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Now this may have been correct, but, as a matter of fact, continued observation showed that a man shot in ordinary trench warfare very very rarely either threw up his hands or fell back. He nearly always fell forward and slipped down. For this the old Greek rendering is best, “And his knees were loosened.”
We soon found that a very skilled man with a telescope could tell pretty accurately whether a man fired at had been hit, or had merely ducked, and this was the case even when only the “head of the target” was visible; but to be certain of his accuracy, it was necessary that the observer should have had a long experience of his work, coupled with real aptitude for it. The idea of how to spot whether a German was hit or not was suggested by big-game shooting experiences. An animal which is fired at and missed always stands tense for the fraction of a second before it bounds away, but when an animal is struck by the bullet there is no pause. It bounds away at once on the impact, or falls. Thus, a stag shot through the heart commences his death rush at once, to fall dead within fifty yards, whereas a stag missed gives that tell-tale sudden start.
In dealing with trench warfare sniping a very capable observer soon learned to distinguish a hit from a miss, but there were naturally many observers who never reached the necessary degree of skill. A reason once advanced for claiming a hit was that the Germans had been shouting for stretcher-bearers, but a question as to what was the German word for stretcher-bearer brought confusion upon the young sniper, whose talents were promptly used elsewhere!
But taken long by broad the accuracy of the information given by snipers was really wonderful. On one occasion the snipers of the 33rd Division reported that two Germans had been seen with the number 79 upon their helmets. This information went from Battalion, through Brigade, Division and Corps, to Army, who rather pooh-poohed the snipers’ accuracy, as the 79th, when last heard of, had been upon the Russian front. Within a day or two, however, the Germans opposite the battalion to which these snipers belonged sent a patrol out of their trenches one misty morning. The patrol fell in with our scouts, who killed two and carried back the regulation identifications. These proved the sentries to be correct.
It was in the same Division that in one tour of duty the snipers reported the cap-bands of the Germans opposite as: (1) brown; (2) yellow; (3) white. This again raised a doubt as to their accuracy; the matter was interesting, as it seemed possible that the trenches had been taken over by dismounted Uhlans. But before long the snipers were once again justified. A prisoner was taken, who acknowledged that the men of his unit had, under orders, covered the state badges on their caps with strips of tape wound round and round the brims. Prior to putting on this tape, he said, many of his comrades had dipped it in their coffee.
It is only fair to say that the sniping officer of the division in question was Lieut. Gray, and the exceeding skill of the officers and men under him may fairly be laid at his door.
There was in the trenches a very simple way of testing the accuracy of the sniper’s observation. The various German States, Duchies or Kingdoms all wore two badges on their caps, one above the other, the higher being the Imperial badge and the lower the badge of the State. Thus, the Prussian badge is black and white, the Bavarian light blue and white; the Saxon, green and white. These badges or, to be more correct, cockades, are not larger than a shilling, and the colours are in concentric rings. A series of experiments carried out at First Army School by the Staff and some of the best Lovat Scouts proved that these colours were indistinguisable with the best Ross telescope at a distance of more than 150 yards, except under the most favourable circumstances. So if ever a sniper (who, of course, knew what troops he was faced by) reported the colours of cockades when more than 150 yards from the enemy, it was at once clear that his imagination was too strong to admit of his useful employment with an observer’s telescope.
Another great duty of snipers was the blinding of the enemy. Thus, if the Germans bombarded any portion of our front, their artillery observers almost always did their work from the flank, where very often from the front line or from some other point of vantage they spotted and corrected the shell bursts of their gunners. On such occasions our snipers opposite both flanks of the bombarded area broke the periscopes of the German observers, and thus often succeeded in either rendering them blind, or forcing them to take risks.
When Germans retaliated and shot our periscopes, we had a number of dummies made, and by taking the entry and exit of the bullet through the back and front of these, we were able to spot many posts from which the Germans were firing. The result was that the enemy suffered casualties. It is, in fact, not too much to say that in these ways we were able from very early days to place the position of any sniper who troubled us, and, once placed, there were many methods by which the man could be rendered harmless.