THE ARM AT GRAVELOTTE
By William Almon Wolff
He was an old man, with snow-white hair and a patriarch’s beard. One sleeve of his coat was empty. He had lived in the village for many years—since five years after the great war, men said. He had prospered; when the new war of 1914 broke out he was the largest landholder for miles around.
It was not far from the French border, this village of which Hans Schmidt was patriarch. It had no railway station, but a line of rail came to it and ended in long platforms in open fields. Twice, of late years, trains had rolled up beside those platforms, discharging soldiers of the Fatherland, engaged in manœuvres. Now, in the first week of August, there was real use for the platforms. For three days trains rolled up in a never-ending procession, discharging their living freight of men in a misty, gray-green uniform that melted into the background of grass and shrubs at a hundred paces, with even the spikes of their helmets covered with cloth.
Westward moved the soldiers, like a swarm of locusts. But they left something behind, an integral part of themselves, their collective brain. About the house of Hans Schmidt sentries were posted. Mechanics, working quietly, swiftly, as if they had known long since what they must do, laid wires into his modest parlour, connected it by telephone and telegraph with Berlin, with the ever-moving forces to the west. In Hans Schmidt’s bed slept a corps commander; the whole house was given up to the staff. He himself was allowed a cot in the kitchen. His house was chosen for headquarters.
From the parlour the general ordered the movements of forty thousand men, playing their part, like a piece in a game of chess, in the plan of invasion of the Great Headquarters Staff. Vastly important were these movements; each corps must coördinate absolutely with every other. Confusion here might ruin the whole great plan.
The high-born general was very busy. But on the second day he deigned to notice Hans Schmidt, who had drawn back, his one arm raised in the salute, as the general passed him.
“Ach!” said the general. “You have lost an arm! An old soldier, nicht wahr?”
“Yes, my general. I left my arm at Gravelotte.”
“So! I was in that business, too. I got my company that day, when Steinmetz lost half his corps. Ach! This time we shall finish them even more quickly! Von Kluck is halfway through Belgium; the Crown Prince is hammering at Verdun! We shall be in Paris within the month!”
Hans Schmidt listened respectfully, as became him. The general went to his desk. Hans Schmidt, in his garden, looked at the western sky. Flying low, nearby, was an aeroplane, blunt, snub-nosed. He knew it for a Taube, though no monoplanes had circled over Gravelotte. It turned, and flew eastward, out of sight. Still he peered into the west. High in the air something flashed gold in the rays of the sun, shining upward from behind a cloud. Hans Schmidt went slowly into the kitchen.
There a hot, smokeless fire of hard coal burned to roast two suckling pigs for the dinner of the general and the high-born officers of the staff. He sent out a maid whose duty it was to watch the pigs. Hans Schmidt took a bag from his pocket, emptied it into the fire, added a pile of kindling wood. He went back into the garden. Thoughtfully he looked at the chimney, from which there rose suddenly a thick column of oily black smoke. Straight up it went, higher and higher.
“In Berlin you would be fined for that,” said a young staff officer, coming up beside him.
“The maids are careless,” answered the patriot.
The officer gaped at the smoke. Hans Schmidt looked to the west. Again he caught the gleam of the sun on metal. From the west a monoplane was coming, flying like a hawk. It took shape. A mile away a gun spoke; another, and another. Above, below the monoplane, hung three fleecy balls of white smoke, where shells had burst. Followed a volley. Other officers came from the house to stare upward. On came the monoplane.
“A French flyer!” cried one.
It was overhead. It paused in its flight, circled. A tiny black thing hurtled down. The side wall of Hans Schmidt’s house vanished. In a moment more there was no house—only a heap of smoking ruins. Amid fused wires a thing that had been a man, in the uniform of a general, dragged itself, shrieking, till it died.
“The smoke!” cried an officer. “It was a signal! Headquarters was betrayed!”
“Fools!” cried Hans Schmidt, as they turned on him. “The arm I left at Gravelotte carried a French chassepôt! Vive la France! Vive Alsace—jamais plus Elsass! Vive la rep——”
A revolver spat in his face. But as he lay his staring eyes were turned to the west, to a monoplane that was flying home to France.