A poet of genius, who even before the war had been an aviator, Gabriele d’Annunzio, has described in his novel, Forse che si forse che no, the friendship of two young men, Paolo Tarsis and Giulio Cambasio, whose mutual affection, arising from a similar longing to conquer the sky, has grown in the perils they dare together.  If this book had been written later, war would have intensified its meaning.  Instead of dying in a fight, Cambasio is killed in a contest for altitude between Bergamo and the Lake of Garda.  As Achilles watched beside the dead body of Patroclus, so Tarsis would not leave to another the guarding of his lost friend: 

“In tearless grief Paolo Tarsis kept vigil through the short summer night.  So it had broken asunder the richest bough on the tree of his life; the most generous part of himself ruined.  For him the beauty of war had diminished, now that he was no longer to see, burning in those dead eyes, the fervor of effort, the security of confidence, the rapidity of resolution.  He was no longer to taste the two purest joys of a manly heart:  steadiness of eye in attack, and the pride of watching over a beloved peer.”

For him the beauty of war had diminished....  War already so long, so exhausting and cruel, and laden with sorrow!  Will war appear in its horrid nakedness, now that those who invested it with glory disappear, now, above all, when the king of these heroes, the dazzling young man whose luminous task was known to the whole army, is no more?  Is not his loss the loss of something akin to life?  For a Guynemer is like the nation’s flag:  if the soldiers’ eyes miss the waving colors, they may wander to the wretchedness of daily routine, and morbidly feed on blood and death.  This is what the loss of a Guynemer might mean.

But can a Guynemer be quite lost?

* * * * *

     Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, September, 1917
     (From the author’s diary)

     Visited the Storks Escadrille.

The flying field occupies a vast space, for it is common to the French and the British.  A dam protecting the landing-ground screens it from the sea.  But from the second floor of a little house which the bombs have left standing, you can see its moving expanse of a delicate, I might say timid blue, dotted with home-coming boats.  The evening is placid and fine, with a reddish haze blurring the horizon.

Opposite the sheds, with their swelling canvas walls, a row of airplanes is standing before being rolled in for the night.  The mechanicians feel them with careful hands, examining the engines, propellers, and wings.  The pilots are standing around, still in their leather suits, their helmets in their hands.  In brief sentences they sum up their day’s experiences.

Mechanically I look among them for the one whom the eye invariably sought first.  I recalled his slight figure, his amber complexion, and dark, wonderful eyes, and his quick descriptive gestures.  I remembered his ringing, boyish laugh, as he said: