es, and finally, on February 25, the attack on
Louvemont and Douaumont. The escadrilles, little by little, headed in
the same direction, and Guynemer was about to leave the Sixth Army. He
would dart no more above the paternal mansion, announcing his victories
by his caracoles in the air; nor watch over his own household during his
patrol of the region beyond Compiegne, over Noyon, Chauny, Coucy, and
Tracy-le-Val. The cord which still linked him with his infancy and youth
was now to be strained, and on March 11 the Storks Escadrille received
orders to depart next day, and to fly to the Verdun region.

The development of the German fighting airplanes had constantly
progressed during 1915. Now, early in 1916, they appeared at Verdun,
more homogeneous and better trained, and in possession of a series of
new machines: small, one-seated biplanes (Albatros, Halberstadt, new
Fokker, and Ago), with a fixed motor of 165-175 H.P. (Mercedes, and more
rarely Benz and Argus), and two stationary machine-guns firing through
the propeller. These chasing escadrilles (_Jagdstaffeln_) are
essentially fighting units. Each _Jagdstaffel_ comprises eighteen
airplanes, and sometimes twenty-two, four of which are reserves. These
airplanes do not generally travel alone, at least when they have to
leave their lines, but fly in groups (_Ketten_) of five each, one of
them serving as guide (_Kettenfuhrer_), and conducted by the most
experienced pilot, regardless of rank. German aviation tactics seek more
and more to avoid solitary combat and replace it by squadron fighting,
or to surprise an isolated enemy by a squadron, like an attack of
sparrow-hawks upon an eagle.

Ever since the establishment of our first autonomous group of fighting
airplanes, which figured in the Artois offensives in May, 1915, but
which did not take the offensive (having their cantonments in the
barriers and limiting themselves to keeping off the enemy and cruising
above our lines and often behind them), our fighting airplanes gradually
overcame prejudice. They were not, it is true, so promptly brought to
perfection as our army corps airplanes, which proved so useful in the
Champagne campaign of September, 1915; but it was admitted that the
aerial combat should not be regarded as a result of mere chance, but as
inevitable, and that it constituted, first, a protection, and
afterwards an effective obstruction to an enemy forbidden to make raids
in our aerial domain. The next Ge