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Updated: May 23, 2025
"It ain't such an escape as what you blokes think, because, you see, the bomb ain't nothin' more nor an ornary jam tin with a bit of fuse what I stuck in it." And he disappeared down the trench as rapidly as had his comrades a few minutes before. "So, you see, Schoolmaster," said Oberleutnant von Scheldmann, "you French are a race of dogs.
He handed the food and wine to the German, and watched him as he tramped down the garden path, to join in the unending stream of grey-coated soldiers who straggled towards the north. Oberleutnant von Scheldmann sat on a bank by the roadside, to lunch in haste.
Then he suddenly jerked his head forward, and, with his chin, knocked the glass out of the German's hand. As the wine splashed over the floor, von Scheldmann leaped to his feet. "Swine!" he shouted. "It is lucky for you that your wine was good and has left me in a kind mood, otherwise you would certainly die for that insult.
Von Scheldmann read it, and swore. "In five minutes we parade," he said, "to follow on after your cowardly dogs of poilus. Here's a health to the new rulers of France! Here's to the German Empire!" and he leant across the table towards the schoolmaster. "Drink, you dog," he said, "drink to my toast," and he held his glass close to the other's lips. Gaston Baudel hesitated for a moment.
Von Scheldmann knocked the top off the wine bottle with a blow from a stone, and, with care to avoid the sharp edges of the glass, he drank long and deep. As he bit greedily into the sandwich, his teeth met on something thin and tenuous, and he pulled the two bits of bread apart. Inside was a scrap of paper.
And even as he read the hurriedly written words, von Scheldmann felt the first awful sense of numbness that presaged the end. We sat in a railway carriage and told each other, as civilians love to do, what was the quickest way to end the war. "You ought to be able to hold nearly 400 yards of trench with a company," my friend was saying.
The insult was too much for Gaston Baudel. "May I be cursed," he shouted, "if I lift hand or foot to feed you and your like. I hate you all, for did you not kill my own father, when your soldiers overran France forty-four years ago! Go and find food elsewhere." Von Scheldmann laughed to himself, amused at the Frenchman's rage.
Was he not taking away God's gift of life from a fellow creature? Unconsciously he touched the bandage that covered his mutilated ears. Surely, though, it could not be wrong to kill one of these hated oppressors? Should not an enemy of France be destroyed at any cost? As he hesitated, the impatient voice of von Scheldmann sounded from the schoolroom.
He lay, then, in silence, on the floor of his own schoolroom, until the two soldiers returned, dragging between them the terrified Rosine, his old housekeeper. "Are you the schoolmaster's servant?" asked von Scheldmann, in French. Rosine nodded, for no words would come to her. "Well, bring me the best food and wine in the house at once, or your master will suffer for it."
"Now, you pig," said von Scheldmann when the soldiers had gone off to search the house, "remember that you are the conquered dog of a conquered race, and that my sword thirsts for French blood," and he added meaning to his words by drawing his weapon and pricking the schoolmaster's thin legs with it. "If I don't get food in a few minutes, I shall have to run this through your body."
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