GUYNEMER, THE WINGÈD SWORD OF FRANCE
His Ancestry and Childhood

ONE

Not only modern, but ancient French records glorify the name of Guynemer. In the time of Roland and Charlemagne, there was a Guinemer that performed noble deeds. An eleventh-century history of the Crusades extols the name of a Guinemer of Boulogne. The Treaty of Guérande, which terminated in 1365 a war of succession in Brittany, bore the signature of Geoffroy Guinemer among thirty knightly signers. In 1464 the old and honorable name was first spelled with a y by Yvon Guynemer, a man of arms in the service of his country.

Bernard Guynemer, great grandfather of Georges, was an instructor in jurisprudence in Paris during the Revolution, and was later made president of the Tribunal of Mayence. A son, Auguste, who lived to be ninety-three, left to posterity a remarkable collection of memoirs of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration. One of his brothers, an officer in Napoleon’s army, was killed at the siege of Vilna in 1812; another, a naval officer, died of wounds received at Trafalgar. A fourth brother named Achille became the grandfather of Georges, and it was his exploits, among all the tales of his forbears, that the youthful grandson loved best to read about. One venturous anecdote of the child Achille became part of family history, and in its revelation of mature purpose and utter poise under confounding circumstances recalls instances of the boyhood of the future Ace of Aces. When the small Achille arrived one morning at his school in Paris he found it closed. The mistress, he was told, had been taken away, summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal. When he inquired where this Tribunal was, he was laughingly informed, and straightway he set out to find it. When the eight-year-old appeared in the court room alone, he was received by assembly and judges with amazement, then with raillery, but, in no wise disconcerted, he continued up the imposing aisle to the place where the mighty Robespierre sat. Humorously, Robespierre met his request that his teacher be allowed to return to her classes by remarking that the child’s need of her could not be great, as doubtless she had taught him little in the past. In his desire to refute the injustice, the boy begged permission to recite his lessons for the day. When he had finished, Robespierre impulsively took him in his arms and embraced him. Then he gave into his charge the school mistress, and permitted them both to depart.

Seven years later, Achille Guynemer was a volunteer in the army that invaded Spain. In 1812, he was taken prisoner; later he escaped, and in 1813, at the age of twenty-one, he was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. His grandson, who strongly resembled his early portraits, received the same honor when he was a few months younger.

Of the four sons of the president of the Tribunal of Mayence, only one, Achille, had descendants. The son of the latter was Paul Guynemer, a French army officer and military historian, and his only son was Georges, the young chieftain of the sky.

Even as a very little boy, Georges carried his head with pride and set his ambitions high. Adored by his mother and sisters, he was a constant object of solicitude because of ill health. When he was of school age he received instruction from the governess of his sisters. Very young he showed evidences of those qualities of honor, truth and bravery that earned him in later years all the honors France could bestow. Very young he fell under the spell of Joan of Arc, she who was wounded in Compiègne, the home of his boyhood, and he clamored for stories of her and of others of his country’s warriors.

An indifferent pupil in the grammar-school at Compiègne, he was placed in Stanislas Military College, his father’s Alma Mater. A group photograph of the students represents Georges as a boy of twelve, pale, thin, with dark, wilful eyes lighted by smouldering fires of dream and ambition. As a student he was quick and intelligent, but he was mischievous and headstrong under discipline. In play he preferred warlike games, and invariably chose parts that gave him opportunities to attack, which he did with agility and vigor, often to the discomfiture of older opponents. One of his teachers wrote a sketch of his school-boyhood that betrays many outstanding traits of the Guynemer of the future. In playground battles he had no desire to command; he liked above all to fight, and to fight alone. He attacked the strongest, without consideration for any advantage they might have of weight, height or numbers. Even as a boy, he excelled by adroitness, suppleness of maneuver, and will-to-win.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 18. SERIAL No. 166
COPYRIGHT, 1918. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.