This is the spirit of youth. "They jest and play with death as they
played in school only yesterday at recreation."[3] But Guynemer
immediately added:

"It gives so much pleasure to the poilus watching us down there."[4]

[Footnote 3: Henri Lavedan (_L'Illustration_ of October 6, 1917).]

[Footnote 4: Pierre l'Ermite (_La Croix_ of October 7, 1917).]

The sky-juggler was working for his brother the infantryman. As the
singing lark lifts the peasant's head, bent over his furrow, so the
conquering airplane, with its overturnings, its "loopings," its close
veerings, its spirals, its tail spins, its "zooms," its dives, all its
tricks of flight, amuses for a while the sad laborers in the trenches.

May my readers, when they have finished this little book, composed
according to the rules of the boy, Paul Bailly, lift their heads and
seek in the sky whither he carried, so often and so high, the tricolor
of France, an invisible and immortal Guynemer!




CANTO I

CHILDHOOD