“They owe that to me, too!” cried the enthusiastic urchin.

Meanwhile Captain Allain Launay had patiently ripped the captain’s stripes from his cap, and when he had finished handed them to Guynemer: 

“Promise me to wear them when you are appointed captain.”

This victory was not questioned, and there was even some discussion about making this youngster a Knight of the Legion of Honor.  But even when he had been promoted sergeant there had been some objection, owing to his youth.  “Nevertheless,” Guynemer had observed angrily, “I am not too young to be hit by the enemy’s shells.”  This time another objection arose:  If he receives the “cross” for this victory, what can be given him for succeeding ones?  The proud little Roland rebelled, revolted, rose up like a cock on its spurs.  He did not see that everybody already foresaw his destiny.  He would have his “cross,” he would have it, and he would not wait long for it, either.  He would know how to wring it out of them.

Six days later, December 14, with his comrade, the sober and calm Bucquet, he attacked two Fokkers, one of which was dashed to pieces in its fall, while the other damaged his own machine.  A letter to his father described the combat in his own brief and direct manner, without a superfluous word:  “Combat with two Fokkers.  The first, trapped, and his passenger killed, dived upon me without having seen me.  Result:  35 bullets at close quarters and ‘couic’ [his finish]!  The fall was seen by four other airplanes (3 plus 1 makes 4, and perhaps that will win me the ’cross’).  Then combat with the second Fokker, a one-seated machine shooting through the propeller, as rapid and easily handled as mine.  We fought at ten meters, both turning vertically to try to get behind.

“My spring was slack:  compelled to shoot with one hand above my head, I was handicapped; I was able to shoot twenty-one times in ten seconds.  Once we almost telescoped, and I jumped over him—­his head must have passed within fifty centimeters of my wheels.  That disgusted him; he went away and let me go.  I came back with an intake pipe burst, one rocker torn away:  the splinters had made a number of holes in my over-coat and two notches in the propeller.  There were three more in one wheel, in the body-frame (injuring a cable), and in the rudder.”

All these accounts of the chase, cruel and clear, seem to breathe a savage joy and the pride of triumph.  The sight of a burning airplane, of an enemy sinking down, intoxicated him.  Even the remains of his enemies were dear to him, like treasures won by his young strength.  The shoulder-straps and decorations worn by his adversary who fell at Tilloloy were given over to him; and Achilles before the trophies of Hector was not more arrogant.  These combats in the sky, more than nine thousand feet above the earth, in which the two antagonists are isolated in a duel to the death, scarcely to be seen from the land, alone in