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 tank, the cartridge chest, my glove ... where it stayed in the index finger: result, about as if my finger had been slightly pinched in a door; not even skinned, only the top of the nail slightly blackened. At the time I thought two fingers had been shot. To continue the inventory: one bullet in the reservoir, in the direction of my left lung, having passed through four millimeters of copper and had the good sense to stop, but one wonders why. One bullet in the edge of the back of my seat, one in the rudder, and a dozen in the wings. They knocked the "taxi" to pieces with a hatchet at two o'clock in the morning, under shell-fire. On landing, received 86 shots of 105, 130 and 150, for nothing. They will pay the bill. For a beginning, La Tour has his fourth mention.