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

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

Perhaps the most remarkable observation posts used during the war were three famous ones in the French lines. At one point there was a slight rise in front of the French position and above the German. Both trenches cut across the Paris road, and exactly upon the top of the rise between the trenches where the observation was best stood a milestone on which was stated the number of kilometres to Paris.

This milestone the French photographed. The photograph was sent to the Camouflage Works, where an exact copy of the milestone, with the number of kilometres printed on it, was made in steel, but with an observation eye-slit covered with gauze. Then one night a French party crept out and removed the real milestone, putting in its stead the camouflaged one. A tunnel from the trench was next dug, and for many months inside that harmless-looking milestone a pair of keen French eyes noted much of interest that happened in the German line.

In another case, a huge dead, yellow-bearded Prussian lay, on a point of vantage, staring at the sky. He, too, was photographed and copied, and from the hollow shell, clothed in his uniform, another observer fulfilled his duty. A dead horse likewise was replaced and used.

In fact, the romance of observation was endless, forming, as it did, one of the more human phases of the world-war, for here, at least, an observer’s life was often dependent upon his own skill. Observers often lay in full view, their lives depending upon quiescence and their art of blending with the background.

When, at a later date, there was an issue in the British Army of sniping robes for the use of snipers and observers—robes which tallied with any background and were ornamented with all kinds of dazzle painting—there was a tendency to send snipers and observers out in front. As a rule I think this was a mistake, for the hours out in front from dawn to dark were very long, and the observer had to keep upon the qui vive for too long a period. Also the smallest movement would give him away, and he was rarely in a position to use his telescope over any large area. Freedom of movement is necessary to the observer, and as to the sniper, I always felt that it was wrong to send him out except on a definite quest, for the man behind the trench is always in a superior position to the man who is lying on open ground without any chance of escape.

So far I have dealt with what is known as front line observation; but besides this we have to consider the very wide subject of back area observation. The sniper’s duty is to watch the enemy’s front and support lines. The brigade observers, if any—and keen brigades were always sending them to be trained—and the divisional observers working from posts on their own support lines, or from some point of vantage far behind, watched the areas lying at the back of the enemy fighting lines as far as the glass could see.

To some of the Army Corps were attached the Lovat Scouts Sharpshooters. This name turned out in a way really a misnomer, for the Lovats were found to be so invaluable with the telescope that they were in many cases forbidden to use the rifle. Many Corps also had groups of observers formed from their Corps Cavalry. Besides these we had the F.O.O.’s and Artillery observers who, however, do not come within the scope of this chapter as their work is so largely for the guns.

In order to understand fully the tremendous mass of work done by observers, you must realize that behind the lines the Major-General, the Corps Commander, the Army Commander and the Commander-in-Chief himself are all blind. Their brains direct the battle, but it is with the eyes of Sandy McTosh that they see. And nobly through the war did Sandy do his part. It is from him and his officers that the blind General behind learns how the battle goes—that the brigade have gained their first objective—that the —th are held up by wire—that at N26, C4.3 at least six German battalions are massing for a counter-attack. In the Vimy Ridge battle did not Lieut. Whamond and Sergeant Fraser observe, and did not the guns they warned break up, a mighty counter-attack before ever it was launched?

The duty of the battle observer is to obtain the information as to how each phase of the battle goes, and then to get that information back to where it should be of value.