Now, the number of the _Vieux-Charles_ did not
appear on any of these lists, although having only one wing broken the
number ought to have been plainly visible. Who were the noncommissioned
officer and the two soldiers? Finally, on October 4, 1917, the British
took Poelkapelle, but the enemy counter-attacked, and there was furious
fighting. On the 9th the village was completely occupied by the British,
and they searched for Guynemer's grave. No trace of it could be found in
either the military or the village graveyard.
In fact, the Germans had to acknowledge in an official document that
both the body and the airplane of Guynemer had disappeared. On November
8, 1917, the German Foreign Office replied as follows to a question
asked by the Spanish Ambassador:
Captain Guynemer fell in the course of an air fight on September 11
at ten A.M. close to the honor graveyard No. 2 south of
Poelkapelle. A surgeon found that he had been shot through the
head, and that the forefinger of his left hand had been shot off by
a bullet. The body could neither be buried nor removed, as the
place had been since the previous day under constant and heavy
fire, and during the following days it was impossible to approach
it.
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