The lists of names are always too short, but these, at
least, should be loudly acclaimed.
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.
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