began anew, while two other Spads appeared—a pack after a deer. The German cleverly took advantage now of the sun, now of the evening vapors, but he was within range, and the tack-tack of a machine-gun was heard. Guynemer and the other two were coming nearer, when the Spad dropped beneath its adversary and fired upwards. The German plunged, and we expected would sink, but he righted himself and was off in an instant. However, this was Guynemer’s chance: three shots, not more, from his gun, and the German airplane crashed down somewhere near Muizon, on the banks of the Vesle.23
One after another, the victorious birds came back to cover from every part of the violet and rosy sky. But joy over their success must show itself, and they indulged in all the fanciful caprioles of acrobatic aviation, spinning down in quick spirals, turning somersaults, looping or plunging in a glorious sky-dance. Last of these young gods, Guynemer landed after one final circle, and took off his helmet, offering to the setting sun his illuminated face, still full of the spirit of battle.
Notes
23 This victory was not put down to Guynemer’s account, because another airman had shot first—which gives an idea of the French controlling board’s severity.