Meanwhile the battle of Verdun shattered trees, knocked down walls, annihilated villages, hollowed out the earth, dug up the plains, distorted the hills, and renewed once more that chaos of the third day, according to Genesis, on which the Creator separated the waters from the earth.  Almost the entire French army filed through this extraordinary epic battle, and Guynemer, wounded and weeping with rage, was not there.

But there was another period in the Great War in which the grouping of our fighting escadrilles and their employment in offensive movements gave us triumphant superiority in the aerial struggle, and this was the battle of the Somme, particularly during its first three months—­a splendid and heroic time when our airmen sprang up in the sky, spreading panic and fear, like the knights-errant of La Legende des siecles.  Victor Hugo’s verses seem to describe them and their vertiginous rounds rather than the too slow horsemen of old: 

     La terre a vu jadis errer des paladins;
     Ils flamboyaient ainsi que des eclairs soudains,
     Puis s’evanouissaient, laissant sur les visages
     La crainte, et la lueur de leurs brusques passages... 
     Les noms de quelques-uns jusqu’a nous sont venus.... 
     Ils surgissaient du Sud ou du Septentrion,
     Portant sur leur ecu l’hydre ou l’alerion,
     Couverts des noirs oiseaux du taillis heraldique,
     Marchant seuls au sentier que le devoir indique,
     Ajoutant au bruit sourd de leur pas solennel
     La vague obscurite d’un voyage eternel,
     Ayant franchi les flots, les monts, les bois horribles,
     Ils venaient de si loin qu’ils en etaient terribles,
     Et ces grands chevaliers melaient a leurs blasons
     Toute l’immensite des sombres horizons....

These new knights-errant who wandered above the desolate plains of the Somme, no longer on earth but in the sky, mounted on winged steeds, who started up with a “heavy sound” from south or north, will be immortal like those of the ancient epics.  It will be said that it was Dorme or Heurtaux, or Nungesser, Deullin, Sauvage, Tarascon, Chainat, or it was Guynemer, who accomplished such and such an exploit.  The Germans, without knowing their names, recognized them, not by their armor and their sword-thrust, but by their machines, their maneuvers and methods.  Almost invariably their enemies desperately avoided a fight with them, retreating far within their own lines, where, even then, they were not sure of safety.  Those who accepted their gage of battle seldom returned.  The enemy aviation camps from Ham to Peronne watched anxiously for the return of their champions who dared to fight over the French lines.  None of them cared to fly alone, and even in groups they appeared timid.  In patrols of four, five, and six, sometimes more, they flew beyond their own lines with the utmost caution, fearful at the least alarm, and anxiously examining the wide and empty sky where these mysterious knights mounted guard and might at any moment let loose a storm.  But in the course of these prodigious first three months of the battle of the Somme, our French chasing-patrols not infrequently flew to and fro for two hours over German aviation camps, forcing down all those who attempted to rise, and succeeding in spreading terror and consternation in the enemy’s lines.