Georges Guynemer: Knight of the Air

In his book on Chivalry, the good Léon Gautier, beginning with the knight in his cradle and wishing to surround him immediately with a supernatural atmosphere, interprets in his own fashion the sleeping baby smiling at the angels. "According to a curious legend, the origin of which has not as yet been clearly discovered," he explains, "the child during its slumber hears 'music,' the incomparable music made by the movement of the stars in their spheres.

Yes, that which the most illustrious scholars have only been able to suspect the existence of is distinctly heard by these ears scarcely opened as yet, and ravishes them. A charming fable, giving to innocence more power than to proud science."[5]

[5] La Chevalerie, by Léon Gautier. A. Walter ed. 1895.

The biographer of Guynemer would like to be able to say that our new knight also heard in his cradle the music of the stars, since he was to be summoned to approach them. But it can be said, at least, that during his early years he saw the shadowy train of all the heroes of French history, from Charlemagne to Napoleon.

Georges Marie Ludovic Jules Guynemer was born in Paris one Christmas Eve, December 24, 1894. He saw then, and always, the faces of three women, his mother and his two elder sisters, standing guard over his happiness. His father, an officer (Junior Class '80, Saint-Cyr), had resigned in 1890. An ardent scholar, he became a member of the Historical Society of Compiègne, and while examining the charters of the Cartulaire de royallieu, or writing a monograph on the Seigneurie d'Offémont, he verified family documents of the genealogy of his family. Above all, it was he in reality who educated his son.

Guynemer is a very old French name. In the Chanson de Roland one Guinemer, uncle of Ganelon, helped Roland to mount at his departure. A Guinemer appears in Gaydon (the knight of the jay), which describes the sorrowful return of Charlemagne to Aix-la-Chapelle after the drama of Roncevaux; and a Guillemer figures in Fier-à-Bras, in which Charlemagne and the twelve peers conquer Spain. This Guillemer l'Escot is made prisoner along with Oliver, Bérart de Montdidier, Auberi de Bourgoyne, and Geoffroy l'Angevin.

In the eleventh century the family of Guynemer left Flanders for Brittany. When the French Revolution began, there were still Guynemers in Brittany,[6] but the greatgrandfather of our hero, Bernard, was living in Paris in reduced circumstances, giving lessons in law. Under the Empire he was later to be appointed President of the Tribunal at Mayence, the chief town in the country of Mont Tonnerre. Falling into disfavor after 1815, he was only President of the Tribunal of Gannat.

[6] There are still Guynemers there. M. Etienne Dupont, Judge in the Civil Court of Saint-Malo, sent me an extract from an aveu collectif of the "Leftenancy of Tinténiac de Guinemer des Rabines." The Guynemers, in more recent times, have left traces in the county of Saint-Malo, where Mgr. Guynemer de la Hélandière inaugurated, in September, 1869, the Tour Saint-Joseph, house of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Saint-Pern.

Here, thanks to an unusual circumstance, oral tradition takes the place of writings, charters, and puzzling trifles. One of the four sons of Bernard Guynemer, Auguste, lived to be ninety-three, retaining all his faculties. Toward the end he resembled Voltaire, not only in face, but in his irony and skepticism. He had all sorts of memories of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration, of which he told extraordinary anecdotes. His longevity was owing to his having been discharged from military service at the conscription. Two of his three brothers died before maturity: one, Alphonse, infantry officer, was killed at Vilna in 1812, and the other, Jules, naval officer, died in 1802 as the result of wounds received at Trafalgar. The last son, Achille, whom we shall presently refer to again, was to perpetuate the family name.

Auguste Guynemer remembered very vividly the day when he faced down Robespierre. He was at that time eight years old, and the mistress of his school had been arrested. He came to the school as usual and found there were no classes. Where was his teacher? he asked. At the Revolutionary Tribunal. Where was the Revolutionary Tribunal? Jestingly they told him where to find it, and he went straight to the place, entered, and asked back the captive. The audience looked at the little boy with amazement, while the judges joked and laughed at him. But without being discomposed, he explained the purpose of his visit. The incident put Robespierre in good humor, and he told the child that his teacher had not taught him anything. Immediately, as a proof of the contrary, the youngster began to recite his lessons. Robespierre was so delighted that, in the midst of general laughter, he lifted up the boy and kissed him. The prisoner was restored to him, and the school reopened.

However, of the four sons of the President of Mayence, the youngest only, Achille, was destined to preserve the family line. Born in 1792, a volunteer soldier at the age of fifteen, his military career was interrupted by the fall of the Empire. He died in Paris, in the rue Rossini, in 1866. Edmond About, who had known his son at Saverne, wrote the following biographical notice:

A child of fifteen years enlisted as a Volunteer in 1806. Junot found him intelligent, made him his secretary, and took him to Spain. The young man won his epaulettes under Colonel Hugo in 1811. He was made prisoner on the capitulation of Guadalajara in 1812, but escaped with two of his comrades whom he saved at the peril of his own life. Love, or pity, led a young Spanish girl to aid in this heroic episode, and for several days the legend threatened to become a romance. But the young soldier reappeared in 1813 at the passage of the Bidassoa, where he was promoted lieutenant in the 4th Hussars, and was given the Cross by the Emperor, who seldom awarded it. The return of the Bourbons suddenly interrupted this career, so well begun. The young cavalry officer then undertook the business of maritime insurance, earning honorably a large fortune, which he spent with truly military generosity, strewing his road with good deeds. He continued working up to the very threshold of death, for he resigned only a month ago, and it was yesterday, Thursday, that we laid him in his tomb at the age of seventy-five.

His name was Achille Guynemer. His family is related to the Benoist d'Azy, the Dupré de Saint-Maur, the Cochin, de Songis, du Trémoul and Vasselin families, who have left memories of many exemplary legal careers passed in Paris. His son, who wept yesterday as a child weeps before the tomb of such a father, is the new Sub-Prefect of Saverne, the young and laborious administrator who, from the beginning, won our gratitude and friendship.

The story of the escape from Spain contributes another page to the family traditions. The young Spanish girl had sent the prisoner a silken cord concealed in a pie. A fourth companion in captivity was unfortunately too large to pass through the vent-hole of the prison, and was shot by the English. It was August 31, 1813, after the passage of the Bidassoa, that Lieutenant Achille Guynemer was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was then twenty-one years of age. His greatgrandson, who resembled the portraits of Achille (especially a drawing done in 1807), at least in the proud carriage of the head, was to receive the Cross at an even earlier age.

There were other epic souvenirs which awakened Georges Guynemer's curiosity in childhood. He was shown the sword and snuffbox of General Count de Songis, brother of his paternal grandmother. This sword of honor had been presented to the general by the Convention when he was merely a captain of artillery, for having saved the cannon of the fortress at Valenciennes,-though it is quite true that Dumouriez, for the same deed, wished to have him hanged. The snuffbox was given him by the Emperor for having commanded the passage of the Rhine during the Ulm campaign.

Achille Guynemer had two sons. The elder, Amédée, a graduate of the école polytechnique, died at the age of thirty and left no children. The second, Auguste, was Sub-Prefect of Saverne under the Second Empire; and, resigning this office after the war of 1870, he became Vice-President of the society for the protection of Alsatians and Lorrainers, the President of which was the Count d'Haussonville. He had married a young Scottish lady, Miss Lyon, whose family included the Earls of Strathmore, among whose titles were those of Glamis and Cawdor mentioned by Shakespeare in "Macbeth."

As we have already seen, only one of the four sons of the President of Mayence-the hero of the Bidassoa-had left descendants. His son is M. Paul Guynemer, former officer and historian of the Cartulaire de Royallieu and of the Seigneurie d'Offémont, whose only son was the aviator. The race whose history is lost far back in the Chanson de Roland and the Crusades, which settled in Flanders, and then in Brittany, but became, as soon as it left the provinces for the capital, nomadic, changing its base at will from the garrison of the officer to that of the official, seems to have narrowed and refined its stock and condensed all the power of its past, all its hopes for the future, in one last offshoot.

There are some plants, like the aloe, which bear but one flower, and sometimes only at the end of a hundred years. They prepare their sap, which has waited so long, and then from the heart of the plant issues a long straight stem, like a tree whose regular branches look like forged iron. At the top of this stem opens a marvelous flower, which is moist and seems to drop tears upon the leaves, inviting them to share its grief for the doom it awaits. When the flower is withered, the miracle is never renewed.

Guynemer is the flower of an old French family. Like so many other heroes, like so many peasants who, in this Great War, have been the wheat of the nation, his own acts have proved his nobility. But the fairy sent to preside at his birth laid in his cradle certain gilded pages of the finest history in the world: Roland, the Crusades, Brittany and Duguesclin, the Empire, and Alsace.

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