“The opening weeks of the automobile and aviation exhibition were a period of comparative tranquillity for his masters, as Guynemer was no longer the same restless, nervous, mischievous boy, being too anxious to retain his privileges for the promenades.  He was always one of those who haunted the prefect when the hour for departure drew near.  He was impatient to know where they were to go:  ’Where are we going?...  Shall you take us to the Grand Palais? (The Automobile and Aviation Exhibition)....  Wouldn’t you be a brick!...’  When they arrived, he was not one of those many curious people who circulate aimlessly around the stands with their hands in their pockets, without reaping anything but fatigue, like a cyclist on a circular track.  His plans were all made in advance, and he knew where the stand was which he meant to visit.  He went directly there, where his ardor and his free and easy behavior drew upon him the admonitions of the proprietor.  But nothing stopped him, and he continued to touch everything, furnishing explanations to his companions.  When he returned to the college his pockets bulged with prospectuses, catalogues, and selected brochures, which he carefully added to the heterogeneous contents of his desk."[11]

[Footnote 11:  Unpublished notes by Abbe Chesnais.]

Jean Krebs crystallized Georges Guynemer’s vocation.  He developed and specialized his taste for mechanics, separating it from vague abstractions and guiding it towards material realities and the wider experiences these procure.  He deserves to be mentioned in any biography of Guynemer, and before passing on, it is proper that his premature loss should be cited and deplored.  Highly esteemed as an aviator during the war, he made the best use of his substantial and reliable faculties in the work of observation.  Airplane chasing did not attract him, but he knew how to use his eyes.  He was killed in a landing accident at a time almost coincident with the disappearance of Guynemer.  One of his escadrille mates described him thus:  “With remarkable intelligence, and a perfectly even disposition, his chiefs valued him for his sang-froid, his quick eye, his exact knowledge of the services he was able to perform.  Every time a mission was intrusted to him, everybody was sure that he would accomplish it, no matter what conditions he had to meet.  He often had to face enemy airplanes better armed than his own, and in the course of a flight had been wounded in the thigh by an exploding shell.  Nevertheless he had continued to fly, only returning considerably later when his task was done.  His death has left a great void in this escadrille.  Men like him are difficult to replace....”

Thus the immoderate Guynemer had for his first friend a comrade who knew exactly his own limits.  Guynemer could save Jean Krebs from his excess of literal honesty by showing him the enchantment of his own ecstasies, but Jean Krebs furnished the motor for Guynemer’s ambitious young wings.  Without the technical lessons of Jean Krebs, could Guynemer later have got into the aviation field at Pau, and won so easily his diploma as pilot?  Would he have applied himself so closely to the study of his tools and the perfecting of his machine?