He soon started again. Towards noon a German machine
appeared above the camp itself. How had it been able to get there? This
is what the airmen down below were asking themselves. It was useless to
chase it, for it would take any of them longer to rise than the German
to escape. So they had to content themselves with looking up, some of
them searching the sky with binoculars. Everybody was back except
Guynemer, when somebody suddenly cried:
"Here comes Guynemer!"
"Then the Boche is done for."
Guynemer, in fact, was coming down upon his prey like lightning, and the
instant he was behind and slightly beneath him, he fired. Only one shot
from the machine-gun was heard, but the enemy airplane was already
spinning down, its engine going full speed, and was dashed into the
earth at Courlandon near Fismes. The pilot had been shot through the
head.
In the afternoon the very prudent Guynemer started for the third time,
and towards seven o'clock, above the Guignicourt market gardens (that is
to say, in the enemy lines), he brought down another machine in flames.
"Very prudent" is the last epithet one could have expected to see in
connection with the name of Guynemer.
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