The First Flight In A Blériot
Later on Captain Colcomb spoke of Guynemer as "the most sublime military figure I have ever been permitted to behold, one of the finest and most generous souls I have ever known." Guynemer was not satisfied to be merely calm and systematically immovable, and to display sang-froid, though to an extraordinary degree. He amused himself by counting the holes in his wings, and pointing them out to the observer. He was furious when the explosions occurred outside his range of vision, because he was not resigned to missing anything. He seemed to juggle with the shrapnel. And after landing, he rushed off to his escadrille chief, Captain Brocard, took him by the arm, and never left him until he had drawn him almost by force to his machine, compelling him to put his fingers into the wounds, exulting meanwhile and fairly bounding with joy. Captain, now Major Brocard, felt quite sure of him from that time, and referred to him later in these words: "Very young: his extraordinary self-confidence and natural qualities will very soon make him an excellent pilot...."
His curiosity, indeed, was satisfied; and to whom would he confide all the risks that he ran? His mother and his sisters, the hearts which were the most troubled about him, and whose peace and happiness he had carried off into the air. He never dreamed of the torment he caused them, and which they knew how to conceal from him. Even the idea of such a thing never occurred to him. As they loved him, they loved him just as he was, in the raw. He was too young to dissimulate, too young to spare them. He knew nothing either of lies or of pity. He never thought that any one could suffer anguish about a son or a brother when this son and brother was himself supremely happy in his vocation. He was naïvely cruel.
But the rounds and reconnaissances were not to hold him long; and he already scented other adventures. He had scented the odor of the beast, and he had his airplane furnished with a support for a machine-gun. That particular airplane, it is true, came to an untimely end in a ditch, but was already condemned by its body-frame, which was rotten with bullet holes. That was the only "wood" Guynemer "broke" during his early flights.
But his next airplane was also armed, and in the young pilot could already be plainly seen that taste for enemy-chasing which was to bewitch and take possession of him. Though after this time he certainly carried over the lines Lieutenant de Lavalette, Lieutenant Colcomb and Captain Siméon, and always with equal calm, yet he aspired to other flights, further away from earth. Lieutenant de Beauchamp—the future Captain de Beauchamp, who was to die so soon after his audacious raids on Essen and Munich—divined what was hidden in this thin boy who was in such breathless haste to get on. He would not allow Corporal Guynemer to address him as lieutenant, feeling so surely his equality, and to-morrow perhaps his mastery. On July 6, 1915, he sent him a little guide for aviators in a few lines: "Be cautious. Look well at what is happening around you before acting. Invoke Saint Benoît every morning. But above all, write in letters of fire in your memory: In aviation, everything not useful should be avoided." Oh, of course! The "little girl" laughed at the advice as he laughed at the tempest. He had an admiration for Beauchamp, but when did a Roland ever listen to an Oliver? One day he went up in a wind of over 25 meters, and even by nosing-up a bit he could hardly make any progress. With the wind behind him he made over 200 kilometers. Then he landed. Védrines addressed a few warning remarks to him, and he was thought to be calmed. But off he went again before the frightened spectators. He would always do too much, and nothing could restrain him.
The importance of the development of aviation in the war had been foreseen neither by the Germans nor ourselves. If before the beginning of the campaign the military chiefs had understood all the services which would be rendered by aërial strategic scouting, the regulation of artillery fire would not have still been in an experimental stage. No one knew the help which was to be derived from aërial photography. The air duel was regarded simply as a possible incident that might occur during a patrol or a reconnaissance, and in view of which the observer or mechanician armed himself with a gun or an automatic pistol. Airplanes armed with machine-guns were very exceptional, and at the end of 1914 there were only thirty. The Germans used them generally before we did; but it was the French aviators, nevertheless, who forced the Germans to fight in the air. I had the opportunity in October, 1914, to see, from a hill on the Aisne, one of these first airplane combats, which ended by the enemy falling on the outskirts of the village of Muizon on the left bank of the Vesle. The French champion bore the fine name of Franc, and piloted a Voisin. At that date it was not unusual to pick up messages dropped within our lines by enemy pilots, substantially to this effect: "Useless for us to fight each other; there are enough risks without that...."
Meanwhile, strategic reconnaissance was perfected as the line of the front became firmly established, and more and more importance was accorded to the search for objectives. Remarkable results were attained by air photography from December, 1914; and after January, 1915, the regulation of artillery fire by wireless telegraphy was in general practice. It was necessary to protect the airplanes attached to army corps, and to clean up the air for their free circulation. This rôle devolved upon the most rapid airplanes, which were then the Morane-Saunier-Parasols, and in the spring of 1915 these formed the first escadrilles de chasse, one for each army. Garros, already popular before the war for having been the first air-pilot to cross the Mediterranean, from Saint-Raphael to Bizerto, forced down a large Aviatik above Dixmude in April, 1915. A few days later a motor breakdown compelled him to land at Ingelminster, north of Courtrai, and he was made prisoner.[18] The aviators, like the knights of ancient times, sent one another challenges. Sergeant David—who was killed shortly after—having been obliged to refuse to fight an enemy airplane because his machine-gun jammed, dropped a challenge to the latter on the German aërodrome, and waited at the place, on the day and hour fixed, at Vauquois (noon, in June, 1915, above the German lines), but his adversary never came to the rendezvous.
[18] The romantic circumstances under which he escaped in February, 1918, are well known.