Georges Guynemer | Page 2

so vast, delicate,
and complicated that years are needed to complete it. At all points we
see the immense need of thorough organization and of making ready far
in advance of the day of trial. But this does not mean that there is any
less need than before of those qualities of endurance and hardihood, of
daring and resolution, which in their sum make up the stern and
enduring valor which ever has been and ever will be the mark of
mighty victorious armies.
The air service in particular is one of such peril that membership in it is
of itself a high distinction. Physical address, high training, entire

fearlessness, iron nerve, and fertile resourcefulness are needed in a
combination and to a degree hitherto unparalleled in war. The ordinary
air fighter is an extraordinary man; and the extraordinary air fighter
stands as one in a million among his fellows. Guynemer was one of
these. More than this. He was the foremost among all the extraordinary
fighters of all the nations who in this war have made the skies their
battle field. We are fortunate indeed in having you write his biography.
Very faithfully yours, (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.
M. Henry Bordeaux, 44 Rue du Ranelagh, Paris, France.

PROLOGUE
" ... Guynemer has not come back."
The news flew from one air escadrille to another, from the aviation
camps to the troops, from the advance to the rear zones of the army;
and a shock of pain passed from soul to soul in that vast army, and
throughout all France, as if, among so many soldiers menaced with
death, this one alone should have been immortal.
History gives us examples of such universal grief, but only at the death
of great leaders whose authority and importance intensified the general
mourning for their loss. Thus, Troy without Hector was defenseless.
When Gaston de Foix, Duke de Nemours, surnamed the Thunderbolt of
Italy, died at the age of twenty-three after the victory of Ravenna, the
French transalpine conquests were endangered. The bullet which struck
Turenne at Saltzbach also menaced the work of Louis XIV. But
Guynemer had nothing but his airplane, a speck in the immense spaces
filled by the war. This young captain, though without an equal in the
sky, conducted no battle on land. Why, then, did he alone have the
power, like a great military chief, of leaving universal sadness behind
him? A little child of France has given us the reason.
Among the endless expressions of the nation's mourning, this letter was
written by the school-mistress of a village in Franche-Comté,

Mademoiselle S----, of Bouclans, to the mother of the aviator:
Madame, you have already received the sorrowful and grateful
sympathy of official France and of France as a nation; I am venturing to
send you the naïve and sincere homage of young France as represented
by our school children at Bouclans. Before receiving from our chiefs
the suggestion, of which we learn to-day, we had already, on the 22nd
of October, consecrated a day to the memory of our hero Guynemer,
your glorious son.
I send you enclosed an exercise by one of my pupils chosen at random,
for all of them are animated by the same sentiments. You will see how
the immortal glory of your son shines even in humble villages, and that
the admiration and gratitude which the children, so far away in the
country, feel for our greatest aviator, will be piously and faithfully
preserved in his memory.
May this sincere testimony to the sentiments of childhood be of some
comfort in your grief, to which I offer my most profound respect.
The School-mistress of Bouclans, C.S.
And this is the exercise, written by Paul Bailly, aged eleven years and
ten months:
Guynemer is the Roland of our epoch: like Roland he was very brave,
and like Roland he died for France. But his exploits are not a legend
like those of Roland, and in telling them just as they happened we find
them more beautiful than any we could imagine. To do honor to him
they are going to write his name in the Panthéon among the other great
names. His airplane has been placed in the Invalides. In our school we
consecrated a day to him. This morning as soon as we reached the
school we put his photograph up on the wall; for our moral lesson we
learned by heart his last mention in the despatches; for our writing
lesson we wrote his name, and he was the subject for our theme; and
finally, we had to draw an airplane. We did not begin to think of him
only after he was dead; before he died, in our school, every time he
brought down an airplane we were proud and happy. But