ll my strength so that it would fall flat. There was a
terrible shock! One tree higher than the rest broke my right wings, and
made me turn as if I were on a pivot. I closed my eyes. There was a
second shock, less violent than I could have hoped: the machine fell on
its nose like a stone, at the foot of the tree which had stopped me. I
unfastened my belt which, luckily, had not broken, and let myself slip
onto the ground, amazed not to be suffering intense agony. The only bad
effects were that my head was heavy, and blood was flowing through my
mask. I breathed, coughed, and shook my arms and legs, and was
dumbfounded to find that all my faculties functioned normally...."
Guynemer did not tell us so much; but, as a mathematician, he calculated
his chances. He too had switched off, and with the greatest sang-froid
superintended, so to speak, his fall. Its result was no less magical.

The infantrymen had observed this rainfall of airplanes. The French
plane reached the earth just before its pilot's last victim fell also,
in flames. The soldiers pitied the poor victor, who had not, as they
thought, survived his conquest! They rushed to his aid, expecting to
pick him up crushed to atoms. But Guynemer stood up without aid. He
seemed like a ghost; but he was standing, he was alive, and the excited
soldiers took possession of him and carried him off in triumph. A
division general approached, and immediately commanded a military salute
for the victor, saying to Guynemer:

"You will review the troops with me."

Guynemer did not know how to review troops, and would have liked to go.
He was suffering cruelly from his knee:

"I happen to be wounded, General."

"Wounded, you! It's impossible. When a man falls from the sky without
being broken, he is a magician, no doubt of that. You cannot be wounded.
However, lean upon me."

And holding him up, almost indeed carrying him, he walked with the young
_sous-lieutenant_ in front of the troops. From the neighboring trenches
rose the sound of singing, first half-suppressed, and then swelling into
a formidable roar: the _Marseillaise_. The song had sprung spontaneously
to the men's lips.

* * * * *

Cerebral commotion required Guynemer to rest for a few days. But on
October 5 he started off again. The month of October on the Somme was
marked by an improvement in German aviation, their numbers being
considerably reinforced and supplied with new tactics