Part 8 (1/2)

When I saw that Boche this morning I felt something quite new. Then....”

He stopped and laughed, as if he had played some schoolboy joke.

”Then, what did you do?”

”Well, I made up my mind to submit to his shots. Calmly.”

”Without replying?”

”Surely: I ordered myself not to shoot. That is the way one masters one's nerves, little sister. Mine are entirely mastered: I am now absolutely in control. The Boche presented me with five hundred shots while I maneuvered. They were necessary. I am perfectly satisfied.”

She looked at him, sitting at the foot of the bed with his head resting against the post. Her eyes were wet and she kept silent. The silence continued.

Finally she said softly, ”You have done well, Georges.”

But he was asleep.

Later, referring to this meeting in which he offered himself to the enemy's fire, he said gravely:

”That was the decisive moment of my life. If I had not set things right then and there, I was done for....”

When he reappeared at his escadrille's head-quarters on May 18, quite cheerful but with a set face and flaming eyes, no one dared discuss his cure with him.

The Storks returned for a few days to the Oise region, and once more the contented pilot of a Nieuport flew over the country from Peronne to Roye. He had not lost the least particle of his determination; quite the reverse. One day (May 22) he searched the air desperately for three hours, and though he finally discovered a two-seated enemy machine over Noyon, he was obliged to give over the combat for lack of gasoline in his motor.

Meanwhile they were preparing the Somme battle; the escadrilles familiarized themselves with their ground, and new machines were tried.

The enemy, who suspected our preparations, sent out long-distance scouting airplanes. Near Amiens, above Villers-Bretonneux, Guynemer, making his rounds with Sergeant Chainat, attacked one of these groups on June 22, isolated one of the airplanes and, maneuvering with his comrade, set it afire. That was, I believe, his ninth. This combat took place at a height of 4200 meters. The advantage went more and more to the pilot who mounted highest.

After July 1 there was a combat almost every day. Would Guynemer be put out of action from the beginning, as at Verdun? Returning on the 6th, after having put to flight an L.V.G., he surprised another Boche airplane which was diving down on one of our artillery-regulating machines. He immediately drew the enemy's attention to himself; but the enemy (Guynemer pays him this homage in his flight notebook) was keen and supple. His well-aimed shots pa.s.sed through the propeller of the Nieuport and cut two cables in the right cell. Guynemer was obliged to land. He was forced down eight times during his flying career, once under fantastic conditions. He pa.s.sed through every form of danger without ever losing the self-possession, the quickness of eye, and rapidity of decision which his pa.s.sion for conquest had developed.

What battles he fought in the air! On July 9 his journal notes a combat of five against five; on the 10th a combat of three against seven, in which Guynemer disengaged Deullin, who was followed by an Aviatik at a distance of a hundred meters. On the 11th, at 10 o'clock, he attacked an L.V.G. and cut its cable; the enemy dived but appeared to be in control of the machine. A few moments later he and Deullin attacked an Aviatik and an L.V.G., Guynemer damaging the Aviatik, and Deullin forcing down the L.V.G.; and before returning to their base, the two comrades attacked a group of seven machines and dispersed them. On the 16th Guynemer forced down, with Heurtaux, an L.V.G., which fell with its wheels in the air. After a short absence, during which he got a more powerful machine for his own use, he began on the 25th a repet.i.tion of his former program. On the 26th he waged five combats with enemy groups consisting of from five to eleven airplanes. On the 27th he fought three L.V.G.'s, and then groups of from three to ten machines. On the 28th he successively attacked two airplanes within their own lines, then a drachen which was obliged to land, then a group of four airplanes one of which was forced down, and then a second group of four which were dispersed, Guynemer pursuing one of the fugitives and bringing him down.

One blade of his own propeller was riddled with bullets, and he was compelled to land. Such was his work for three days, taken at random from the notebook.

Open his journal at any page, and it reads the same. On August 7 Guynemer got back with seven sh.e.l.l fragments in his machine: he had been cannonaded from the ground while in chase of four enemy airplanes. On the same day he started off again, piloting Heurtaux, who attacked the German trenches north of Clery and fired on some machine-guns. From its place up in the air the airplane encouraged the infantry, and shared in their a.s.saults. The recital of events became, however, more and more brief: the fighting pilot had not time enough to write details; n.o.body had any time in the Storks Escadrille, constantly engaged as it was in its triumphant flights. We must turn then to Guynemer's letters--strange letters, indeed, which contain nothing, absolutely nothing about the war, or the battle of the Somme, or about anything else except _his_ war and _his_ battle. The earth-world no longer existed for him: the earth was a place which received the dead and the vanquished. So this is the way in which he wrote his two sisters, then sojourning in Switzerland (Fritz meaning any enemy airplane):

Dear Kids,

Some sport: the 17, attacked a Fritz, three shots and gun jammed; Fritz tumbled. The 18th, _idem_, but in two shots: two Fritzes in five shots, record.

Day before yesterday, attacked Fritz at 4.30 at ten meters: killed the pa.s.senger and perhaps the rest, prevented from seeing what happened by a fight at half-past four: the Boche ran.

At 7.40 attacked an Aviatik, carried away by the impetus, pa.s.sed it at fifty centimeters; pa.s.senger ”_couic_” (killed), the machine fell and was got under control again at fifty meters above the ground.

At 7.35, attacked an L.V.G.; at fifteen meters; just ready to shoot, when a bullet in my fingers made me let go the trigger; reservoir burst, good landing two kilometers from the trenches between two sh.e.l.l-holes. Inventory of the ”taxi”: one bullet right in the face of my Vickers; one perforative bullet in the motor; the steel stone had gone clear through it as well as the oil reservoir, the gasoline tank, the cartridge chest, my glove ... where it stayed in the index finger: result, about as if my finger had been slightly pinched in a door; not even skinned, only the top of the nail slightly blackened. At the time I thought two fingers had been shot. To continue the inventory: one bullet in the reservoir, in the direction of my left lung, having pa.s.sed through four millimeters of copper and had the good sense to stop, but one wonders why.

One bullet in the edge of the back of my seat, one in the rudder, and a dozen in the wings. They knocked the ”taxi” to pieces with a hatchet at two o'clock in the morning, under sh.e.l.l-fire. On landing, received 86 shots of 105, 130 and 150, for nothing. They will pay the bill.

For a beginning, La Tour has his fourth mention.

A hug for each of you.