“Who is it?”

“Jeanne d’Arc.”

Georges Guynemer’s parents renounced the woman teacher, and in order to keep him near them, entered him as a day scholar at the lyceum of Compiegne.  Here the child worked very little.  M. Paul Guynemer, having been educated at Stanislas College, in Paris, wished his son also to go there.  Georges was then twelve years old.

“In a photograph of the pupils of the Fifth (green) Class,” wrote a journalist in the Journal des Debats, who had had the curiosity to investigate Georges’ college days, “may be seen a restless-looking little boy, thinner and paler than the others, whose round black eyes seem to shine with a somber brilliance.  These eyes, which, eight or ten years later, were to hunt and pursue so many enemy airplanes, are passionately self-willed.  The same temperament is evident in a snapshot of this same period, in which Georges is seen playing at war.  The college registers of this year tell us that he had a clear, active, well-balanced mind, but that he was thoughtless, mischief-making, disorderly, careless; that he did not work, and was undisciplined, though without any malice; that he was very proud, and ’ambitious to attain first rank’:  a valuable guide in understanding the character of one who became ‘the ace of aces.’  In fact, at the end of the year young Guynemer received the first prize for Latin translation, the first prize for arithmetic, and four honorable mentions.”

The author of the Debats article, who is a scholar, recalls Michelet’s mot:  “The Frenchman is that naughty child characterized by the good mother of Duguesclin as ‘the one who is always fighting the others....’” But the best portrait of Guynemer as a child I find in the unpublished notes of Abbe Chesnais, who was division prefect at Stanislas College during the four years which Guynemer passed there.  The Abbe Chesnais had divined this impassioned nature, and watched it with troubled sympathy.

“His eyes vividly expressed the headstrong, fighting nature of the boy,” he says of his pupil.  “He did not care for quiet games, but was devoted to those requiring skill, agility, and force.  He had a decided preference for a game highly popular among the younger classes—­la petite guerre.  The class was divided into two armies, each commanded by a general chosen by the pupils themselves, and having officers of all ranks under his orders.  Each soldier wore on his left arm a movable brassard.  The object of the battle was the capture of the flag, which was set up on a wall, a tree, a column, or any place dominating the courtyard.  The soldier from whom his brassard was taken was considered dead.