Part 17 (1/2)
These letters roused the enthusiasm of the Chamber, and the following resolution was pa.s.sed by acclamation:
The government shall have an inscription placed in the Pantheon to perpetuate the memory of Captain Guynemer, the symbol of France's highest aspirations.
On November 5 the foregoing letters were solemnly read aloud in every school, and Guynemer was presented as an example to all French schoolboys.
The army then prepared to celebrate Guynemer as a leader, and in default of any place suitable for such a ceremony they selected the camp of Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, whence Guynemer had started on his last flight. On November 30 General Anthoine, commanding the First Army, before leaving the Flemish British sector where he had so brilliantly a.s.sisted in the success, decided to a.s.sociate his men with the glorification of Guynemer.
The ceremony took place at ten in the morning. A raw breeze was blowing off the sea, whose violence the dam, raised to protect the landing-ground, was not sufficient to break. In front of the battalion which had been sent to render the military honors, waved the colors of the twenty regiments that had fought in the Flemish battles, glorious flags bearing the marks of war, some of them almost in rags. To the left, in front of the airmen, two slight figures were visible, one in black, one in horizon blue: Captain Heurtaux still on his crutches, the other _sous-lieutenant_ Fonck. The former was to be made an officer, the latter a chevalier in the Legion of Honor. Heurtaux, a fair-haired, delicate, almost girlish young man, but so phenomenally self-possessed in danger, had been, as we have said, our Roland's Oliver, his companion of old days, his rival and his confidant. Fonck, whom I called Aymerillot because of his smallness, his boyish simplicity and his daring, the hope of the morrow and already a glorious soldier, had perhaps avenged Guynemer's death already. For Lieutenant Weissman, according to the _Kolnische Zeitung_, had boasted in a letter to his people of having brought down the most famous French aviator. ”Don't be afraid on my account,” he added, ”I shall never meet such a dangerous enemy again.” Now, on September 30 Fonck had shot this Lieutenant Weissman through the head as the latter was piloting a Rumpler machine above the French lines.
While the band was playing the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, accompanied by the roaring of the gale and of the sea, as well as of the airplanes circling above, General Anthoine stepped out in front of the row of flags. His powerful frame seemed to suggest the cuira.s.s of the knights of old, as, silhouetted against the cloudy sky, he towered above the two diminutive aviators near whom he was standing. The band stopped playing, and the general spoke, his voice rising and falling in the wind, and swelling to a higher pitch when the elements were too rebellious. He was speaking almost on the spot where Guynemer had departed from the soil of his own country on his final flight.
”I have not summoned you,” he said, ”to pay Guynemer the last homage he has a right to from the First Army, over a coffin or a grave. No trace could be found in Poelcapelle of his mortal remains, as if the heavens, jealous of their hero, had not consented to return to earth what seems to belong to it by right, and as if Guynemer had disappeared in empyrean glory through a miraculous a.s.sumption. Therefore we shall omit, on this spot from which he soared into Infinity, the sorrowful rites generally concluding the lives of mortals, and shall merely proclaim the immortality of the Knight of the Air, without fear or reproach.
”Men come and go, but France remains. All who fall for her bequeath to her their own glory, and her splendor is made up of their worth. Happy is he who enriches the commonwealth by the complete gift of himself.
Happy then the child of France whose superhuman destiny we are celebrating! Glory be to him in the heavens where he reigned supreme, and glory be to him on the earth, in our soldiers' hearts and in these flags, sacred emblems of honor and of the wors.h.i.+p of France!
”Ye flags of the second aeronautical unit and of the First Army, you keep in the mystery of your folds the memory of virtue, devotion, and sacrifice of every kind, to hand down to future generations the treasures of our national traditions!
”Flags, the souls of our heroes live in you, and when your fluttering silk is heard, it is indeed their voice bidding us go from the same dangers to the same triumphs!
”Flags, keep the soul of Guynemer forever. Let it raise up and multiply heroes in his likeness! Let it exalt to resolution the hearts of neophytes eager to avenge the martyr by imitating his lofty example, and let it give them power to revive the prowess of this legendary hero!
”For the only homage he expects from his companions is the continuation of his work.
”In the brief moment during which dying men see, as in a vision, the whole past and the whole future, if Guynemer knew a comfort it was the certainty that his comrades would successfully complete what he had begun.
”You, his friends and rivals, I know well; I know that, like Guynemer, you can be trusted, that you meet bravely the formidable task he has bequeathed to you, and that you will fulfil the hopes which France had reposed in him.
”It is to confirm this cert.i.tude in presence of our flags, brought to witness it, that I am glad to confer on two of his companions, two of our bravest fighters, distinctions which are at the same time a reward for the past and an earnest of future glory.”
Then the general gave the accolade and embraced Heurtaux, now less dependent on his crutches, and Fonck, suddenly grown taller, children of glory, both of them, and still pale from the emotion caused by the evocation of their friend's glory. He pinned the badges on their coats.
After this he added, in a lull of the conflicting elements:
”Let us raise our hearts in respectful and grateful admiration for the hero whom the First Army can never forget, of whom it was so proud, and whose memory will always live in History.
”Dead though he be, a man like Guynemer guides us, if we know how to follow him, along the triumphal way which, over ruins, tombs, and sacrifices, leads to victory the good and the strong.”
Of itself, thanks to this religious conclusion of the general's ode, the ceremony had a.s.sumed a sort of sacred character, and the word which concludes prayers, the Amen of the officiating priest, naturally came to our lips while the general saluted with his sword the invisible spirit of the hero, and the blasts of the bugles rose above the gale and the sea.
VI. IN THE PANTHeON
In the Pantheon crypt, destined, as the inscription says, for the burial of great men, the name of Guynemer will be graven on a marble slab cemented in the wall. The proper inscription for this slab will be the young soldier's last citation:
FALLEN ON THE FIELD OF HONOR ON SEPTEMBER 11, 1917. A LEGENDARY HERO, FALLEN FROM THE VERY ZENITH OF VICTORY AFTER THREE YEARS'
HARD AND CONTINUOUS FIGHTING. HE WILL BE CONSIDERED THE MOST PERFECT EMBODIMENT OF THE NATIONAL QUALITIES FOR HIS INDOMITABLE ENERGY AND PERSEVERANCE AND HIS EXALTED GALLANTRY. FULL OF INVINCIBLE BELIEF IN VICTORY, HE HAS BEQUEATHED TO THE FRENCH SOLDIER AN IMPERISHABLE MEMORY WHICH MUST ADD TO HIS SELF-SACRIFICING SPIRIT AND WILL SURELY GIVE RISE TO THE n.o.bLEST EMULATION.
”To deserve such a citation and die!” exclaimed a young officer after reading it.
In his poem, _Le Vol de la Ma.r.s.eillaise_, Rostand shows us the twelve Victories seated at the Invalides around the tomb of the Emperor rising to welcome their sister, the Victory of the Marne. At the Pantheon, in the crypt where they rest, Marshal Lannes and General Marceau, Lazare Carnot, the organizer of victory, and Captain La Tour d'Auvergne will rise in their turn on this young man's entrance. Victor Hugo, who is there too, will recognize at once one of the knights in his _Legende des Siecles_, and Berthelot will look upon his coming as an evidence of the fervor of youth for France as well as for science. But of them all, Marceau, his elder brother, killed at twenty-seven, will be the most welcoming.
Traveling in the Rhine Valley some ten or twelve years ago, I made a pilgrimage to Marceau's tomb, outside Coblenz, just above the Moselle.
In a little wood stands a black marble pyramid with the following inscription in worn-out gilt letters: