In the Somme campaign he had forced down two airplanes in a single day, and then four in two days.  In Lorraine he was to do even better.  At that time, the beginning of 1917, the German aerial forces were very active in Lorraine, but the city of Nancy paid no attention to them.  In 1914 Nancy had seen the invading army broken against the mountain of Saint Genevieve and the Grand Couronne; she had withstood a bombardment by gigantic shells and visits from air squadrons, and all without losing her good humor and her animation.  She was one of those cities on the front who are accustomed to danger, and who find in it an inspiration for courage, for commerce, and even for pleasure which does not belong to cities behind the lines.  Sometimes people who were dining on the Place Stanislas left their tables to watch some fine battle in the air, after which they resumed their seats and their appetites, merely replacing Rhenish by Moselle wines.  Nevertheless, the frequency of raids, and the destruction caused by bombs, began to make the existence of both native and visiting Nancyites decidedly unpleasant.  The Storks Escadrille, which arrived in February, very promptly punished these aerial brigands, by a police policy both rapid and severe.  The enemy airplanes which flew over Nancy were vigorously chased, and less than a month later the framework of a good dozen of them, arranged in an orderly manner around the statue of Stanislas Leczinski, reassured the population and served as an interesting spectacle for the visitor who could no longer have the pleasure of admiring, behind Lamour’s gates, the two monumental fountains consecrated to Neptune and Amphitrite, by Guibal, and which were then covered by coarse sacks of earth.

Guynemer had contributed his share of these spolia opima.  On March 16 he alone had forced down three Boches, and a fourth on the 17th.  Three victories in one day constituted a novel exploit.  Navarre had achieved a double victory on February 26, 1916, at Verdun, and Guynemer had the same success on the Somme; in this campaign Nungesser had burned a drachen and two airplanes in one morning; but three airplanes destroyed in one day had never been seen before.

On that same evening Guynemer wrote to his family, and I transcribe the letter just as it is, with neither heading nor final formula.  The King of Spain, in Ruy Blas, talks of the weather before he tells of the six wolves he has killed; but the new Cid fought in all weathers and speaks of nothing but his chase: 

     9 o’clock.—­Rose from the ground on hearing shell explosions. 
     Forced down in flames a two-seated Albatros at 9.08.