Those who never saw Guynemer at his father's at Compiègne cannot know him well. Of course, even in camp he was the best of comrades, full of his work, but always ready to enjoy somebody else's success, and speaking about his own as if it were billiards or bridge. His renown had not intoxicated him, and he would have been quite unconscious of it had he not sometimes felt that unresponsiveness on the part of others which is the price of glory: anything like jealousy hurt him as if it had been his first discovery of evil. In Kipling's Jungle Book, Mowgli, the man cub, noticing that the Jungle hates him, feels his eyes and is frightened at finding them wet. "What is this, Bagheera?" he asks of his friend the panther. "Oh, nothing; only tears," answers Bagheera, who had lived among men.
One who, on occasion, told Guynemer not to mind knows how deep was his sensitiveness, not to the presence of real hostility, which he fortunately never encountered, but even to an obscure germ of jealousy. The moment he felt this he shrank into himself. His native exuberance only displayed itself under the influence of sympathy.
Friendship among airmen is manly and almost rough, not caring for formulas or appearances, but proving itself by deeds. To these men the games of war are astonishingly like school games, and are spoken of as if they were nothing else. When a comrade has not come back, and dinner has to begin without him, no show of sorrow is tolerated: only these young men's hearts feel the absence of a friend, and the casual visitor, not knowing, might take them for sporting men, lively and jolly.
Guynemer was living his life in perfect confidence, feeling no personal ambition, not inclined to enjoy honors more than work, ignoring all affectation or attitudinizing, never politic, and naturally unconscious of his own simplicity. Yet he loved and adored what we call glory, and would tell anybody of his successes, even of his decorations, with a childlike certitude that these things must delight others as much as himself. His French honors were of course his great pride, but he highly appreciated those which he had received from allied governments, too: the Distinguished Service order, the Cross of St. George, the Cross of Leopold, the Belgian war medal, Serbian and Montenegrin orders, etc. All these ribbons made a bright show, and although he generally wore only the rosette of the Legion of Honor, he would sometimes deck himself out in them all, or carry them in his pocket and occasionally empty them out on a table, as at school he used to tumble out the untidy contents of his desk in search of his task.
When he went to Paris to see to his machines, he first secured a room at the Hôtel Edouard VII, and immediately posted to the Buc works. When he had time he would invite himself to dinner at the house of his schoolmate at the Collège Stanislas, Lieutenant Constantin. "Every time he came," this officer writes, "some new exploit or a new decoration had been added to his list. He never wore all his medals, his 'village-band banner,' as he amusingly called them; but when people asked to see them, he immediately searched his pockets and produced the whole disorderly lot. When he became officer in the Legion, he appeared at my mother's quite radiant, so that she asked him the reason of this unusual joy. 'Regardez bien, madame, there is something new.' The new thing which my mother discovered was a tiny rosette ornamenting his red ribbon."
This rosette was so very small that nobody noticed it, and Guynemer felt that he must complain to the shopman at the Palais Royal who had sold it to him.
"Give me a larger one, a huge one," he said; "nobody sees this."
The tradesman spread a number of rosettes on his counter, but Guynemer only took back again the one of which he had complained, and went out laughing as if the whole thing had been a good joke.
His officer's stripes gave him as much pleasure as his decorations. Every time he was promoted, he wanted his stripes sewn on, not in a day or an hour, or even five minutes, but immediately. He received his captain's commission the same day he had been given the Distinguished Service order, and he promptly went to see his friend, Captain de la Tour, who was wounded in the hospital at Nancy. This officer had lost three brothers in action, and loved Guynemer as if he had been another younger brother. Indeed, Guynemer said later that La Tour loved him more than any other did.