wheels in the air.  After a short absence, during which he got a more powerful machine for his own use, he began on the 25th a repetition of his former program.  On the 26th he waged five combats with enemy groups consisting of from five to eleven airplanes.  On the 27th he fought three L.V.G.’s, and then groups of from three to ten machines.  On the 28th he successively attacked two airplanes within their own lines, then a drachen which was obliged to land, then a group of four airplanes one of which was forced down, and then a second group of four which were dispersed, Guynemer pursuing one of the fugitives and bringing him down.  One blade of his own propeller was riddled with bullets, and he was compelled to land.  Such was his work for three days, taken at random from the notebook.

Open his journal at any page, and it reads the same.  On August 7 Guynemer got back with seven shell fragments in his machine:  he had been cannonaded from the ground while in chase of four enemy airplanes.  On the same day he started off again, piloting Heurtaux, who attacked the German trenches north of Clery and fired on some machine-guns.  From its place up in the air the airplane encouraged the infantry, and shared in their assaults.  The recital of events became, however, more and more brief:  the fighting pilot had not time enough to write details; nobody had any time in the Storks Escadrille, constantly engaged as it was in its triumphant flights.  We must turn then to Guynemer’s letters—­strange letters, indeed, which contain nothing, absolutely nothing about the war, or the battle of the Somme, or about anything else except his war and his battle.  The earth-world no longer existed for him:  the earth was a place which received the dead and the vanquished.  So this is the way in which he wrote his two sisters, then sojourning in Switzerland (Fritz meaning any enemy airplane): 

     Dear Kids,

     Some sport:  the 17, attacked a Fritz, three shots and gun jammed;
     Fritz tumbled.  The 18th, idem, but in two shots:  two Fritzes in
     five shots, record.

     Day before yesterday, attacked Fritz at 4.30 at ten meters:  killed
     the passenger and perhaps the rest, prevented from seeing what
     happened by a fight at half-past four:  the Boche ran.

At 7.40 attacked an Aviatik, carried away by the impetus, passed it at fifty centimeters; passenger “couic” (killed), the machine fell and was got under control again at fifty meters above the ground.

At 7.35, attacked an L.V.G.; at fifteen meters; just ready to shoot, when a bullet in my fingers made me let go the trigger; reservoir burst, good landing two kilometers from the trenches between two shell-holes.  Inventory of the “taxi”:  one bullet right in the face of my Vickers; one perforative bullet in the motor; the steel stone had gone clear through it as well as the oil reservoir, the gasoline