he continued to touch everything, furnishing explanations to his
companions. When he returned to the college his pockets bulged with
prospectuses, catalogues, and selected brochures, which he carefully
added to the heterogeneous contents of his desk."[11]

[Footnote 11: Unpublished notes by Abbe Chesnais.]

Jean Krebs crystallized Georges Guynemer's vocation. He developed and
specialized his taste for mechanics, separating it from vague
abstractions and guiding it towards material realities and the wider
experiences these procure. He deserves to be mentioned in any biography
of Guynemer, and before passing on, it is proper that his premature loss
should be cited and deplored. Highly esteemed as an aviator during the
war, he made the best use of his substantial and reliable faculties in
the work of observation. Airplane chasing did not attract him, but he
knew how to use his eyes. He was killed in a landing accident at a time
almost coincident with the disappearance of Guynemer. One of his
escadrille mates described him thus: "With remarkable intelligence, and
a perfectly even disposition, his chiefs valued him for his sang-froid,
his quick eye, his exact knowledge of the services he was able to
perform. Every time a mission was intrusted to him, everybody was sure
that he would accomplish it, no matter what conditions he had to meet.
He often had to face enemy airplanes better armed than his own, and in
the course of a flight had been wounded in the thigh by an exploding
shell. Nevertheless he had continued to fly, only returning considerably
later when his task was done. His death has left a great void in this
escadrille. Men like him are difficult to replace...."

Thus the immoderate Guynemer had for his first friend a comrade who knew
exactly his own limits. Guynemer could save Jean Krebs from his excess
of literal honesty by showing him the enchantment of his own ecstasies,
but Jean Krebs furnished the motor for Guynemer's ambitious young wings.
Without the technical lessons of Jean Krebs, could Guynemer later have
got into the aviation field at Pau, and won so easily his diploma as
pilot? Would he have applied himself so closely to the study of his
tools and the perfecting of his machine?

The war was to make them both aviators, and both of them fell from the
sky, one in the fullness of glory, the other almost obscure. When they
talked together on school outings, or as they walked along beside the
walls of Stani