The Sniper-observer Scout



Sniping in France by Major H. Hesketh-Prichard

With Notes on the Scientific Training of Scouts, Observers, and Snipers

MAJOR H. HESKETH-PRICHARD, D.S.O., M.C.

WITH A FOREWORD by

GENERAL LORD HORNE OF STIRKOKE, G.C.B., K.C.M.G., etc.

Illustrations by ERNEST BLAIKLEY, Artists' Rifles, late Sergeant-1nstructor at the First

Army School of S.O.S., the late Liant B. Head, The Hertfordshire Regt., and from Photographs.



FOREWORD BY GENERAL LORD HORNE, G.C.B.

IT may fairly be claimed that when hostilities ceased on November 11th, 1918, we had outplayed Germany at all points of the game.

Perhaps as a nation we failed in imagination. Possibly Germany was more quick to initiate new methods of warfare or to adapt her existing methods to meet prevailing conditions. Certainly we were slow to adopt, indeed, our souls abhorred, anything unsportsmanlike.

Had it been left to us, "Gas" would have taken no part in the Great European War.

But, however lacking in imagination, however slow to realize the importance of novel methods, once we were convinced of their necessity, once we decided to adopt them, we managed by a combination of brains and energy, pluck and endurance, not only to make up the lost ground, but to take the lead in the race. In proof of this statement I would instance Heavy Field Artillery, High Explosives, Gas, Work in the Air, etc., and many other points I could mention in which Germany started ahead of us, including Sniping Observation and Scouting.

And for our eventual superiority we owe much to individuals, men who, like the author of this book Major Hesketh-Prichard, combined expert knowledge with untiring energy, men who would not be denied and could not recognize defeat.

In the early days of 1915, in command of the 2nd Division, I well remember the ever-increasing activity of the German sniper and the annoyance of our officers and men in the trenches. I can recall the acquisition by the Guards' Brigade, then in the Brickfields of Cuinchy with Lord Cavan as Brigadier, of two rifles fitted with telescopic sights and the good use made of them. It was the experience of 1915 that impressed upon us the necessity of fighting for superiority in all branches of trench warfare, amongst .which sniping held an important position. It was therefore a great satisfaction to me upon my arrival from the battlefields of the Somme in the autumn of 1916 to find Major Hesketh-Prichard's School firmly established in the First Army area, thanks in a great measure to the support and encouragement of Lieut.-General Sir Richard Haking, the Commander of the Eleventh Corps.

From that time onwards, owing chiefly to the energy, enthusiasm, tact and personality of its Commandant, the influence of the Sniping, Observation and Scouting School spread rapidly throughout the British Forces in France. Of its ups and downs, of its troubles and its successes, and of its ultimate triumph, Major Hesketh-Prichard tells the tale with modesty typical of the man.

I may be permitted to add my testimony that in each phase of the war, not only in the trenches, but in the field, we found the value of the trained sniper, observer and scout.

This book is not only a record of a successful system of training, valuable as such to us soldiers, but also will be found to be full of interest to the general reader.



CHAPTER I. THE GENESIS OF SNIPING

READERS of this book must realize the necessarily very narrow and circumscribed point of view from which it is written. It is simply an account of some memories of sniping, observation and scouting in France and Flanders, and its purpose is to preserve, as far as may be, in some form the work and training of a class of officers and men whose duties became ever more important as the war progressed. It is in the hope that the true value of sniping and scouting will continue to be recognized in the future training of our armies, as it certainly was recognized in the later years of the war, that this book is written.

The idea of organized sniping was not a new one to me when I went out to France in May, 1915. I had been there before, in the previous March, and had seen the immense advantages which had accrued to the Germans through their superiority in trench warfare sniping.

It is difficult now to give the exact figures of our losses. Suffice it to say that in early 1915 we lost eighteen men in a single battalion in a single day to enemy snipers. Now if each battalion in the line killed by sniping a single German in the day, the numbers would mount up. If any one cares to do a mathematical sum, and to work out the number of battalions we had in the line, they will be surprised at the figures, and when they multiply these figures by thirty and look at the month's losses, they will find that in a war of attrition the sniper on this count alone justifies his existence and wipes out large numbers of the enemy.

But it is not only by the casualties that one can judge the value of sniping. If your trench is dominated by enemy snipers, life in it is really a very hard thing, and moral must inevitably suffer. In many parts of the line all through France and Belgium the enemy, who were organized at a much earlier period than we, certainly did dominate us. Each regiment and most soldiers who have been to France will remember some particular spot where they will say the German sniping was more deadly than elsewhere, but the truth of the matter is that in the middle of 1915 we were undergoing almost everywhere a severe gruelling, to say the least of it.



When I went out in May, 1915, I took with me several telescopic-sighted rifles, which were either my own property or borrowed from friends. I was at the time attached to the Intelligence Department as an officer in charge of war-correspondents, and my work gave me ample opportunity to visit all parts of the line. Whenever I went to the line I took with me, if it was possible, a telescopic-sighted rifle, and I found that both brigades and battalions were soon applying to me to lend these rifles. In this way opportunities arose of visiting the line and studying the sniping problem on the spot.

One day I remember I was going through the trenches in company with the Australian Correspondent, Mr. Gullett, when we came to a very smart notice board on which was painted the word "Sniper," and also an arrow pointing to the lair in which he lay. The sniper, however, was not in the lair, but was shooting over the top of the parapet with a telescopic-sighted rifle. These rifles were coming out from England at that time in very small numbers, and were being issued to the troops.

I had for many years possessed telescope-sighted rifles, and had some understanding of their manipulation as used in big-game shooting. In a general way I could not help thinking that they were unsportsmanlike, as they made shooting so very easy, but for shooting at rabbits with a small-bore rifle, where you only wounded your rabbit unless you hit him in the head, they were admirable and saved a great deal of unnecessary suffering.

But to return to the sniper. Much interested, we asked him how he liked his rifle, and he announced that he could put a shot through the loophole of the iron shields in the German trenches "every time." As the German trenches were six hundred yards away, it seemed to me that the sniper was optimistic, and we asked him if he would let us see him shoot. I had with me a Ross glass which I always carried in the trenches, and when the sniper shot I saw his bullet strike some six feet to the left of the plate at which he was aiming. He, however, was convinced from the sound that it had gone clean through the loophole! He had another shot, and again struck well to the left. I had a look at his sight, which was a tap-over fitting, and seeing that it was a little out of alignment I questioned the sniper as to how much he knew about his weapon. It is no exaggeration to say that his knowledge was limited.

From this moment all telescope-sighted rifles became a matter of great interest to me, and it was not long before I came to the conclusion that about 80 per cent, were quite useless, much worse, in fact, than the ordinary open sights, in the hands in which they were. The men using them had in most cases hardly any knowledge of how their sights were aligned.



A tap or a knock and the rifle was straightway out of shooting.

For the benefit of the untechnical reader it will be well here to remark that if a telescopic sight set upon a 4-inch base is one-hundredth of an inch out of its true alignment, it will shoot incorrectly to the extent of 9 inches at 100 yards, and, of course, 18 inches at 200 yards, and 54 inches at 600 yards. The sights had been issued without instruction, were often handed over as trench-stores, and were served out by quartermaster-sergeants who very often looked on them as egregious fads.

It seemed to me that here was something definite to go upon towards that organization of sniping in which I so much desired to have a hand. That evening I laid the matter before my Commanding Officer, Lieut.-Colonel A. G. Stuart, of the 40th Pathans, than whom surely no finer officer went to the war. He was killed in 1916 by a chance bullet a mile behind the trenches, when he was serving near Ypres as G.S.O.I to the 50th Division.

He listened with both sympathy and interest. " You say," said he, " that all or nearly all the telescope-sighted rifles you have seen are so incorrect as to be worse than useless. Are you quite sure of this ? "

" Quite sure," said I. " And that is only one side of it. The men have no idea of concealment, and many of them are easy targets to the Hun snipers."



" The proper authorities should move in the matter," said Colonel Stuart.

" There don't seem to be any proper authorities, sir. The officers know no more than the men about these sights, and what I want to do is this : If it is possible I should like to be appointed as sniping expert to some unit. I believe I could save hundreds of lives even in a brigade the way things are."

Colonel Stuart said nothing, so I went on :

" Will you help me to get a job of this kind, sir ? I am asking because it seems absurd for a fellow like me who has spent years after big game to let men go on being killed when I know perfectly well that I can stop it."

" Are you sure of that ? "

" I am quite willing, sir, to go to any unit for a fort¬night's trial, and if I do not make good, there will be no harm done."

"Well," said Colonel Stuart at length, "we will talk to people about it and see what they say."

After that, Colonel Stuart often questioned me, and I pointed out to him our continued and heavy losses, the complete German superiority, the necessity not only of a course of training but, more important still, the selection of the right men to train and also their value to Intelligence if provided with telescopes, and made a dozen other suggestions, all very far-reaching. When I look back now on these suggestions, which came from a very amateur soldier of no military experience, I can only marvel at Colonel Stuart's patience ; but he was not only patient, he was also most helpful and sympathetic. Without him this very necessary reform might, and probably would, have been strangled at birth, or would have only come into the Army, if it had come at all, at a much later time.

Colonel Stuart not only allowed me to speak of my ideas to various officers in high command, but even did so himself on my behalf. I was amazed at the invariable kindness and courtesy that I met on every hand. I used to introduce myself and say : " Sir, I hope you will forgive me if I speak about a thing I am awfully keen on—sniping, sir. The Huns got twelve of the Blankshires in this Division on their last tour of duty, and I think we could easily beat them at this if we had proper training and organization." And then I would lay out my plans.

But, though people listened, there were immense difficulties in the way, and these might never have been surmounted, although quite a number of Corps and Divisional G.O.C.'s had said to me : " If you can get away from your job at G.H.Q., come here and be our sniping expert. We shall be very glad to have you."

Still, as I say, there is a thing in the Army called " Establishment," and there was no Establishment for a sniping officer, and if the matter were put through the War Office it would probably take some months, I knew, to obtain an establishment. Colonel Stuart, however, once I had convinced him, backed me up in every possible way, going to see the M.G.G.S., Third Army, Major-General Sir A. L. Lynden-Bell, who was in full sympathy with the idea. It was thus that the matter was mentioned to Sir Charles Monro, commanding the Third Army, and Colonel Stuart arranged with Brigadier-General MacDonogh, now Lieut.-General Sir George MacDonogh, who was then in command of the Intelligence Corps, to allow me to serve with the Third Army as sniping expert.

John Buchan,[*] who was at that time the Times correspondent on the Western Front, also gave the idea great encouragement. He had seen for himself the awful casualties that we were suffering, and considered the scheme which I laid out to be a sound one.

[*] Afterwards Lieut.-Col. John Buchan, Director of Information.

Sir Charles Monro, in talking over the matter, made a remark which I have always remembered.

"It is not," he said, "only that a good shot strengthens his unit, but he adds to its moral—he raises (the moral of his comrades—it raises the moral of the whole unit to know that it contains several first-class shots."

These are not the exact words which Sir Charles used, but they are as near them as I can remember.

Now that I had got my chance I was at first extremely happy, but later, as I could not go to my new work at once, I became a little nervous of failure, and pictured myself unsuccessful in my attempt to dominate the German snipers. I began to wish that I had gone to my work a month earlier, for when the Third Army took over from the French, the Germans offered any amount of targets, whereas I now heard that they were becoming more cautious. I, therefore, cast about for some way in which I might hope to make certain of success, and to this end, having conceived a plan, I went down to Neuve Chapelle, where my friend, Captain A. C. Gathorne-Hardy, 9th Scottish Rifles, since killed at Loos leading his men and within ten yards of the German wire, was in the line. We obtained from the old German trenches a number of the large steel plates from behind which the German snipers were wont to shoot, and these I took home with me to England, for I had obtained a week's leave before taking up my new duties.

I proceeded to try on these plates all kinds of rifles, from the Jeffreys high velocity .333 to heavy elephant guns of various bores, and was delighted to find that the bullets from the .333, as well as the elephant guns, pierced them like butter. Here, again, Colonel John Buchan came to my assistance, and obtained for me a fund, to which Lord Haldane, Lord Glenconner and Lord Finlay kindly contributed the money, and which enabled me to purchase the necessary rifles. Later on, Mr. St. Loe Strachey, the editor of The Spectator, continued to keep up my fund, which really was of incalculable value to us, and out of which everything from dummy heads purchased at Clarkson's to football jerseys for the splendidly-appointed Sniping School, which finally eventuated, were purchased.

At length I was free of my work at G.H.Q., and went down to the Third Army, where I was attached to the 7th Corps, the 4th Division, and the 10th and 12th Infantry Brigades.

It would be out of place to describe in detail the days that followed. Suffice it to say that very early in the proceedings it became clear that snipers must always work in pairs, one man shooting and one man finding the targets with the telescope. The regulation issue of the latter was at the time, I think, about eight telescopes per battalion, and these were used by the Signallers, but Lord Roberts' Fund, administered with extraordinary energy by Mr. Penoyre, came to the rescue, and soon a certain number of telescopes dribbled down into the 4th Division line. As to the heavy and armour-piercing rifles, they did their work exceedingly well, and no doubt caused a great surprise to the enemy.

One day I obtained leave to go to Amiens, where I visited the French Camouflage Works, and found to my delight that they had made a number of papier-mache models of the heads and shoulders of British soldiers.



Of these I was able to purchase a large quantity, and had no longer any need to buy in London, where the heads were rather theatrical properties than the real thing. The uses to which the heads were put were varied. They were, in these early days before they were too much advertised (for they afterwards became an issue in our Army), most useful in getting the enemy to give a target. It was also possible, by showing very skilfully the heads of Sikhs or Ghurkas in different parts of the line, to give the German Intelligence the impression that we were holding our line with Indian troops, and I have no doubt they were considerably worried to account for these movements.

One day I received orders from Army Headquarters telling me that Colonel Langford Lloyd, D.S.O., had now started a telescopic-sight school in the 10th Corps area, and ordering me to go there and to collaborate with Colonel Lloyd in a book upon sniping and telescopic sights. I went and found a splendid school running, in which the instruction in telescopic sights was rapidly correcting these rifles in the 10th Corps. I had the opportunity at Colonel Lloyd's school of learning a great deal that I did not know about telescopic sights, and many other matters in which Colonel Lloyd is a past master. He listened with great interest to the various ruses, of which there was now quite a long list, that we had employed in the trenches. We wrote our pamphlet on sniping and telescopic sights, a pamphlet which, owing to a change in the Army Command, was never published, and shortly-after my visit to Colonel Lloyd I received the intimation that my trial time with the Third Army had been successful, and that steps would now be taken to get me placed permanently upon its strength. In the meantime, I went from brigade to brigade, burning with eagerness to make organized sniping a definite fact. The instruction took place both in and out of the trenches, and during the course of it we had many interesting experiences. As soon as people began to talk about sniping as a new and interesting subject, our arrival in the trenches became rather trying, as we were certainly looked upon as something in the light of performing animals who would-give some kind of a show of greater or less interest. But the Higher Command soon put a stop to this, and thenceforward we were allowed to plough our lonely furrow.

It would be difficult to describe the various days spent in the trenches, or the duels that took place there ; but each one threw fresh light upon sniping and showed the enormous extent to which it might be developed. I will make some reference to these days in later chapters.

As I have stated, snipers always worked in pairs, one observing, the other shooting, and soon we found that the notes kept by the observer were invaluable from an Intelligence point of view. If a line was well covered with snipers' posts, nothing could happen in the enemy line without our snipers' observers reporting it—no work could be done, no alteration in the parapet made.

Successful observation was, in my experience, first obtained in the 10th Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Hull,[*] by the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders. They had an extraordinarily keen Commanding Officer, who provided his men with good telescopes.

[*] Afterwards Major-General Sir A. Hull, K.C.B.

We now began all through the 7th Corps to start sniping sections consisting of trained snipers and observers, and the success of the movement grew very rapidly. The German began to cower in his trenches, and as time wore on our casualties grew less and less. My life at this time was an extraordinarily interesting and strenuous one. Moving from brigade to brigade, I would often find splendid arrangements for testing the telescopic sights, and as often none at all. A horse before breakfast, on which I would set forth to find a range, followed by an hour in the Pioneer's shop, pasting up targets made out of old Daily Mails on to frames—the snipers of the brigade paraded at nine o'clock, the march to the improvised range, shooting the telescopic sights at the target, and after dark a lecture in some barn, was often the order of the

day.

I think in these early days that I was exceedingly fortunate in having something definite to show. The telescopic sights were often very much out of shooting, and no one understood the cure. I think many thought for the first time that there was something in this sniping movement when a sniper missed the target three times running at 70 yards, and a little later, after his rifle had been manipulated, scored three bulls on end.

One thing that struck me was the extraordinary interest taken by all Brigade Commanders in every detail of the work. I do not say, nor do I think, that at the beginning they looked on my coming with unmixed favour. Once I walked into a Brigade Head-quarters, and while waiting in the passage heard a voice say :

" Who is this blighter who is coming ? " And then someone gave my name. Then a voice said : " Plays cricket, doesn't he ? "

I could not help laughing, but as I say, in the very early days every Brigade Major and G.O.C. had to be converted to a belief in sniping. Often and often the Brigade Commanders would spend hours on the first day at the range, and I think that without exception when they saw the incorrect rifles being made correct, they once and for all decided in my favour. On my second visit to these Brigades, I was almo6t always made the guest of the Brigadier-General and received with a kindness so great as to be really over-whelming. Things, in fact, were going very well indeed for the work which one hoped would soon spread through the whole B.E.F., for to my delight one day I received a letter from Major Collins, then G.S.O.2 to the Second Army, whom I had informed of my appointment as sniping expert, to say that General Plumer was starting an Army Sniping School in the Second Army, and asking for any notes I might have.

But one morning while shooting on the range I heard that Sir Charles Monro and his staff had gone to Gallipoli. I had been so keen on my work that I had not pushed the matter of getting my appointment regularized, but now I realized that its tenure might become very insecure. Indeed, as a matter of fact when I did raise the question I was informed by G.H.Q. that if I did not keep quiet I should be recalled. In 1915, the Third Army was far and away the best sniping Army in France. There was hardly an incorrect sight in the 10th or 7th Corps, and scores of officers and hundreds of men had been through courses at Colonel Lloyd's 10th Corps School, or with me. It was while I was with one of the Infantry Brigades of the 37th Division that I received a letter which gave me immense pleasure. It was to the effect that Lieut.-General Haking, the Corps Commander of the nth Corps in the First Army, wished to borrow me, so that I might lecture on sniping to his Corps, and go through their telescopic sights. Here was a splendid chance of carrying the work outside my own Army.

About this time I was attached to the Third Army Infantry School, then just formed under its first and very capable Commandant, Brig.-General R. J. Kentish, D.S.O. I lectured there on sniping and started a range and demonstrations, but I found myself lecturing to Company Commanders, whereas I ought to have been doing so to sniping officers, in order to get the best results. The Company Commanders liked, or appeared to like, the lectures, but, in the Army phrase, it was " not their pidgin," and I soon felt that I should do better work nearer the line.

From the school, however, I journeyed up into the First Army area, and went through the sights and fulfilled my engagement with the nth Corps. I think these days as the guest of the various Corps Commanders of the First Army—for I was passed on from the nth Corps to the 3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st—were the best days I had in France, for the extraordinary keenness in the First Army was very marked. It was here that I had to go through the ordeal of having to lecture to the Guards Divisional Staff and Snipers at nine o'clock in the morning. In lecturing, even on an interesting subject like sniping, it has always seemed to me much easier to be successful in a warm room at five o'clock rather than in a cold one at nine.



After finishing with the First Army and correcting some 250 telescopic sights, I went back to the Third Army Infantry School. Here I found that the Army Commander of the Third Army, Sir E. H. H. Allenby, had applied for my services for the Third Army, and had received the reply that these could be granted provided I relinquished the staff pay I was receiving and was willing to accept instead the lower rate of an Infantry Captain. This, of course, I agreed to do. Evidently, however, there was some further hitch, for I received no pay for the next eight months, nor did I dare to raise the question lest I should be sent back to G.H.Q.

I remember one General saying to me upon this question, not without a smile, " You are not here officially, you know, and any Germans you may have killed, or caused to be killed, are, of course, only unofficially dead."

I will conclude this chapter with a letter that I wrote in November, 1915. which gives my impressions at that date.

MY DEAR

Since I have been with the 3rd Army, I have had an Officer from every battalion in the 7th Corps through my course. These Officers in their turn train snipers, and so the thing permeates quickly and, I think, with really good results.



Sniping seems to me to be the art of—

I.—Finding your mark.

II.—Defining your mark.

III.—Hitting your mark.

With regard to No. I, it is absolutely essential that the use of the telescope should be taught from the stalking or big-game point of view. If we had one Officer teaching it in every battalion of our Army in France, we should kill a lot of Germans, and not only this but the task of Intelligence Officers would be greatly facilitated. With four good telescopes on every battalion front, very little can happen in the enemy line without our knowing it. There are a good many telescopes in France.

With regard to defining a mark. It is here that telescope sights help us, but telescope sights in the hands of a man who does not thoroughly understand them are utterly useless. I have had a~ great many through my hands, and in every ten I have had to correct about six after they have been in the trenches a short time. I wish every battalion had an Officer who could correct and shoot telescopic sights. It is very important that he should be thoroughly knowledgeable, because a rifle barrel must not have too many shots fired through it. With a new barrel a good shot can nearly always get a 3-inch group, but after 600 or 1000 shots have been fired through the barrel the group becomes more scattered. It is therefore necessary that the man who regulates the rifle behind the trenches should be able to do so with as few shots as possible.

Another point is,—that men must be trained to understand and believe in their telescopic-sighted rifles. One Brigade I had for instruction, on the third day of instruction with 16 snipers shooting, got 17 hits on a model of a human head at 430 yards in the first 21 shots. Some of the rifles used by these men had been 6 or 8 inches off at 100 yards until regulated. In all they got 27 hits in 48 shots on the head, shoulder hits not counted.

Also I have been having Officers through a regular course. I give them first of all 20 objects, such as models of heads of French, British and German soldiers, periscopes, rifle barrel, pickaxe, fire lighted, etc. These objects are shown for fifteen seconds each from a trench, and those under instruction have to write a list of what they can see with a telescope from 600 or 700 yards away. It is wonderful how quickly they come on. After a short time they can spot the colour of the pieces of earth thrown up from the trench under observation. Then I give them a hillside to examine. On this hillside I place a couple of objects which are easy to find, perhaps the heads of a French¬man and an Englishman. I also put in two carefully concealed loopholes, which they usually fail to find. This teaches thoroughness of search.



The construction of loopholes is most important. In this we are behind the Germans. There is one form of double loophole, which I am keen to see more universally adopted. The plate is placed in the parapet, and two feet behind it a second plate is placed in grooves along which it will slide. Not once in a hundred times does the German at whom one is shooting get his bullet through both loopholes.

The drainpipe loophole is also very good. If put in at an angle, it is very difficult for a German to put a bullet down it. In fact if the drainpipe is put in low in the parapet, the brave Hun has to come clean over the top of his own parapet to shoot down it at all. I am also keen on teaching our fellows to open loopholes sanely. I usually lie in front watching, and it is rarely that, if I shot straight, I should not be able to kill or wound nine of every ten men who open them. Loopholes should, of course, be opened from the side, and a cap badge exposed before they are looked through. If the German does not fire for 75 seconds, one may conclude that it is fairly safe. These little simple-sounding precautions can save so many lives.

I cannot help feeling that sniping, even in these days of many specialists, should be organized and improved. My aim has always been to work in with battalions. Some are better than others, naturally so, but always without exception I have found them very keen on improving sniping.



The use of snipers in attack is another point. If you have a man who can hit a model of a human head once in every 2 shots at 400 yards—and I will undertake to get most men up to this standard who can shoot decently—we shall kill some machine gunners in our next advance. Also when a German is shooting at our troops coming down a road through an aperture made by the removal of a brick from a wall, as they have often done, how useful to have a fellow who can put a bullet through the aperture.

Of course no telescopic sight should ever be touched, except as far as moving the focussing sleeve goes, by anyone who does not understand it thoroughly. When the object-glass becomes dirty or fogged with wet, snipers often unscrew it. Unless they put it back in its exact original position, they of course alter the shooting of the rifle hopelessly. They also unscrew the capstan heads, which are for the lateral regulation of the sighting. I have seen telescopic sights which were 30 inches out at 100 yards, or about 25 feet at 1000 yards. These things would be impossible under a keen sniping Officer.

One thing I am certain snipers can do. They can make it very hot for the enemy's forward artillery observing Officers. If when the enemy shell our trenches, one can get on the flank, one can often spot a Hun Officer observing. The thing to do then is to lay a telescope on through a drainpipe loophole near by. If you pack in the rifle on to a bed of sandbags so that the pointer of the telescopic sight rests just under the place where the Hun pops up, it is possible to take aim and fire the rifle in from two to four seconds. It is very important that the man who is to shoot should look through the big telescope and get a map of the trench opposite into his brain. Our telescopic sights magnify about 3J and one can often make a successful shot by shooting six inches or a foot left or right, or above or below a white stone or some prominent object in the opposing parapet, even when you cannot define the Hun's head very clearly through the sight.

I have seen this done. It is a very good sign when the Hun's fieldglasses fall on the wrong side of the parapet.

Another thing to which we might give attention is the use of decoys. I have had some made for me by the French.

I am quite convinced if I were asked to give the Germans the impression that we had been relieved by Sikhs, Gurkhas or Frenchmen, that I could do so, so wonderful are the models made for me by the French sculptor. It is impossible to tell them from the real thing if skilfully exposed at 100 yards, unless the light is very strong, and at 300 and 400 yards it is quite impossible.

In fact as long as trench warfare lasts, I believe much can be done in many small ways, if desired. But 1200 or 1500 telescopic sights in the hands of trained men and four times as many optical sights, if full value is got out of them, might along our line shorten the German army of many a valuable unit before the spring.

Again and again battalions report two, three or four Germans shot by their snipers in a single day ; if you reduce these claims by half or even if each battalion snipes but one Hun a day—and this is an absurdly low estimate where adventitious sights are skilfully used, the loss to the Germans would be great.

I have received the most kindly welcome possible from everybody, and in many cases, almost in all, the Corps have been asked to let me go back to give further instruction. All Brigadiers are very keen indeed to get a high standard of sniping, and many of them feel that to do this is almost impossible unless the snipers are trained to their rifles until their belief in their own

powers of hitting a mark, however small, becomes fixed. As I think of sniping all day and often dream about it at night, I could write you a lot more on the subject, of which I have only touched the fringes. If we organize sniping, we can get solid and tangible

results by killing the enemy and saving the lives of our own men. Only those who have been in a trench opposite Hun snipers that had the mastery, know what a hell life can be made under these conditions. I don't think the Germans are better snipers than our men, except that they are more patient and better organized and better equipped. I have found out a good deal about the German sniping organization, but this is too long to go into now. I have said nothing of piercing and blowing in German plates with heavy and .333 rifles. You can shut up their sniping very promptly for a time in this way.



CHAPTER II. THE SNIPER IN THE TRENCHES

I

IN my last chapter I attempted to give some history of the small beginnings of organized sniping, and I will now turn to the actual work of sniping in the line. Sniping, which is to be defined in a broad way as the art of very accurate shooting from concealment or in the open, did not exist as an organized thing at the beginning of the war. The wonderful rapid fire which was the glory of the original expeditionary force was not sniping, nor was it, beyond a certain degree, accurate. Its aim was to create a " beaten zone " through which nothing living could pass; and

this business was not best served by very accurate individual shooting. Rather it was served by rapid fire under skilled fire-control. But when we settled down to trench warfare, and the most skilful might spend a month in the trenches without ever seeing, except perhaps at dawn, the whole of a German, and when during the day one got but a glimpse or two of the troglodytic enemy, there arose this need for very accurate shooting. The mark was often but a head or half a face, or a loophole behind which lurked a German sniper, and no sighting shot was possible because it " put down the target." The smallest of big game animals did not present so small a mark as the German head, so that sniping became the highest and most difficult of all forms of rifle shooting. At it, every good target shot, though always useful, was not necessarily successful, for speed was only less necessary than accuracy, and no sniper could be considered worthy of the name who could not get off his shot within two seconds of sighting his target.

So much for the sniper in trench warfare, of which a certain clique in the Army held him to be the product. The officers who believed this prophesied that when warfare became once more open, he would be useless. This proved perhaps one of the most short-sighted views of the whole war, for when it became our turn to attack, the sniper's duties only broadened out. Should a battalion take a trench, it was the duty of snipers to lie out in front and keep down the German heads during the consolidation of their newly-won position by our men, and were we held up by a machine-gun in advance, it was often the duty of a couple of snipers to crawl forward and, if possible, deal with the obstruction.

I am here, however, going ahead of my narrative, but I want early in this book to state definitely that the sniper is not, and from the first, as I saw him never was meant to be, a product of trench warfare. In modern war, where a battalion may be held up by a machine-gun, it is invaluable to have in that battalion a number of picked shots who can knock that machine-gun out. For this purpose in some of our later attacks a sniper carried armour-piercing ammunition, and did not shoot at the machine-gunners, but at the machine-gun itself. A single hit on the casing of the breech-block, and the machine-gun was rendered useless.

In the Army there has always been in certain quarters a prejudice against very accurate shooting, a prejudice which is quite understandable when one considers the aims and ends of musketry. While sniping is the opportunism of the rifle, musketry is its routine. It would obviously never do to diminish the depth of your beaten zone by excess of accuracy. But this war, which, whatever may be said to the contrary—and much was said to the contrary—was largely a war of specialists, changed many things, and among them the accurate shot or sniper was destined to prove his extraordinary value.

But a great deal that I have said in the foregoing paragraphs only became clear later, and at the moment of which I am writing, September and October, 1915, the superiority lay with the Germans, and the one problem was to defeat them at a game which they had themselves started. For it was the Germans, and not the British, who began sniping.

That the Germans were ready for a sniping campaign is clear enough, for at the end of 1914 there were already 20,000 telescopic sights in the German Army, and their snipers had been trained to use them. To make any accurate estimate of how many victims the Hun snipers claimed at this period is naturally impossible, but the blow which they struck for their side was a heavy one, and many of our finest soldiers met their deaths at their hands. In the struggle which followed there was perhaps something more human and more personal than in the work of the gunner or the infantryman. The British or Colonial sniper was pitted against the Bavarian or the Prussian, and all along the front duels were fought between men who usually saw no more of their antagonists than a cap badge or a forehead, but who became personalities to each other, with names and individualities.

Only the man who actually was a sniper in the trenches in 1915 can know how hard the German was to overcome. At the end of 1914 there were, as I have said, 20,000 telescopic sights in the German Army, and the Duke of Ratibor did good work for the Fatherland when he collected all the sporting rifles in Germany (and there were thousands of them) and sent them to the Western front, which was already well equipped with the military issue.







The Sniper's End



Armed with these the German snipers were able to make wonderfully fine shooting. Against them, lacking as we did a proper issue of telescopic-sighted rifles, we had to pit only the blunt open sights of the service rifle, except here and there where the deer stalkers of Scotland (who possessed such weapons) lent their Mannlichers and their Mausers. But for these there it was no great supply of ammunition, and many had to be returned to their cases for this reason.

At this time the skill of the German sniper had become a by-word, and in the early days of trench warfare brave German riflemen used to lie out between the lines, sending their bullets through the head of any officer or man who dared to look over our parapet. These Germans, who were often Forest Guards, and sometimes Battle Police, did their business with a skill and a gallantry which must be very freely acknowledged. From the ruined house or the field of decaying roots, sometimes resting their rifles on the bodies of the dead, they sent forth a plague of head-wounds into the British lines. Their marks were small, but when they hit they usually killed their man, and the hardiest soldier turned sick when he saw the effect of the pointed German bullet, which was apt to keyhole so that the little hole in the forehead where it entered often became a huge tear, the size of a man's fist, on the other side of the stricken man's head. That occasional snipers on the Hun side reversed their bullets, thus making them into dum-dums, is incontrovertible, because we were continually capturing clips of such bullets, but it must also be remembered that many bullets keyholed which were not so reversed. Throughout the war I saw thousands of our snipers' bullets, and I never saw one which had been filed away or other¬wise treated with a view to its expanding upon impact. At that time in the German Army there was a system of roving snipers; that is, a sniper was given a certain stretch of trench to patrol, usually about half-a-mile, and it was the duty of sentries along his beat to find and point out targets for him. This information I got from a prisoner whom I examined soon after I went down to the trenches. Indeed, I used to go any distance to get the chance of examining a prisoner and so learn something of the German organization. One deserter gave quite a lot of in¬formation. He had the Iron Cross, and was a sergeant. One of the scenes that always remains with me is the examination of this man on a rainy, foggy night by the light of a flaring smoky lamp in the room of an estaminet just behind the lines. As time went on it became very difficult for a German prisoner to lead me astray with wrong information. There were so many questions to which one got to know the answers, and which must be more or less common knowledge to German riflemen.



Examination of a German Prisoner



The demeanour of prisoners was very diverse. Some would give no answers—brave fellows these, whom we respected; others would volunteer a good deal of false statement; others yet again were so eager to answer all questions that when they did not know they made a guess. But one way and another, through them all I gained an immense amount of information as to the German sniping organization.

It would appear that the telescopic-sighted rifles in the German army were served out in the ratio of six per company, and that these rifles were issued not to the private soldiers who shot with them, but to N.C.O.'s who were responsible for their accuracy, and from whom the actual privates who used the rifles obtained them, handing them back at given intervals for inspection. In the top of the case of each German telescopic sight were quite short and very clear instructions, a very different matter to the conditions obtaining upon our side, where very often, as I have before stated, the man using the telescopic sight knew nothing about it.

On one occasion I had gone down on duty to a certain stretch of trench and there found a puzzled-looking private with a beautiful new rifle fitted with an Evans telescopic sight.

" That is a nice sight," said I.

" Yessir."

I examined the elevating drum, and saw that it was set for one hundred yards. " Look here," I said, ' you have got the sight set for a hundred. The Hun trenches are four hundred yards away."

The private looked puzzled.

" Have you ever shot with that rifle ? " I asked.

" No, sir."

" Do you understand it ? "

" No, sir."

" How did you get it ? "

" It was issued to me as trench stores, sir."

" Who by ? "

" The Quartermaster Sergeant, sir."

Certainly many a German owed his life in those earlier days to the fact that so many of the telescopic-sighted rifles in the British Expeditionary Force were incorrectly sighted to the hold of the men using them. By this I mean that some men hold tightly and some men hold loosely, and there may be a difference at a hundred yards of six inches in the shooting of the same rifle in different hands. To hand over the rifle as " trench stores," in which case it would be shot by different men of different battalions, was simply to do away with the accuracy which formed its only asset.

But to return to the examination of German prisoners. One point cropped up over and over again, and this was the ease with which German snipers quite frankly owned that they were able to distinguish between our officers and men in an attack because, as one said naively : " the legs of the officers are thinner than the legs of the men." There are hundreds and hundreds of our officers lying dead in France and Flanders whose death was solely due to the cut of their riding breeches. It is no use wearing a Tommy's tunic and a webbing belt, if the tell-tale riding trousers are not replaced by more commonplace garments.

In 1915 there were very few loopholes in the British trenches, whereas the Germans had a magnificent system. In early days when I used to be told at Brigade Headquarters that there was a German sniper at such and such a map reference, and I was to go and try to put him out of action, I very rarely found a loophole from which I could reconnoitre him, and as every German sniper seemed to be supported on either flank by other German snipers, looking for him with one's head over the top of the parapet was, if made a continual practice, simply a form of suicide. I used, therefore, to have a couple of sandbags filled with stones and rubble placed as inconspicuously as possible on the top of the parapet. No ball will pierce a sandbag full of stones, and it Was thus that one got the opportunity of a good look at the German trenches without fear of receiving a bullet from either flank.

At this time the efforts to camouflage our loopholes were extraordinarily primitive—indeed, concealment was nearly impossible in the form of parapet then in use. Many of our units took an actual pride in having an absolutely flat and even parapet, which gave the Germans every opportunity of spotting the smallest movement. The parapets were made of sandbags beaten down with spades, and it is not too much to say that along many of them a mouse could not move without being observed by the most moderate-sighted German sniper. It was curious how some few commanding officers stuck to these flat parapets in the face of all casualties and the dictates of common-sense, even after the High Command had issued orders upon the subject. At a later date a trial was instituted, and proved that in spotting and shooting at a dummy head exposed for two and four seconds over a flat parapet, the number of hits was three to one, as compared with the same a exposure when made over an imitation German parapet.



Over on the other side of No Man's Land the German trenches presented a quite different appearance from ours—ours being beaten down, as I have said, until they made as clear a line as a breakwater. The German trenches were deeper, with much more wire in front, and from our point of view looked like the course of a gigantic mole which had flung up uneven heaps of earth.







OUTSIDE THE SNIPERS' POST



Here and there, a huge piece of corrugated iron would be flung upon the parapet, and pinned there with a stake. Here and there stood one of those steel boxes, more or less well concealed under a heap of earth, from which set rifles fired all night. Here and there lay great piles of sandbags, black, red, green, striped, blue, dazzling our eyes. It was said that the Germans used the pink and red ones to look round, because they approximated to flesh colour, but this was no doubt apocryphal. But what was not apocryphal was the fact that the Germans had a splendid parapet behind which a man could move and over which he could look with comparative impunity, whereas we in this respect gave heavy hostages to fortune.

There was one protection which was always sound, and which could be put into immediate operation, and that was to teach our men to hang as many rags as possible upon our wire, and wherever else they could in the region of our parapet. These fluttering rags continually caught the German eyes, which were drawn by the movement of the rags in the wind. It is possible that, if the truth were recognized, those simple little rags saved many a life during the course of the war. Of course, there were battalions in which attempts had been made to remedy these defects, as there was one type of officer whom one occasionally came across. This was the soldier who had done a certain amount of stalking, or big-game shooting, and it is not too much to say that wherever there was such an officer, there were usually two or three extra telescopes and telescopic-sighted rifles, and various well-concealed posts from which to use them. The Intelligence report, which was each day forwarded to Brigade, was also full and accurate. Indeed, the truth of the matter forced itself upon me, as I spent day after day in the trenches. What was wanted, apart jrom organization, was neither more nor less than the hunter spirit. The hunter spends his life in trying to outwit some difficult quarry, and the step between war and hunting is but a very small one. It is inconceivable that a skilled hunter in a position of command should ever allow his men to suffer as our men sometimes did in France. It was all so simple and so obvious. The Canadian Division and, later, the Canadian Corps was full of officers who understood how to deal with the German sniper, and early in the war there were Canadian snipers who were told off to this duty, and some of them were extraordinarily successful. Corporal, afterwards Lieutenant, Christie, of the P.P.C.L.I., was one of the individual pioneers of sniping. He had spent his life hunting in the Yukon, and he simply turned the same qualities which had brought him within the range of the mountain sheep to the downfall of Fritz the Forest Guard.

In the long monotony of the trenches during that bleak winter of 1915, the only respite besides work which was possible to our soldiers was the element of sport and excitement introduced by sniping and its more important and elder sister, observation. Sniping in a dangerous sector—and there were many of these— was really neither more nor less than a very high-class form of big game shooting, in which the quarry shot back. As to danger, there are in Africa the lion, the elephant, the buffalo and the rhinoceros, and though the consensus of instructed opinion agrees that in proportion more hunters come back feet foremost from lion hunting than from the pursuit of the three other forms of dangerous game, yet I suppose that no one would dispute that the German sniper, especially when he is supported on either flank by Kamaraden, was far more dangerous in the long run than any lion.

In sniping, as the movement grew and sections were formed, one relied to an enormous extent upon the skill of the section to which the individual sniper belonged. A really first-rate man in a bad section was thrown away. First-rate men under a moderate officer were thrown away, and, worse than all, a good section under a good officer, who were relieved by the slack and poor section of another battalion, often suffered heavy casualties through no fault of their own.

Thus, the Royal Blankshires, who have an excellent sniping organization, build half-a-dozen skilfully-hidden posts for observation and sniping purposes.



All kinds of precautions, which have become second nature, are taken to prevent these posts being given away to the enemy. The telescopes used are carefully wrapped in sandbags, their sunshades carefully extended lest the sun should, by flashing its reflection upon the object glass, give away the position. The loopholes in dry weather are damped before being fired through, and, most important of all, no one but the CO., the sniping officer, and the snipers and observers are allowed in the posts. If anyone else enters them there are for him heavy penalties, which are always enforced. The result is that the Blank-shires have a good tour of duty, lose no casualties to enemy snipers, and get splendid detail for their Intelligence reports.

They are relieved, however, by the Loamshires. The CO. of this Battalion does not believe very much in sniping. He has a way of saying that sniping will " never win the war." He has, it is true, a sniping section because, and only because, his Brigadier and his Divisional General are keen about sniping, and continually come into the trenches and inquire about it. But the Loamshire sniping section is a pitiable affair. They take over from the Royal Blanks.

" These are jolly good observation posts," says the Royal Blanks sniping officer. He is the real thing, and he dreams of his job in the night. " But one has to be a bit careful not to give them away. I never let my fellows use the one in Sap F until the sun has worked round behind us."

" Aw—right oh ! " says the Loamshire opposite number.

" One has to be a bit careful about the curtains at the back of those loopholes in Perrier Alley.

The light's apt to shine through."

" Aw—right oh ! " says the Loamshire officer.

" We are leaving our range-cards."

" Aw—right oh ! "

So the keen Royal Blanks officer and his keen section go out into rest billets, and do not visit the trenches again till they come back to take over from the Loamshires.

" Well, how are the posts ? " asks the Royal Blanks officer, cheerily.

" Pretty rotten ; they were all busted up the first day."

" Damn ! They took us a fortnight to build."

" Well, they are busted up all right."

" Did your fellows give them away, do you think ? "

" Oh, no ! "

Now, as a matter of fact, the moment the Royal Blankshires were out of the trenches the Loamshire snipers, who knew no better, had used the O.P.s for promiscuous firing, and the posts which had been so jealously guarded under the Blankshire regime had been invaded by Loamshire officers and men in need of a view of the German trenches—or of sleep. The curtains that kept the loopholes dark had been turned back. The result was as might have been expected. The watching German, who had suffered from those posts without being able to locate them when the Blankshires were in the trenches, now spotted them, rang up their guns, and had them demolished, not without casualties to the Loamshires. So the work was all to be done again—but no sooner does the keen Blankshire officer build up a post than the slack Loamshire officer allows it to be given away. It is now a case for the Royal Blanks CO. to take up with the Loamshire CO.

Such were the difficulties of the keen officer when the opposite number of the relieving battalion was a " dud."

Conscientiousness is a great quality in an officer, but in the Sniping, Scouting and Observation Officer something more was needed. To obtain success, real success, it was necessary that his should be a labour of love. He must think and dream of his work at all hours and all times, and it was wonderful how many came to do this. In the battalion the Intelligence and Sniping officer had always a sporting job, and if he suffered in promotion (as do nearly all specialists in any great Army) yet he had the compensations which come to an artist in love with his work.



There were at this time one or two other factors in the situation to which I must allude in order that the reader may understand the position as it was then. The enemy had an immense preponderance in trench weapons such as minenwerfer. The result was that a too successful bout of British sniping sometimes drew a bombardment. The activity of snipers was therefore not always welcome to short-sighted officers, who distinctly and naturally objected to the enemy riflemen calling in the assistance of the parapet-destroying engines of war, in which, they so outclassed us.

Soon, however, it was realized that the state of things obtaining while the German held the mastery of aimed rifle-fire could not be permitted to continue— the casualties were too great—and I will now give some account of the instruction and experience in the trenches that went on while we were attempting to capture the sniping initiative from the enemy.

II

Towards the end of October, 1915, I was ordered to report to the 48th Division, then holding a line in the neighbourhood of Hebuterne. I was to proceed to Divisional Headquarters behind Pas, and was there ordered to Authie, where a number of officers were to come for instruction. This instruction was, as usual, to be divided between the back areas and the front line. I had applied for the services of my friend, Lieut. G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, an experienced shot, and skilled user of the telescope, who had been many shooting trips in different parts of the world with me and others. At Authie we at once settled down to work ; the officers going through a course which need not be detailed here. Suffice it to say that the telescopic-sighted rifles of all the battalions in the Division were shot and corrected, and various plans which we had formed for the destruction of German snipers were rehearsed.

On the third day arrangements were made by Division as to which trenches we were to visit, and after duly reporting at Brigade Headquarters in a dug-out in Hebuterne, we proceeded upon our way.

It is not an easy thing to instruct five or six officers in the line in sniping—the number is too large—so as soon as we entered the trenches I divided my class into three parties, and assigned to each an area in which to look for German snipers, Gathorne-Hardy and I going from one group to another.

At the point at which we entered the front line trenches, our line was a little higher than that of the enemy, so that the initial advantage was certainly with us, and almost at once G. (for so I shall refer to Capt. Gathorne-Hardy) spotted a German sniper who was just showing the top of his cap at the end of a sap. He was about three hundred and fifty or four hundred yards away, and though we watched him for half-an-hour, he gave no target. So we moved on. Examining the enemy line was enthralling work, as he had, even at that time, begun his campaign of skilled concealment, and was apt to set periscopes in trees, and steel boxes in all sorts of positions.

To spot and actually place these upon the map was as important a duty of the sniper as killing the enemy by rifle fire. For, once discovered, such strong points and emplacements could be dealt with by our artillery.

But to return. G. and I, after visiting the sections, acted together as shooter and observer. After spending a couple of hours examining the enemy line, we got into a disused trench and crawled back to a little bit of high ground from which we were able to overlook a group of poplar trees which grew between the lines, and which were said to be the haunt of a very capable German sniper.

Nothing, however, was to be seen of him, though we could clearly make out the nest he had built in one of the trees and, on the ground, what appeared to be either a dead man lying in the long grass or a tunic.

While we were here a message came down to say that No. i group had seen a party of nine Germans, and had wounded one of them. No. 2 party had not been successful.



At the time of which I write the Germans were just beginning to be a little shy of our snipers on those fronts to which organization had penetrated, and it was clear that the time would arrive when careful Hans and conscientious Fritz would become very troglodytic, as indeed they did. We had, therefore, turned our minds to think out plans and "ruses by which the enemy might be persuaded to give us a target. We had noticed the extraordinary instinct of the German Officer to move to a flank, and thinking something might be made out of this, we collected all our officers and went back to the place where G. and I had spotted the Hun sniper or sentry at the end of the sap. A glance showed that he was still there.

I then explained my plan, which was that I should shoot at this sentry and in doing so, deliberately give away my position and rather act the tenderfoot, in the hope that some German officer would take a hand in the game and attempt to read me a lesson in tactics.

On either flank about 150 yards or so down the trench I placed the officers under instruction with telescopes and telescopic-sighted rifles, explaining to them that the enemy snipers would very possibly make an attempt to shoot at me from about opposite them. I then scattered a lot of dust in the loophole from which I intended to fire, and used a large .350 Mauser, which gave a good flash and smoke.







1. " Not yet."



2. "Now!"

TELESCOPIC SIGHTS. "NURSE YOUR TARGET."



As the sentry in the sap was showing an inch or two of his forehead as well as the peak of his cap, I had a very careful shot at him, which G., who was spotting for me with the glass, said went about twelve inches too high.

The sentry, of course, disappeared, and I at once poured in the whole magazine at a loophole plate, making it ring again, and by the dust and smoke handsomely giving away my own position. I waited a few minutes, and then commenced shooting again. Evidently my first essay had attracted attention, for two German snipers at once began firing at me from the right flank. At these two I fired back; they were almost exactly opposite the party under instruction, and it was clear that, if the party held their fire, the Germans would probably give fine targets. As a matter of fact, all that we hoped for actually happened, for the exasperated German snipers, thinking they had to deal only with a very great fool, began to fire over the parapet, their operations being directed by an officer with an immense pair of field-glasses. At the psychological moment, my officers opened fire, the large field-glasses dropped on the wrong side of the parapet, as the officer was shot through the head, and the snipers, who had increased to five or six, disappeared with complete suddenness. Nor did the enemy fire another shot.

It should be borne in mind, in reading the above, how great a plague were the skilled German snipers to us. One of "them might easily cause thirty or forty casualties. Later in the war we had, on our side, many a sniper who killed his fifty or even his hundred of the enemy. Besides, as I have pointed out, in these early days of trench warfare the continual attrition caused by German snipers was very bad for moral.

At a later date we found a means by which we were able at once to find the position of any German sniper. For this purpose we used a dummy head made of papier-mache.

The method of using was as follows: When a German sniper was giving trouble, we selected a good place opposite to him, and drove two stakes into our own parapet until only about a foot of them remained uncovered. To these we nailed a board on which was fashioned a groove which exactly fitted the stick or handle attached to the dummy head. This stick was inserted in the groove and the dummy head slowly pushed up above our parapet.

If the enemy sniper fired at and hit the head, the entry and exit of the bullet made two holes, one in the front, and one in the back of the hollow dummy head. The head, immediately on the shot, was pulled down by whoever was working it in as natural a manner as possible. The stick on which it was mounted was then replaced in the groove, but exactly the height between the two glasses of a periscope lower than the position in which it was when shot through.





Spotting the Enemy Sniper



Now all that remained to do was to place the lower glass of the periscope opposite the front hole in the head, and apply the eye to the rear hole and look into the periscope, the upper glass of which was above the parapet.

In this way we found ourselves looking along the path of the bullet, only in the opposite direction to that in which it had come, and, in the optical centre of the two holes, would be seen the German sniper who had fired the shot, or the post which concealed him. Once found he was soon dealt with. In trials at First Army Sniping School, we were able by this invention to locate sixty-seven snipers out of seventy-one.

Some of those who wanted to give the dummy head a specially life-like appearance, placed a cigarette in its mouth, and smoked it through a rubber tube.

It is a curious sensation to have the head through which you are smoking a cigarette suddenly shot with a Mauser bullet, but it is one that several snipers have experienced.

After the incidents last described, we went up towards the flank, where the 4th Division lay alongside the 48th. It was in this Division that the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders had just played a delightful trick on the enemy. Someone in the battalion had obtained a mechanical stop, one of those ticking bits of mechanism which are made with a view to saving the employment of a human " stop" at covert-shoots. This particular stop was guaranteed to tick loudly for hours.

The Seaforths were facing the Germans across a very wild piece of No Man's Land. One night some adventurous and humorous spirit crawled out and placed the " stop " about sixty yards from the German parapet, and then set it going. The Germans at once leaped to the conclusion that the tick-tick-tick was the voice of some infernal machine, which would, in due time, explode and demolish them. They threw bombs, and fired flares, and officers and men spent a most haggard and horrible night, while opposite them the Scotsmen were laughing sardonically in their trenches. The whole incident was intensely typical of the careless and grim humour with which the Scottish regiments were at times apt to regard the Hun.

Another battalion at a much later date, when the Germans had become very shy, and mostly spent their off-duty hours in deep dug-outs, had the brilliant idea of preparing a notice board on which was printed in large letters and German : " Bitter Fighting in Berlin," and then, in smaller type, some apocryphal information. This notice it was their plan to raise, having first posted their snipers, who would be sure to obtain shots at the Huns who attempted to read the smaller lettering with their field-glasses. I do not think, however, that this plan was ever actually carried out. This was fortunate, since, though ingenious, the idea was not sound, as it would inevitably have led to a heavy bombardment of the trenches in which the notice was shown, and the game would not have been worth the candle.

To continue, however, with our day. Late in the afternoon, no Germans having shown themselves since the shooting of the officer—a heavy bombardment broke out on the right flank, and we hurried in that direction, as experience had taught me that the German Forward Observation Officers often did their spotting for the guns from the front-line trench on the flank of the bombarded area.

Sure enough, we soon picked up one of those large dark artillery periscopes, shaped like an armadillo. It was being operated by two men, as far as could be seen. One of them wore a very high peaked cap, and was at once called " Little Willie; " the other had a black beard. The nearest point to which we could approach was more like five than four hundred yards, and though we waited till dark, Little Willie did not show more than his huge cap peak and an inch or two of forehead. As evening fell, we went out of the trenches without having fired, as soon after our arrival the bombardment had ceased, and Little Willie never gave a good target, and the bearded man had disappeared. I did not wish to disturb the German F.O.O.'s in their post; as, now that they were discovered, arrangements could be made to deal with them when next they were observing.

The opportunity occurred three days later, when, after a very long vigil, an officer shot Little Willie, and the same evening a Howitzer battery wiped out the post for good and all.

As, when Little Willie met his end, he was just in the act of spotting the first shots for his battery, which had opened on our front line trenches, his death probably saved us some casualties, for it temporarily stopped the activities of his guns.

It was not only the number of the enemy that our snipers shot that was so important. It was often the psychological moment at which they shot them that gave their work an extra value.

In the autumn of 1915 there came high winds following frosty nights. It was clear that a heavy fall of the leaf would take place on the following days. I therefore asked, and obtained leave from the 4th Division, to which I was at the time attached, to drop instructional work, and instead to go into the trenches in order to spot enemy snipers and artillery observation officers' posts. On my way down I called at Headquarters, where I was told that a very trouble¬some sniper was operating at Beaumont Hamel. This man had killed a number of our fellows. He was supposed to live in a pollarded willow, one of a row not very far from Jacob's Ladder, which will be remembered by all who were on that front in 1915. There was on that day a certain amount of mild shelling of the communication trenches, but before the advent of gas-shells this rarely caused trouble in the daytime, except to those who had to repair the breaches. On the day in question I was alone with my batman, who, I can say, without fear of libel, shot better than he " batted," for he had been chosen because he was a marksman. Arrived in the front line, we at once set about trying to locate the sniper. As a rule, in such a case, the enemy one seeks is taking a siesta, but this was not so now, for as soon as I looked over the parapet a bullet, striking low, knocked some dust into my eyes. , At this point, you must understand, our trenches were shaped like an arm, with a crooked elbow, the crook or turn of the elbow being at the bottom of a hill. In front lay Beaumont Hamel, where in the German lines when I arrived a soldier had hung out his shirt to dry. Between us and Beaumont Hamel lay a wild piece of No Man's Land, with some dead ground on the Beaumont Hamel side, and at the bottom of the hill the row of willows from which the sniper was supposed to operate.

As these willow trees were out of sight from the place where I had been fired at, I did not put down that shot to the sniper, whom we will call Ernst. In this I was probably wrong, as transpired later.

All that morning we tried to locate Ernst, who had four more shots at me, but all that I had learned at the end of it (when I imagine Ernst went off for a well-earned siesta) was that he was a good shot, as though obviously some distance away, he had made quite good practice. We most carefully examined the pollarded willows, and spotted one or two good snipers' posts, especially one at the bottom of a hedge, but as far as Ernst was concerned he had all the honours.

The next day I was occupied all the morning with an enemy artillery O.P. which was destroyed by howitzer fire, and it was not till after lunch that I could turn my attention once more to Ernst.

This time I began at the bottom of the hill. There were no loopholes, so it was a case of looking over, and almost at once Ernst put in a very close shot, followed again by a second which was not so good. The first shot had cut the top of the parapet just beside my head, and I noticed that several shots had been fired which had also cut the top of the sandbags. Behind the line of these shots was a group of trees, and as they stood on slightly higher ground I crawled to them, and at once saw something of great interest. In the bole of one of the trees a number of bullets had lodged, all within a small circle. Crouching at the base of the tree, and with my head covered with an old sandbag, I raised it until I could see over the parapet fifty yards in front, and found at once that the line of these shots, and those which had struck the tree behind my head, were very nearly the same, and must have been fired from an area of No Man's Land, behind which it looked as if dead ground existed on the enemy's side, and probably from a large bush which formed the most salient feature of that view.

I then went back to the trenches, and warned all sentries to keep a good look-out on this bush and the vicinity. Very soon one of them reported movement in the bush. With my glass I could see a periscope about three feet above the ground in the bush, which was very thick. Being certain, as the " periscope was raised so high, and as it had only just been elevated, that it was held in human hands, I collected half a dozen riflemen and my batman, and giving them the range, and the centre of the bush as a target, ordered them to open fire. On the volley the periscope flew backwards and the activities of Ernst ceased forthwith.

It was this experience of looking along the path of the enemy's bullets that led directly to the invention for spotting enemy snipers, which I have described earlier in this chapter.

No one can deny that Ernst was a gallant fellow, lying out as he did between the lines day after day. Whether he was killed or not who can say, but I should think the odds are that some bullets of the volley found their billet. At any rate, sniping from that quarter ceased.



I have now given enough description of the work and training which was going on at that time in the Third Army in the line. The aim and end of all this work was the formation of sniping sections in each battalion, consisting of sixteen privates with two N.C.O.'s under an officer.

I had realized that my whole problem turned upon the officer. If I could succeed in obtaining fifteen or twenty officers who would be simply fanatics in their work, it was perfectly clear that the sniping movement would spread like wildfire throughout the Army. Already we had got together an immense amount of detail concerning the German sniping organization and had begun not only to challenge his superiority, but also to enforce our own. It is wonderful what can be done in a single week by sixteen accurate shots along the length of line held by a battalion. You must understand also that the success of the German sniping rested largely upon the deeds of certain crack snipers, who thoroughly understood their work, and who each one of them caused us heavy casualties. The first work to be done in the trenches was the organized annihilation of these skilled German snipers, and I think this was the easier in that they had it their own way for so long.

As time went on, the reports from the brigades were very good; one Brigadier[*] even going so far as to wire me : " Only one Hun sniper left on my front. Can you lend me your elephant rifle ? " In this particular brigade the Brigadier informed me that he had not lost a man through enemy sniping in four months.

[*]Later Major-Gen. Sir Guy Bainbridge, K.C.B.

Sniping, I think, or let us say the sniping campaign, may be divided into four parts. During the first, the Germans had the mastery. During the second, our first aim was to kill off the more dangerous German snipers and to train our own to become more formidable. The third was when the Germans had fairly gone to ground and would no longer give us a chance. The idea now was to invent various ways in which to induce them to give a target, and the final period came at a much later date, when great battles were being fought, and the work of sniping was beginning to merge into that of scouting, and snipers were- being trained in great numbers to deal with the new situations that were arising every day as the Germans altered their tactical plans of defence.



CHAPTER III. EARLY DAYS WITH THE 11TH CORPS AND FIRST ARMY

TOWARDS the end of 1915 my services were again borrowed by the First Army, this time to take a class of Sniping and Intelligence officers through the course of sniping and observation which was already in operation in the Third Army, and also to lecture to a G.H.Q. Intelligence Class on the Observation and Intelligence side of sniping—a big subject.

I went up the long road through Doullens, Frevent and St. Pol, which I had traversed so many times from the days when it was impassable with French soldiers before the Battle of Loos to the quieter times which had now dawned. During the war one had very few relaxations of any kind. Shooting was for¬bidden, games were difficult for the unattached Ishmaelite to obtain, and often for long periods it was impossible to get any change of thought. The long drives to all parts of the line held by the British Army, which were part of my work, were, therefore, exceedingly pleasant by contrast.

Wherever there was a battle I used to try and get to it at the earliest possible moment, in order to have the opportunity of examining the German trenches, for as time went on sniping became more and more scientific, and the Germans were always starting some new method which had to be countered. One of the most important points was to obtain specimens of each issue of their steel plates, in order to experiment on them with all kinds of bullets.

But to return to the First Army Class. We were allotted a curious range on the outskirts of the town of Bethune,. then a thriving community, which had been hardly shelled at all, although well within the battle area. Our rifle-firing took place under cover, and each target appeared through a series of holes cut in a number of brick walls which crossed the range at right angles. The noise in the room of the cottage which formed the 200-yards firing-point was deafening, but as the weather was both wet and cold head-cover had its advantages.

The class which assembled consisted of a picked officer from each Division, twelve in all. Some I lost sight of afterwards, but two, at least, of this class rose to command their battalions, and one was awarded the double D.S.O., another the M.C. and Bar, and several more single decorations.

In order that the class might be taught the manipulation of telescopic sights, all the rifles of the 1st Corps which were fitted with these sights or with optical sights were sent down, together with the snipers who shot them, in order that the rifles might be tested for accuracy. As at that time there had been no real organization or instruction in the use of adventitious sights in the Corps, it is not to be wondered at that most of these were incorrect. Of the first eighty, fifty-nine were quite valueless until regulated, and we were hard put to it to correct them as party after party

arrived.

At length a parry of Scottish Rifles came, every one of whose weapons was entirely correct. They were under the command of a young officer who. when the trial of his men's rifles was over, saluted and said to me:

"I stay and help you with tie other rifles, sir : "

" Do you understand telescopic sights ? "

" Yes, sir."

" Hare you done much shooting ? "

" Yes, sir."

" Won anything ? "

" The King's Prize, and the Scottish Open Championship, and the Caledonian Shield, sir."

" What is TOUT name : "

" Gray, sir."

That evening Corps Staff was rung up and Gray was straightway appointed Corps Sniping Officer, butbee it to say, that in a few weeks the German snipers had been dealt with in a way that must have amazed them.

Later on, Gray's Division moved into the i ith Corps, where I have always thought that sniping on some sectors reached its high-water mark as far as the year 1916 was concerned. Afterwards he became my assistant at the nth Corps School, and later at the First Army School. He finally proceeded to the U.S.A., with the rank of Major, to spread the light there. In this he was most successful, receiving the thanks of the Divisional General to whose Division he was attached for the extraordinary efficiency of his work. In my experience of sniping officers in France, two are outstanding, and he was one of them. The other was Major O. Underhill, 1st K.S.L.I.

Our class on that queer range in Bethune lasted a fortnight and was instrumental in getting me a bout of sick leave ; for when, as part of the instruction, we had to make a trench and build into it various posts such as snipers use, we found ourselves working in an extremely noisome atmosphere. As far as we could make out, the greater part of the town drainage seemed to be at no great distance under the ground in which we had to dig. The result was a bout of trench fever. The time I spent at home was not, however, wasted, as I was able to collect large numbers of telescopes and get the various courses for sniping instruction written down, which was useful, as I was continually receiving applications for a syllabus from units outside the Third Army.

When I returned to France I was again attached to the Third Army, but not to the Infantry School, who had secured the services of Captain Pemberthy during my absence. This very capable officer did splendid work for the Third Army. Instead, I went down the line and resumed my old work of instructing brigades and battalions. I also went to the Indian Cavalry Divisions.

At this time, I remember, volunteers who possessed a knowledge of the fitting of telescopic sights were asked for in the 7th Corps. The result was exceedingly typical. One private, who sent in his name, stated that he was well acquainted with telescopic sights and their fittings, having been for four years employed by Messrs. Daniel Fraser of Leith Street Terrace, Edinburgh, the well-known firm of gun and rifle makers, whose work on telescopic sights stands so deservedly high. The staff who unearthed this applicant did not continue to congratulate themselves on having produced exactly the article wanted, when, through a letter to Messrs. Fraser, it transpired that, though it was quite true that the man had been employed by them, the position that he had held in the firm was that of errand boy, and that his knowledge of telescopic sights was consequently not one which they felt they could confidently recommend.



During these days I went back to many of the brigades to which I had been attached six months previously. The casualties among snipers had not been very heavy and we had fairly obtained the upper hand. At this period troops were massing for the Battle of the Somme, in which the Third and Fourth Armies took part. The use of the telescope was now a matter of immense interest, as Intelligence wanted all the facts they could get about the enemy, and consequently instruction in glass-work for battalion and brigade observers became more and more sought after, and I trained many observers for Major-Genera 1 Hull, G.O.C. 56th Division. Just at this period, however, there was a change in my fortunes, and I was ordered to proceed to the First Army, to the command of which Sir Charles Monro had just succeeded after his wonderful performance in Gallipoli. I therefore left the Third Army area and went by rail to Aire-sur-Lys, in order to report to First Army Headquarters, which was situated in that town.

It would be absurd to deny that I was very glad to be attached to the First Army, where the keenness which I had seen on my visit at Christmas time to the various Corps Commanders was glorious. Arriving at Aire I reported to the Town Major, and was allotted a room in the hotel called " Le Clef d'Or." Here I was eating my dinner when the Town Major came across and wanted to know if an officer of my name was present. He said that a car was waiting outside, and that I was to go direct to the Army Commander's chateau to dine and stay the night.

The next day the Army Commander questioned me very closely about sniping, and about all that had occurred with regard to it since he had seen me last. He then informed me that I was to be attached to the nth Corps, and that my orders were the same as they had been under him in the Third Army—to make good shots, and as many of them as possible The nth Corps, since my previous visit, had started a sniping school, where they were putting through five officers and twenty men on short courses. The school was situated on the far side of the Forest of Nieppe, near a place called Steenbecque. I was ordered to make this school my headquarters. It was in charge of Lieut. Forsyth M.C. of the 6th Black Watch. A more curious and picturesque-looking spot for a school it would be hard to imagine. The headquarters were in a little Flemish farmhouse, kept by an exceedingly close-fisted family, and the range, which had firing points at one, two, three and five hundred yards, was neither more nor less than a long sloping cornfield. A most satisfactory point about the range —which was an excellent one—was that it was within two hundred yards of headquarters, so that after parade hours were over an immense amount of voluntary work was done upon it. It was here that we first began to tend towards the really much longer and more detailed course of instruction which we afterwards amplified to a vastly greater extent at First Army School, as soon as the courses were lengthened to seventeen days' duration.

From the first it may be said that the men and officers who came upon all these courses were extraordinarily keen. They liked sniping, and still more, observation, because they felt that here, at last, in the great impersonal war, was an opportunity for individual skill. The more imaginative of them realized also the enormous possibilities of the trained observer. In other chapters I will give several instances of the observation of small details which have had consequences of the most far-reaching nature. I think that this feeling of the ever-present possibility of the opportunity of being able to do a big thing formed part of the fascination of the S.O.S. courses— S.O.S. in this case meaning, " Sniping, Observation and Scouting," and not " Service of Supply," as it does in the American Army.

It has been said, and truly, that soldiers are pretty destructive, but the fact remains that hundreds of privates, N.C.O.'s and officers went through their shooting courses in the Steenbecque cornfield, which was traversed in all directions by narrow paths, and yet it was difficult to find any downtrodden ears of corn. Our one difficulty was that at one of the firing points the corn grew up and obscured the targets. It had, therefore, to be cut to the area of about ten yards. I do not know what the claim sent in by the farmer was for this damage, but as far as claims were

concerned nothing was ever missed by the Flemish peasant.



Although it was my Headquarters I used only to spend the first two days of every course at the school; the other days I passed attached to various divisions and brigades, and in this way became conversant with the trench line of the Corps along the whole length of which I inspected the snipers' posts. The 33rd Division, who were holding the line opposite Violaines and the Brick-stacks, had had a tremendous duel with the German snipers. This line has always been a difficult one from the sniper's point of view, as the Germans had, unfortunately, the best of it as to posi¬tion. The Brick-stacks made ideal sniping-posts, and there were many other points of vantage which were very much in their favour. It shows, however, what a first-class sniping officer can do when it is realized that the 33rd Division who, when they went into the trenches, found the Germans very much in the ascendant, soon reduced them to a more fitting state of mind.







Imitation German Trench used for spotting targets, &c. Note snipers' loophole and observation hole in tree.

METHOD OF INSERTING LOOPHOLE.







1. Original Section of Parapet Dramnys bii]



2. How bags are arranged and fixed round loophole to imitate original parapet. (Gray's Boards.)



3. Parapet reconstructed with loophole



It was here that Gray—the sniping officer in question—had a trying experience. One day while making his tour of duty, an officer told him that there was a sniper who was causing them trouble. Gray asked where he was, and was led without words to the part of our trench opposite which the German sniper was supposed to lie. Gray, being signed to do so by his guide, looked over, only to be saluted at about ten yards' range with a bullet which whizzed by his ear.

"That's him," said the officer delightedly. "I knew he was pretty close. But what am I to do? He shoots if one tries to spot where he is."

" Have you never heard of the sniperscope, you- ? " demanded Gray.

" By Jove, the very thing ! " cried the officer, and it was not long before the German sniper was reduced to impotence.

But to return to the nth Corps School. Work there was certainly strenuous. There was nothing to do in the village and nothing to do in Morbecque.

The nearest place of relaxation was Hazebrouck, and Hazebrouck was out of bounds. The result was that having an interesting course with plenty of rifle shooting competitions, together with occasional mild cricket and football, officers and men were able to concentrate upon the work in hand, and certainly their shooting improved with amazing quickness.

About this time the 33rd Division moved south, and Lieut. Gray was attached to the School, where he soon left the impress of his personality and methods.



One of the difficulties that we had always found in the First Army was due to the fact that our trenches, as far at any rate as the Neuve Chapelle-Fauquissart area was concerned, were very shallow, and, indeed we lived rather behind breastworks than in trenches. To make loopholes in these breastworks was exceedingly difficult, but Gray invented a system which we christened " Gray's Boards " which fairly met the case. Thus, if he wished to put in a concealed iron loop-hole plate, he first of all cut a square of wood of exactly similar size. In this he fashioned a loop¬hole to correspond with the loophole of the iron plate. He then wired the wooden plate on to the iron plate, and having rolled and stuffed a number of sandbags in exact imitation of the parapet in which he wished to insert his loophole, he tacked these with a hammer and tacks upon the wooden board. The whole loophole was then built in at night. These loopholes of his were rarely discovered, and they had also the added advantage that if a bullet struck them it did not ring upon the iron plate, as it had to pierce the wooden board first, so the posts were never given away by sound.

It was at the 11th Corps School that we first constructed exact imitations of German trenches and German sniping posts ; in fact, in one way or another, a great deal of pioneer work was put in there, and the school prospered exceedingly.



Best form of parapet to conceal loopholes.

Wrong type of parapet for concealing snipers' loopholes.

SECTION OF TYPICAL GERMAN PARAPET.

Showing concealed loopholes made through tins, bags, &c. Note—The steel shields on top are dummies.



The chief reason, I think, for the success of the school was the great personal interest taken in it by the Corps Commander, Sir R. Haking, who would come out from his headquarters at Hinges and inspect the school at frequent intervals, as did also Brigadier-General W. Hastings Anderson, then B.G.G.S. of the Corps. We were inspected in July by the Army Commander, and from time to time officers from other theatres of war and from other armies visited us.

In a meadow near the school was a small pond, full of fish, which it was the ambition of Gray and myself to catch. There was only room for two fishermen at a time, and only on one occasion was a fish caught. This we gave to the farmer who owned the pond, and I presume he ate it, for he was up at Headquarters early the next day inquiring for a "medecin ! "

Still, nothing could be more delightful than after three or four strenuous days, on each of which one walked perhaps eight or ten miles of trenches, to sit before that funny little pool in the French meadow, and forget there was a war.

At the time of which I write, the Corps which formed the First Army were the nth, the 1st and the 4th. The 3rd had gone to the Battle of the Somme. The 1st Corps had a sniping school, which, at a later date, reached an extraordinarily high pitch of efficiency under Captain Crang and the late Lieut. Toovey, the author of "The Old Drum Major " and well-known Bisley shot. It was a party commanded by Captain Crang which went into the Portuguese trenches, where it was reported the Germans were showing themselves rather freely, and made a big bag. The 4th Corps also had a good school, but they soon moved out of the Army to the south. In fact, when I first went there, the system in the First Army was that which I had always advocated, to have Corps Schools of sniping and observation. The difficulty, of course, was that there was still no establishment, and that sniping schools did not officially exist. This was quite a common thing in the war, for when I first went to the large Third Army Infantry School, with a score of instructors, a large staff, and a couple of hundred N.C.O. and officer pupils, it did not exist officially.

While I was at the nth Corps School, the War Office at last officially acknowledged my existence as a sniping-officer to the extent that I received my pay, which had been withheld for several months.

After various tours of inspection and work with other Army Corps, I was ordered by the Army Commander to form an Army School of Sniping. Greatly rejoicing, Gray and I borrowed a car from the Army and set out to search through the broad lands of the Pas de Calais. These were delightful days, but search as we would, it was exceedingly difficult to find any place in the area of the First Army which would suit our purpose. It was all too flat. I remember that we once very nearly decided upon a queer little hill, not very far from Hinges, called Mont Bernenchon, but luckily we went on further and at last came to the village of Linghem. Above the village on a high plateau lies an old civilian range backed by a large rifle butt. The plateau on which the range is situated is of considerable extent, and upon its slopes (it was July) bloomed heather and gorse.

" Why," said Gray, " the place is trying hard to be "like Scotland !"

The plateau gave us a range of eight hundred yards and plenty of room for playing fields, which the Army always consider to be absolutely necessary to the well-being of a school—one reason, I think, that the health of our men was so good.

Having decided that here was the ideal place for our projected First Army Sniping School, Gray and I were disgusted to see the fresh tracks of a motor¬car. It was quite clear that somebody else had discovered and had an eye upon our find. We did not even wait for a cup of coffee at the local estaminet but got on board our car and went full speed to Army Headquarters, where we informed the Staff that we had decided upon our location, and were told that as no one else had applied for it, it should be ours. We were only just in time for as we afterwards discovered the Royal Flying Corps had decided to apply for it.

All's well, however, that ends well, and a little later on we left the nth Corps School with great regret, and set forth on a lorry for Linghem to found the First Army Sniping School.

Often afterwards I used to go across to see how things were getting along at the dear old nth Corps

School. The last time I was there, before it was taken over by a Second Army formation, it was a wintry day with snow falling. I must say that I was glad that I had never been attached there during winter, for what had been a smiling cornfield was now a sea of yellow and glutinous mud. The little becque or stream which ran between our stop-butt and our targets had overflowed, and Lieut. Hands, who had succeeded to the command of the school, was urging some one hundred and fifty odd German prisoners to reconstruct the stop-butt itself. The scene really might have been upon the German " Eastern Front."

CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST ARMY SCHOOL OF SCOUTING, OBSERVATION AND SNIPING

THE First Army Sniping School was formed for the purpose of training officers, who might act as Instructors in the various Corps Schools, Brigades and Battalions throughout the Army.

The system of Corps Schools was, as I have said, peculiar to the First Army, who, for the next year and a half, turned out three snipers to any other Army's one. Further, the First Army School became recognized throughout the B.E.F. as the training place of observers with the telescope. Indeed, at a later date, we were overwhelmed with applications from Corps and Divisions in other Armies who wished to send observers for a course. This was especially the case before any big movement, and we might almost have guessed where an advance was contemplated by the applications for the training of observers by the units concerned.

However, all this occurred at a later date, and I must pick up ray narrative when we left the nth Corps School in the lorry. Those who were to start the First Army School got aboard after an early breakfast. They were only six in number, Lieut. Gray, Armourer Staff-Sergeant Carr, Private Fen-some (an extremely capable and skilled carpenter), myself and two batmen. We took with us all the spares we could obtain from the nth Corps School as well as a lot of sniping kit belonging to Gray and myself.

As we rode through the country in the direction of Aire we passed a huge desolate camp which, I believe, had once been inhabited by Australians. No doubt it had boasted a guard at one time, but it had now fallen into sad disrepair, the Flemish peasantry having appropriated all the stoves and most of the wooden walls. A little further on we came upon two or three Armstrong huts standing in a field adjacent to the deserted camp, and as these were in better preservation, and we had no Armstrong hut of our own, it seemed a pity to leave them for the French, so we set to and took one down and loaded it on the lorry. This was, no doubt, a very wrong thing to do, but when you have no " establishment," you can have no conscience either, or, at least, if you allow yourself such a luxury you will find that your job becomes impossible.



First Army School S.O.S.



Presently we rolled into Aire over the canal bridge, which was afterwards destroyed by long-range guns, and in Aire we made the little purchases which are necessary for the formation of officers' and men's messes. We then passed through the old town by the Cathedral. Army Headquarters had moved away, and there was now only the Town Major and one or two A.S.C. columns in possession. On the far side of Aire we took the Lambres and St. Hilaire Road, and passed on through the