Georges Guynemer: Knight of the AirBordeaux, Henry
History
Georges Guynemer: Knight of the Air
Bordeaux, Henry
Air pilots -- France -- Biography; Guynemer, Georges, 1894-1917; World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations
The credulity of the poor people of France with regard to their hero was
most touching. When the death of Guynemer had to be admitted, there was
deep mourning, from Paris to the remote villages where news travels
slowly, but is long pondered upon. Guynemer had been brought down from a
height of 700 meters, northeast of Poelkapelle cemetery, in the Ypres
sector. A German noncommissioned officer and two soldiers had
immediately gone to where the machine was lying. One of the wings of the
machine was broken; the airman had been shot through the head, and his
leg and shoulder had been broken in the fall; but his face was
untouched, and he had been identified at once by the photograph on his
pilot's diploma. A military funeral had been given to him.
Nevertheless, it seemed as if Guynemer's fate still remained somewhat
obscure. The German War Office published a list of French machines
fallen in the German lines, with the official indications by which they
had been recognized. Now, the number of the _Vieux-Charles_ did not
appear on any of these lists, although having only one wing broken the
number ought to have been plainly visible. Who were the noncommissioned
officer and the two soldiers? Finally, on October 4, 1917, the British
took Poelkapelle, but the enemy counter-attacked, and there was furious
fighting. On the 9th the village was completely occupied by the British,
and they searched for Guynemer's grave. No trace of it could be found in
either the military or the village graveyard.
In fact, the Germans had to acknowledge in an official document that
both the body and the airplane of Guynemer had disappeared. On November
8, 1917, the German Foreign Office replied as follows to a question
asked by the Spanish Ambassador:
Captain Guynemer fell in the course of an air fight on September 11
at ten A.M. close to the honor graveyard No. 2 south of
Poelkapelle. A surgeon found that he had been shot through the
head, and that the forefinger of his left hand had been shot off by
a bullet. The body could neither be buried nor removed, as the
place had been since the previous day under constant and heavy
fire, and during the following days it was impossible to approach
it. The sector authorities communicate that the shelling had plowed
up the entire district, and that no trace could be found on
September 12 of either the body or the machine. Fresh inquiries,
which were made in order to answer the question of the Spanish
Embassy, were also fruitless, as the place where Captain Guynemer
fell is now in the possession of the British.
The German airmen express their regret at having been unable to
render the last honors to a valiant enemy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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