WAR HAWK OF THE FRENCH

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2800, 19 June 1916, Page 7

WAR HAWK OF THE FRENCH

DARING YOUNG NAVARRE. Writes the Paris correspondent of the "Pall Mall Gazette":—Navarre, the young airman who holds the record now for Germans brought down,; is only just .twenty, years old, and had never- tried •his liand at flying until well after the war' had started. By the end of 1914 he was.already marked out as a "com-' ing man," and experts now declare that .lie is .worthy .to rank with Garros and Gilbert. • vHe is. desoribed as impatient of discipline and little use unless allowed to act ag a'tree lance, In aerial warfare his aim, is, not.so much to kill his opponent as to cripple the machine and ,ciitch the!, occupants alive. Only once has.lie been compelled for his own safety to shoot liis adversary, '.His favourite trfok is to swoop to within, forty to fifty feet of the German, and; riddle his machine with bullets. It is recounted that a new gunner, Who had iicver been with liiin,. was so startled at the boldness and dash with which ho brought him alongside tho enemy that ho missed an almost point-blank target, and although he was Navarre's superior in rank, the airman gave him sucli a "dressing .down" that a sergeant nearly arrested him for insubordination. .Tean Navarre, with his twin brother Pierre, is the eldest of eleven children, of quiet, almost humble, family, living near Lyons. The mother tells with' pride, if : with some alarm, about her ■two boys' veuturesomo spirit. When kept in at scliool at Lyons both used to escape by. the roof and climb down tho water-pipes. Onp of their amusements wits to put up a tight-rope between two factory chimneys, 70ft. above the ground, and do acrobatics on it. Jpan became an aviator after the war. Pierre, to his disgust, was rejected because of narrow chest, but went to the mountains, and after a few weeks came back fit, was passed, and is now an almost full-fledged aviator. Madame Navarro repeats, trembling but proud, what liar Jean has often told her. "If I had tho bad luck to como down in the German lines I have quite made up my mind what I shall do," He is determined nover to be taken alive, anl his mother knows ho will keep his word.