While I was at the 11th 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 motorcar. 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 11th 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 11th 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.