Sniping in France: With notes on the scientific training of scouts, observers, and snipers

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

I might add that all three boys were accomplished Association football players, so that we always had a really first-class centre forward, left wing and halfback upon the premises. Our Association team, for so small a unit, was thus a very strong one, though it might have been much stronger had not so many of the older members of the staff been wounded.

I think the only other member of the staff that I need mention is Sergeant Foster of the Canadians. At a later date, it became our duty to train the Portuguese Army in sniping and shooting, and Sergeant Foster spoke a kind of Portuguese.

I have given at full length this account of the officers and N.C.O.’s of the school, because whatever efficiency the school obtained was founded upon their selection. Whenever it was possible to do so, it was always a standing order that between courses, when we sometimes had from two days to a week free, all instructors should go to the line. For this purpose, arrangements were made with different battalions to receive them. This kept the school in touch with the progress of events.

I have often regretted that I did not keep a Visitors’ Book at the First Army Sniping School, for certainly enormous numbers of visitors came to us. Outside the officers of the B.E.F., of whom several hundred visited the school, we had attachés and missions of various allied and neutral powers—Japanese, Roumanian, Dutch, Spanish, American, Italian, Portuguese, Siamese and Polish officers, as well as large numbers of journalists, from whom, when they were not our own accredited correspondents, I used to conceal a good deal of the more secret parts of our work. One day, however, on being informed by the officer-in-charge of the correspondents that they were perfectly safe, and that I could show them anything, I showed them a small new invention by which we were able to spot the position of German snipers. I carefully warned them that it was not to be written about, but about three months later I saw a large and glaring article describing the visit of one of these journalists to the school. The description of the invention could have been of little interest to the great public which he served, but it was there, carefully set out. This was the only case of a definitely-broken promise of this nature which I came across during the war. Our own correspondents, Valentine Williams (afterwards Captain Valentine Williams, M.C.), Philip Gibbs, Beach Thomas, Perry Robinson, H.M. Tomlinson, Prevost Battersby, Percival Phillips, and others who came after I left G.H.Q., were welcome and trusted throughout the whole Army.

The feeling in the Army against the Press—for there certainly was, at one period, such a feeling—is really very often a rather stupid pose adopted by the younger officers, who usually copy some downright senior; but it will always remain as long as journalistic mistakes are made—and that will be as long as wars last.

Outside the members of the staff, we had help from time to time from various officers who were attached for short periods of duty. Among these was Major A. Buxton, D.S.O., of the Essex Yeomanry, who took two classes of Lovat Scouts in observation. He was, I believe, the only officer who was habitually successful in catching trout in the French streams. Second Lieut. C.B. Macpherson of Balavil, a true expert with the telescope and map, was also attached to the school for a time. He came out at the age of sixty-two with his splendidly trained group of Lovat Scouts Sharpshooters.

Another officer who was temporarily attached to the staff was Capt. T.B. Barrie of the Canadian Highlanders. He first came to the school on a course, and was afterwards lent to me by the Canadian 4th Division. Shortly after his first visit to the school he gained two M.C.’s in a fortnight, both in raids, in one of which he penetrated six hundred yards behind the German line. There can have been few more gallant officers in France, and his death later in the war was a matter of deep regret to all who knew him.

One day Major-General the Hon. W. Lambton, commanding the 4th Division with which I had begun my sniping duties in 1915, came to the school. His division was then in one of the other armies, but he wished to have observers trained, and sent up a party under Lieut. Kingsley Conan Doyle, of the Hampshire Regiment, the son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and one of the best observation officers we had at any time. Conan Doyle possessed an extraordinary facility for teaching and was most successful with one or two classes of Lovat Scouts which he took. He went back to his Division, was promoted to Captain, and acted in charge of the Divisional Battle Observers in the big battles of 1917. It is tragic to think that when the order came out for all medical students to return to complete their studies Capt. Conan Doyle went back to England; there he contracted influenza and died. This has always seemed to me one of the saddest things in the war—to have gone through so much, to have rendered such good service, and finally to be struck down by the horrible influenza germ instead of the German shells among which he had walked about so unconcernedly.

I have now given you a somewhat rambling account of the formation, and of those who were chiefly connected with the early days, of the First Army Sniping School. On the very day on which it was founded, Sir Charles Monro left France to take up his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in India. Sir Richard Haking succeeded to the temporary command of the Army, and as it happened was the very first visitor who ever came to First Army School. He told us that the King was coming almost at once into the Army area, and that he wished Gray and myself to go back to the 11th Corps School to prepare for a Royal Inspection. This we did, but unfortunately the King was held up in Bethune by shelling, so that there was no time for him to visit us. We greatly regretted this, as a Royal visit would have been of enormous value to sniping at that time.

One visitor who came to the school was of peculiar interest to me. This was my old friend Sir Arthur Pearson, who arrived accompanied by his son, whom I had last seen at the Boys’ Cricket classes at Lord’s when he was first in the running for the Eton Eleven, of which he was afterwards Captain. He was now an officer in the R.H.A. Sir Arthur Pearson went over the whole school and asked me many questions. Though he could not, of course, see the loopholes and all the rather technical work which I explained to him, it was perfectly amazing to realize the way in which he gripped it in its essentials. I think that he knew more about sniping, scouting and observation after the hour or two he spent at the school than I have known other men gather in a week.