“Yes, I think I see where you mean,” said I; “up by that sand-bag dump. There’s a mine-shaft there, and they were probably some of their R.E.’s piling up sand-bags, or emptying them out. I believe that is what they usually do now, fill the sand-bags below in their galleries, bring them up, empty them, and use the same ones again.”
Thomas and Everton gaped at this. It had not occurred to them to consider that the Boche had R.E.’s. They were of the unimaginative class of snipers, who “saw, did, and reported,” and on the whole I preferred them to those who saw, and immediately “concluded.” For their conclusions were usually wrong. To men like Thomas I was, I think, looked upon as one who had some slightly supernatural knowledge of the German lines; he did not realise that by careful compass-bearings I knew the exact ground visible from his post, and that my map of the German lines, showing every trench as revealed by aeroplane photographs, was accurate to a yard. He was like a retriever, who keeps to heel, noses out his bird with unerring skill, and brings it in with the softest of mouths; yet the cunning and strategy he leaves to his master, who is decidedly his inferior in nose and mouth. So 75 Thomas could see and shoot far better than I; but it was I who thought out the strategy of the shoot.
“Well,” said I, as I doled out a rather more liberal rum ration than usual, “that’s d—— good work, anyway. Two you got, you say? Not sure about the second? Anyway you had two good shots, and remember what I told you, a sniper only shoots to kill. So two it’s going to be, anyhow.” (They both grinned at this, which was the nearest they could get to a wink.) “I’m very pleased about it. Now it’s not much good staying up here in this thick snow, so you can go off till I send word to your dug-out for you to go on again.”
I turned to go away, thinking that the other posts, rumless, and in all probability quarryless, must be in a state of exasperating coldness by now. But Thomas and Everton did not move. There was something wanted.
“Well, what is it?”
“Please sir, can we stay on here a bit? P’raps one of those R.E. fellows may come back for something.”
“Good heavens, yes,” I said, “stay on as long as you like,” and smiled as I made off to my other posts. (Later I used to get the snipers to report to me coming off their posts, and get their rum ration then; as I found it gave a bad appearance and damaged the reputation of the snipers when people saw me going about with the nose of a bottle of “O.V.H.” whiskey sticking out of my haversack!) There, as I expected, I found the men blue and bored.
“You can’t see nothing to-day, sir, at all,” was the sentence with which I was immediately greeted. Even the rum seemed to inspire very little outward enthusiasm.
“You can go off to your dug-outs till I send for you,” I replied, carefully corking the bottle and not looking at them while I spoke: “if you like,” I added after a pause, looking up. But the post was empty.
That afternoon I was up on No. 1 post, with a sniper who was new to the work. It was still freezing, but the snow-clouds had cleared right away, and the wind had dropped. There was a tingle in the air; everything was as still as death; the sun was shining from a very blue sky, and throwing longer and longer shadows in the snow as the afternoon wore on. It was a valuable afternoon, the enemy’s wire showing up very clearly against the white ground, and I was showing the new sniper how to search the trench systematically from left to right, noting the exact position of anything that looked like a loophole, or steel-plate, and especially the thickness of the wire, what kind, whether it was grey and new, or rusty-red and old; whether there were any gaps in it, and where. All these things a sniper should note every morning when he comes on to his post. Gaps are important, as patrols must come out through gaps, and the Lewis gunners should know these, and be ready to fire at them if a patrol is heard thereabouts in No Man’s Land. Similarly, old gaps closed up must be reported.