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

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

To spot a hostile machine-gun emplacement was one of the most valuable services a front-line observer could render, since of course a single machine-gun can hold up an attack and inflict great casualties. Therefore, when a machine-gun emplacement was spotted it was not necessarily put out of action at once, but its map reference was noted and sent to Intelligence, where it was filed, and action taken by the divisional artillery at the correct time, usually just before a raid or an attack.

On the 11th Corps front in 1916 our troops were continually making raids, and there was a great deal of competition as to who should make the most successful. The result was that the enemy was kept continually upon the jump. The Germans were allowed very little sleep during those months.

One night they decided to try and regain the lost initiative, and a German raid was turned on, which, however, did not meet with great success; in fact, things began to be critical for the raiders, and the German Company Commander in charge came out into No Man’s Land to see for himself what was amiss. There in No Man’s Land he was killed by our men, and from his body a map was taken on which the position of no less than eighty machine-gun emplacements was marked. At first it was thought that the map on which these eighty emplacements were described might be a fake intended to mislead us, but on comparing it with the emplacements discovered during the previous weeks it was found that no fewer than forty-two of the eighty had been spotted and ticked off, though as yet no serious action against them had been taken.

Such a chance never comes twice, and a few nights later the gunners blew up all the machine-gun emplacements while the South Wales Borderers went across and raided the German trenches. To such a tune was the raid carried out that, though a record number of prisoners were brought in, the raiding party suffered hardly any loss themselves.

More than one officer in the war must have found himself in a dreadful position when captured by the enemy with important maps of his own lines in his pocket. Carelessness, darkness, or misadventure might each or any of them be responsible, but bad as was the lot of the ordinary prisoner, how much worse was that of one whose capture had given valuable local information to the enemy! It is too painful a subject to pursue.

Many people seem to think that all observation is now done from aeroplanes, but this is absurd. The airmen can spot hostile concentrations and do invaluable work in a hundred ways, but, as the war went on, more and more was it recognized how necessary was the ground-observer, for he looked at the enemy from a different angle, and his reports were often of the highest value.

Once the Germans started a new and large form of periscope, and we ceased destroying them at once the moment a clever observer found that with the telescope he could read the reflection of the numbers on the shoulder straps of the Germans who used them, thereby allowing us to identify the opposing unit with both comfort and ease.

It was perhaps natural enough that when a sniper first won his way into the sniping section of his battalion, he should desire to shoot rather than to observe, yet, as a matter of fact, the observer’s was, in my opinion, the post of honour. It was very hard work too, especially in summer time, and more especially still in the chalk country. Some of the happiest days of our lives were spent with the Ross telescope, either watching the German lines from the front trenches or from some observation post further back overlooking the wide areas that lay behind them. On many occasions one became so interested that meals were forgotten, as the telescope searched and waited for the artillery observers’ observation posts.

Such a one there was at Beaumont Hamel. It was in the autumn of 1915, and the leaves were falling, which is the best time of all for spotting the posts of enemy observers. Right back in the village was a building which, though it had been heavily shelled, still stood in a fairly commanding position. A direct hit had at some previous time smashed a jagged hole under the eaves through which one could see a beam stretching across. It was the presence of this beam which first drew attention to the spot, for it seemed strange that the shell should not have carried it away. It looked, indeed, as if it had been placed there afterwards; but it was a little back in the room behind, and it was difficult to tell whether the shell might not have left it intact.

In the morning, when the light was bad owing to the position of the sun, it was very hard to spot the shell hole, and the beam was invisible, but one day when the light was very good in the afternoon, the glass revealed five bricks standing on this broken beam. Natural enough—but not quite so natural when the next day the five bricks had changed their position. On the first day four had been lying along the beam at full length and one was set upon its end. On the second day a second had adopted the erect position.