WAR

—
during general nivelle's disastrous offensive in Champagne in the spring of
1917, a young man named Paul-Rene Fonck attracted attention and interest of the
the Storks by his
flying and obvious elan.
Fonck had been called up on August 22, 1914, winning his first citation
exactly one year later. The citation read in part: ". . . in spite of the most
unfavorable weather, flying at very low altitude over the enemy positions to gather
the required information, daring the most violent enemy fire, in the course of
which the aeroplane was riddled with bullets."
He was nervy enough, this Fonck, according to his
squadron mates, but he never liked the idea of being a
sitting duck for anybody, ground-gunners or air-gunners. He
took along a carbine during the first
year of the war when,
for the most part, the opposite numbers of the French and
German air services were content to wave when they chanced
to meet. Fonck never shot anybody down with a carbine,
Fonck.
but he tried. He was glad when machine guns were finally
issued to the Caudron squadrons. By the time of the
Champagne offensive, the Albatros squadrons were looking
at the Caudron aeroplanes as easy victories and the Nieuports
and Spads were having a hard time protecting them.
Even though his bus was a lumbering ungainly thing, a kind of flying wire
entanglement, Fonck was determined to fight with it. He was a pilot of deftness
and address, and it is likely that no one else could have succeeded in such an
uninspired apparatus as the Caudron.
In March 1917, Fonck was flying a reconnaissance patrol with another
Caudron G.4 when they were attacked by a wedge of five Albatros. Fonck and
the other pilot, Sergeant Raux, managed to stay together until they approached
the French lines when Raux was wounded, his observer killed, and his aeroplane
set afire. Raux dived toward the lines and three Albatros followed him down.
Fonck followed the three single-seaters and shot down the rearmost. The machines
were within reach of French ground fire at this point and the German fighters
prudently withdrew. The wounded Raux brought his burning Caudron in under
control before the French front line—the shell-torn earth of no-man's-land was
no place to land save in an emergency—and crashed the machine directly opposite
a first-aid station. The Germans and French interrupted the war while stretcher
bearers went out to retrieve the body of the observer and the badly hurt Raux.
This particular adventure brought Fonck to the attention of his superiors
who decided he had the makings of a pilote de chasse. Accordingly, he was
instructed, when he was due for a leave, to report to Le Plessis-Belleville for a
ten-day conversion course to single-seaters. On April 25, 1917, having successfully
made the conversion, he reported to Groupe de Combat XII, the Storks,
then stationed at Fismes.
The Storks
les
Cigognes—their record was unique. Under the leadership of
Commandant Brocard, these four squadrons were the finest in France. Spa 3,
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