He was desperately weary, and his hand trembled a little as he penned the words. The Hawks had been in almost continuous action for the past forty-eight hours, and all the pilots were feeling the strain. Thursday, 16 May 1940. Early this morning the Groupe moved to a new airfield at Orconte, near Saint-Dizier, with seven serviceable Hawks — all we have left out of a complement of thirty-four. While we were establishing ourselves at our new location, we were briefed to fly an air cover mission south-west of Charleroi. Take-off was fixed for 1100. All seven available aircraft were to take part. The pilots were selected from the 3rd and 4th Escadrilles: Lieutenant Vincotte, Sous-Lieutenant Baptizet, Sous-Lieutenant Plubeau and Adjutant Tesseraud from the 4th, Capitaine Guieu, Capitaine Armstrong (RAF) and Sergent-Chef Casenobe from the 3rd. We climbed without incident until we were over Reims, when we saw a superb V of nine twin-engined bombers heading south-west at 4,000 metres.
