Drawings by] [Basil Head.
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 11th 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 loophole plate, he first of all cut a square of wood of exactly similar size. In this he fashioned a loophole 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.
XI CORPS SNIPING SCHOOL.