Book: Georges Guynemer

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GEORGES GUYNEMER

_Published on the Fund
given to the Yale University Press in memory of_

ENSIGN CURTIS SEAMAN READ, U.S.N.R.F.

_of the Class of 1918, Yale College, killed in the
aviation service in France, February, 1918_

[Illustration: GEORGES GUYNEMER, KNIGHT OF THE AIR]




HENRY BORDEAUX


GEORGES
GUYNEMER

KNIGHT OF THE AIR


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
By LOUISE MORGAN SILL

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK: 280 MADISON AVENUE

MDCCCCXVIII




COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS




TABLE OF CONTENTS



PAGE

Introduction 9

Prologue 13

CANTO I: CHILDHOOD

I. The Guynemers 21

II. Home and College 28

III. The Departure 52


CANTO II: LAUNCHED INTO SPACE

I. The First Victory 65

II. From the Aisne to Verdun 91

III. "La Terre a vu jadis errer des Paladins" 108

IV. On the Somme (June, 1916, to February, 1917) 125


CANTO III: AT THE ZENITH

I. On the 25th of May, 1917 143

II. A Visit to Guynemer 157

III. Guynemer in Camp 163

IV. Guynemer at Home 170

V. The Magic Machine 182


CANTO IV: THE ASCENSION

I. The Battle of Flanders 189

II. Omens 200

III. The Last Flight 210

IV. The Vigil 217

V. The Legend 225

VI. In the Pantheon 239


Envoi 242

Appendix: Genealogy of Georges Guynemer 251




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Georges Guynemer, Knight of the Air _Frontispiece_
(From a wood block in three colors by Rudolph Ruzicka.)

The First Flight in a Bleriot 80

In the Air 120

Combat 176

"Going West" 208
(From charcoal drawings by W.A. Dwiggins.)




INTRODUCTION


_June 27th, 1918._

My dear M. Bordeaux:

I count the American people fortunate in reading any book of yours; I
count them fortunate in reading any biography of that great hero of the
air, Guynemer; and thrice over I count them fortunate to have such a
book written by you on such a subject.

You, sir, have for many years been writing books peculiarly fitted to
instill into your countrymen the qualities which during the last
forty-eight months have made France the wonder of the world. You have
written with such power and charm, with such mastery of manner and of
matter, that the lessons you taught have been learned unconsciously by
your readers--and this is the only way in which most readers will learn
lessons at all. The value of your teachings would be as great for my
countrymen as for yours. You have held up as an ideal for men and for
women, that high courage which shirks no danger, when the danger is the
inevitable accompaniment of duty. You have preached the essential
virtues, the duty to be both brave and tender, the duty of courage for
the man and courage for the woman. You have inculcated stern horror of
the baseness which finds expression in refusal to perform those
essential duties without which not merely the usefulness, but the very
existence, of any nation will come to an end.

Under such conditions it is eminently appropriate that you should write
the biography of that soldier-son of France whose splendid daring has
made him stand as arch typical of the soul of the French people through
these terrible four years. In this great war France has suffered more
and has achieved more than any other power. To her more than to any
other power, the final victory will be due. Civilization has in the
past, for immemorial centuries, owed an incalculable debt to France; but
for no single feat or achievement of the past does civilization owe as
much to France as for what her sons and daughters have done in the world
war now being waged by the free peoples against the powers of the Pit.

Modern war makes terrible demands upon those who fight. To an infinitely
greater degree than ever before the outcome depends upon long
preparation in advance, and upon the skillful and unified use of the
nation's entire social and industrial no less than military power. The
work of the general staff is infinitely more important than any work of
the kind in times past. The actual machinery of both is 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-Comte,
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 naive 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 Pantheon
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 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: _AEneid_, 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 Compiegne, 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 smiled at his youth
and his prodigious deeds of valor. He made peace within her; and she
knew this, when she had lost him, by the outbreak of her grief. As on
the first day of the war, France found herself once more united; and
this love sprang from her recognition in Guynemer of her own impulses,
her own generous ardor, her own blood whose course has not been retarded
by many long centuries.

Since the outbreak of war there are few homes in France which have not
been in mourning. But these fathers and mothers, these wives and
children, when they read this book, will not say: "What is Guynemer to
us? Nobody speaks of _our_ dead." Their dead were, generally, infantry
soldiers whom it was impossible for them to help, whose life they only
knew by hearsay, and whose place of burial they sometimes do not know.
So many obscure soldiers have never been commemorated, who gave, like
Guynemer, their hearts and their lives, who lived through the worst days
of misery, of mud and horror, and upon whom not the least ray of glory
has ever descended! The infantry soldier is the pariah of the war, and
has a right to be sensitive. The heaviest weight of suffering caused by
war has fallen upon him. Nevertheless, he had adopted Guynemer, and this
was not the least of the conqueror's conquests. The infantryman had not
been jealous of Guynemer; he had felt his fascination, and instinctively
he divined a fraternal Guynemer. When the French official dispatches
reported the marvelous feats of the aviation corps, the infantry soldier
smiled scornfully in his mole's-hole:

"Them again! Everlastingly them! And what about US?"

But when Guynemer added another exploit to his account, the trenches
exulted, and counted over again all his feats.

He himself, from his height, looked down in the most friendly way upon
these troglodytes who followed him with their eyes. One day when
somebody reproached him with running useless risks in aerial acrobatic
turns, he replied simply:

"After certain victories it is quite impossible not to pirouette a bit,
one is so happy!"

This is the spirit of youth. "They jest and play with death as they
played in school only yesterday at recreation."[3] But Guynemer
immediately added:

"It gives so much pleasure to the poilus watching us down there."[4]

[Footnote 3: Henri Lavedan (_L'Illustration_ of October 6, 1917).]

[Footnote 4: Pierre l'Ermite (_La Croix_ of October 7, 1917).]

The sky-juggler was working for his brother the infantryman. As the
singing lark lifts the peasant's head, bent over his furrow, so the
conquering airplane, with its overturnings, its "loopings," its close
veerings, its spirals, its tail spins, its "zooms," its dives, all its
tricks of flight, amuses for a while the sad laborers in the trenches.

May my readers, when they have finished this little book, composed
according to the rules of the boy, Paul Bailly, lift their heads and
seek in the sky whither he carried, so often and so high, the tricolor
of France, an invisible and immortal Guynemer!




CANTO I

CHILDHOOD


I. THE GUYNEMERS

In his book on Chivalry, the good Leon Gautier, beginning with the
knight in his cradle and wishing to surround him immediately with a
supernatural atmosphere, interprets in his own fashion the sleeping baby
smiling at the angels. "According to a curious legend, the origin of
which has not as yet been clearly discovered," he explains, "the child
during its slumber hears 'music,' the incomparable music made by the
movement of the stars in their spheres. Yes, that which the most
illustrious scholars have only been able to suspect the existence of is
distinctly heard by these ears scarcely opened as yet, and ravishes
them. A charming fable, giving to innocence more power than to proud
science."[5]

[Footnote 5: _La Chevalerie_, by Leon Gautier. A. Walter ed. 1895.]

The biographer of Guynemer would like to be able to say that our new
knight also heard in his cradle the music of the stars, since he was to
be summoned to approach them. But it can be said, at least, that during
his early years he saw the shadowy train of all the heroes of French
history, from Charlemagne to Napoleon.

Georges Marie Ludovic Jules Guynemer was born in Paris one Christmas
Eve, December 24, 1894. He saw then, and always, the faces of three
women, his mother and his two elder sisters, standing guard over his
happiness. His father, an officer (Junior Class '80, Saint-Cyr), had
resigned in 1890. An ardent scholar, he became a member of the
Historical Society of Compiegne, and while examining the charters of the
_Cartulaire de royallieu_, or writing a monograph on the _Seigneurie
d'Offemont_, he verified family documents of the genealogy of his
family. Above all, it was he in reality who educated his son.

Guynemer is a very old French name. In the _Chanson de Roland_ one
Guinemer, uncle of Ganelon, helped Roland to mount at his departure. A
Guinemer appears in _Gaydon_ (the knight of the jay), which describes
the sorrowful return of Charlemagne to Aix-la-Chapelle after the drama
of Roncevaux; and a Guillemer figures in _Fier-a-Bras_, in which
Charlemagne and the twelve peers conquer Spain. This Guillemer l'Escot
is made prisoner along with Oliver, Berart de Montdidier, Auberi de
Bourgoyne, and Geoffroy l'Angevin.

In the eleventh century the family of Guynemer left Flanders for
Brittany. When the French Revolution began, there were still Guynemers
in Brittany,[6] but the greatgrandfather of our hero, Bernard, was
living in Paris in reduced circumstances, giving lessons in law. Under
the Empire he was later to be appointed President of the Tribunal at
Mayence, the chief town in the country of Mont Tonnerre. Falling into
disfavor after 1815, he was only President of the Tribunal of Gannat.

[Footnote 6: There are still Guynemers there. M. Etienne Dupont, Judge
in the Civil Court of Saint-Malo, sent me an extract from an _aveu
collectif_ of the "Leftenancy of Tinteniac de Guinemer des Rabines." The
Guynemers, in more recent times, have left traces in the county of
Saint-Malo, where Mgr. Guynemer de la Helandiere inaugurated, in
September, 1869, the Tour Saint-Joseph, house of the Little Sisters of
the Poor in Saint-Pern.]

Here, thanks to an unusual circumstance, oral tradition takes the place
of writings, charters, and puzzling trifles. One of the four sons of
Bernard Guynemer, Auguste, lived to be ninety-three, retaining all his
faculties. Toward the end he resembled Voltaire, not only in face, but
in his irony and skepticism. He had all sorts of memories of the
Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration, of which he told
extraordinary anecdotes. His longevity was owing to his having been
discharged from military service at the conscription. Two of his three
brothers died before maturity: one, Alphonse, infantry officer, was
killed at Vilna in 1812, and the other, Jules, naval officer, died in
1802 as the result of wounds received at Trafalgar. The last son,
Achille, whom we shall presently refer to again, was to perpetuate the
family name.

Auguste Guynemer remembered very vividly the day when he faced down
Robespierre. He was at that time eight years old, and the mistress of
his school had been arrested. He came to the school as usual and found
there were no classes. Where was his teacher? he asked. At the
Revolutionary Tribunal. Where was the Revolutionary Tribunal? Jestingly
they told him where to find it, and he went straight to the place,
entered, and asked back the captive. The audience looked at the little
boy with amazement, while the judges joked and laughed at him. But
without being discomposed, he explained the purpose of his visit. The
incident put Robespierre in good humor, and he told the child that his
teacher had not taught him anything. Immediately, as a proof of the
contrary, the youngster began to recite his lessons. Robespierre was so
delighted that, in the midst of general laughter, he lifted up the boy
and kissed him. The prisoner was restored to him, and the school
reopened.

However, of the four sons of the President of Mayence, the youngest
only, Achille, was destined to preserve the family line. Born in 1792, a
volunteer soldier at the age of fifteen, his military career was
interrupted by the fall of the Empire. He died in Paris, in the rue
Rossini, in 1866. Edmond About, who had known his son at Saverne, wrote
the following biographical notice:

A child of fifteen years enlisted as a Volunteer in 1806. Junot
found him intelligent, made him his secretary, and took him to
Spain. The young man won his epaulettes under Colonel Hugo in 1811.
He was made prisoner on the capitulation of Guadalajara in 1812,
but escaped with two of his comrades whom he saved at the peril of
his own life. Love, or pity, led a young Spanish girl to aid in
this heroic episode, and for several days the legend threatened to
become a romance. But the young soldier reappeared in 1813 at the
passage of the Bidassoa, where he was promoted lieutenant in the
4th Hussars, and was given the Cross by the Emperor, who seldom
awarded it. The return of the Bourbons suddenly interrupted this
career, so well begun. The young cavalry officer then undertook the
business of maritime insurance, earning honorably a large fortune,
which he spent with truly military generosity, strewing his road
with good deeds. He continued working up to the very threshold of
death, for he resigned only a month ago, and it was yesterday,
Thursday, that we laid him in his tomb at the age of seventy-five.

His name was Achille Guynemer. His family is related to the Benoist
d'Azy, the Dupre de Saint-Maur, the Cochin, de Songis, du Tremoul
and Vasselin families, who have left memories of many exemplary
legal careers passed in Paris. His son, who wept yesterday as a
child weeps before the tomb of such a father, is the new
Sub-Prefect of Saverne, the young and laborious administrator who,
from the beginning, won our gratitude and friendship.

The story of the escape from Spain contributes another page to the
family traditions. The young Spanish girl had sent the prisoner a silken
cord concealed in a pie. A fourth companion in captivity was
unfortunately too large to pass through the vent-hole of the prison, and
was shot by the English. It was August 31, 1813, after the passage of
the Bidassoa, that Lieutenant Achille Guynemer was decorated with the
Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was then twenty-one years of age. His
greatgrandson, who resembled the portraits of Achille (especially a
drawing done in 1807), at least in the proud carriage of the head, was
to receive the Cross at an even earlier age.

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