Buisse, and such observers as
Lieutenant Liebmann, who was killed, and Mutel, Naudeau, Campion,
Moulines, Dumas, Robbe, Travers, _sous-lieutenant_ Boillot, Captain
Verdurand--admirable squadron chief--and Major Roisin, expert in
bombardments. 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...
Les noms de quelques-uns jusqu'a nous sont venus....
Ils surgissaient du Sud ou du Septentrion,
Portant sur leur ecu l'hydre ou l'alerion,
Couverts des noirs oiseaux du taillis heraldique,
Marchant seuls au sentier que le devoir indique,
Ajoutant au bruit sourd de leur pas solennel
La vague obscurite d'un voyage eternel,
Ayant franchi les flots, les monts, les bois horribles,
Ils venaient de si loin qu'ils en etaient terribles,
Et ces grands chevaliers melaient a leurs blasons
Toute l'immensite des sombres horizons....

These new knights-errant who wandered above the desolate plains of the
Somme, no longer on earth but in the sky, mounted on winged steeds, who
started up with a "heavy sound" from south or north, will be immortal
like those of the ancient epics. It will be said that it was Dorme or
Heurtaux, or Nungesser, Deullin, Sauvage, Tarascon, Chainat, or it was
Guynemer, who acco