Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - Americans at the Front (1917).djvu/16

 later transferred to the aviation service. Prince and Cowdin, fresh from America, came a little later, and the way was now open for them to join the aviation corps direct. A fourth American, Bert Hall, a Texan cowboy who had also joined the Foreign Legion, was transferred to the air service shortly after Thaw.

Air Corps are to modern armies what the King's Guards were in the days of the Stuarts and the Louis—the corps d'élite. In France, the Army airmen rank specially high, and anyone who has witnessed their marvellous work admits that they have earned their place. For foreigners to come into this picked service was a severe test. Happily the Americans were tried and experienced flyers, and their records soon made them marked men. They themselves would be the last to deny any claim to special honour. "Why write about us," demanded Kiffin Rockwell shortly before his death, "when we are doing only what our French comrades are doing every day as well as we are."

The Americans urged the idea of a separate American squadron of the French flying service. Other men were coming to join them. Soon there were six American pilots who had passed