A great novelist said that the origin of our friendships dates
"from those hours at the beginning of life when we dream of the future
in company with some comrade with the same ideals as our own, a chosen
brother."[20] What difference does it make, then, if they depart in
company for glory or for death? These young men gave themselves with the
same willingness to the same service, a service full of constant
danger. They were not gathered together by chance, but by their vocation
and by selection, and they spoke the same language. For them, friendship
easily became rivalry in courage and energy, and a school of mutual
esteem, in which each strove to outdo the other. Friendship kept them
alert, drove away inertia and weakness, and they became confident and
generous, so that each rejoiced in the success of the others. In the
mountains, on the sea, in every place where men feel most acutely their
own fragility, such friendship is not rare; but war brings it to
perfection.
[Footnote 20: Paul Bourget, _Une Idylle tragique_.]
The patrols of the Storks Escadrille, in the beginning of the Somme
campaign, consisted of a single airplane, or airplanes in couples.
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