One day in 1915 I was knocking about on the top of Hill 63 with a telescope. The edge of Ploegsteert Wood abuts upon this hill, and as I came up I saw an old cock pheasant walking about. At that moment a shell burst very close to him. He was not hit, but he was certainly very much dazed, for he stood stupidly watching the fumes rising from the cavity, and had it not been for the strict orders concerning game—and the probable arrival of more shells—I could easily have captured him; but after a few moments, during which he sat with his feathers all fluffed out, he gathered himself together and disappeared into the nearest thicket.
I was always very much afraid all through the war that, having started poison gas, the Germans might start using shot guns loaded with buckshot for work between the trenches. Had they done so, patrolling would have become a horrible business; but I suppose that they were restrained by the fact either that such weapons are not allowed by the Geneva Convention, or that the British Isles have such a supply of shot guns and cartridges that the advantage would not remain long upon their side. As it was, things were much more satisfactory, for there was plenty of excitement out in No Man’s Land, what with machine-gun bullets and rifle fire, without the added horror of a charge of small shot in the face.
I have touched on the work of observers in the front line in this chapter, but it will be more fully considered in the next upon the subject of Observation, to which this side of the sniper’s work really belongs.
CHAPTER VI
AN OBSERVER’S MEMORIES
As I have already said, when sniping was started in the B.E.F., we owed our fairly rapid and certainly very definite success in the task of dominating the Hun to a single factor. Whereas the German sniper usually worked alone, we put up against him two men, one of whom, “A,” used the telescope and kept a close watch for “targets” upon a good sector of the enemy’s line, while “B,” his comrade, used the rifle and shot at the “targets” which “A” found. The result was that at a hundred points along the line you could daily hear a conversation such as this:
A.—“Black Sandbags—left—two feet—’alf a ’Un’s ’ead showing. D——! he’s down!”
B.—“Hope he’ll come up again.”
A.—“He’s up!”
B.—(Fires).
A.—“Close shave—six inches high—bad luck, ole son!”