“Started with Guerder after a Boche reported at Couvres and caught up with him over Pierrefonds.  Shot one belt, machine-gun jammed, then unjammed.  The Boche fled and landed in the direction of Laon.  At Coucy we turned back and saw an Aviatik going toward Soissons at about 3200 meters up.  We followed him, and as soon as he was within our lines we dived and placed ourselves about 50 meters under and behind him at the left.  At our first salvo, the Aviatik lurched, and we saw a part of the machine crack.  He replied with a rifle shot, one ball hitting a wing, another grazing Guerder’s hand and head.  At our last shot the pilot sank down on the body-frame, the observer raised his arms, and the Aviatik fell straight downward in flames, between the trenches....”

This flight began at 3700 meters in the air, and lasted ten minutes, the two combatants being separated by a distance of 50 and sometimes 20 meters.  The statement of fact is characteristic of Guynemer.  An unforgettable sight had been imprinted on his eyes:  the pilot sinking down in his cock-pit, the arms of the observer beating the air, the burning airplane sinking.  Such were to be his future landscape sketches, done in the sky.  The wings of the bird of prey were unfurled definitely in space.

The two fighting airmen had left Vauciennes at two o’clock in the afternoon, and at quarter-past three they landed, conquerors, at Carriere l’Eveque.  From their opposing camps the infantry had followed the fight with their eyes.  The Germans, made furious by defeat, cannonaded the landing-place.  Georges, who was too thin for his clothes, and whose leather pantaloons lined with sheepskin, which he wore over his breeches, slipped and impeded his walking, sat down under the exploding shells and calmly took them off.  Then he placed the machine in a position of greater safety, but broke the propeller on a pile of hay.  During this time a crowd had come running and now surrounded the victors.  Artillery officers escorted them off, sentinels saluted them, a colonel offered them champagne.  Guerder was taken first into the commanding officer’s post, and on being questioned about the maneuver that won the victory excused himself with modesty: 

“That was the pilot’s affair.”

Guynemer, who had stolen in, was willing to talk.

“Who is this?” asked the colonel.

“That’s the pilot.”

“You?  How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“And the gunner?”

“Twenty-two.”

“The deuce!  There are nothing but children left to do the fighting.”

So, passed along in this manner from staff to staff, they finally landed at Compiegne, conducted by Captain Simeon.  No happiness was complete for Guynemer if his home was not associated with it.

“He will get the Military Medal,” declared Captain Simeon, “because he wanted his Boche and went after him.”