The making of a good shot in a course of seventeen days is no easy matter. The First Army School of Sniping was, as I have said, founded for the instruction of officers and N.C.O.’s who should, in their turn, instruct, and all who came to it were supposed to be already “good shots.” As a matter of fact the standard was wonderfully high, and we very rarely had a hopeless case. Did such a man put in his appearance, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to send him back to his battalion.
Yet although a great mass of good material came to us, we were nearly always able to improve every student’s shooting by 30 or 40 per cent. It is wonderful what can be done in seventeen days if both the class and the instructors are working in unison.
Each class used to begin with an inspection of rifles, followed by a lecture on care and cleaning, at which the value of the polished barrel was taught with no uncertain voice.
FIRST ARMY SCHOOL OF S.O.S.
Comparison of sniper’s robe as opposed to ordinary kit firing over a turnip heap. To find second sniper look for muzzle of rifle. Distance from camera, 8 yards.
There were many difficulties in the way of teaching shooting with telescopic sights, when the issue of these was so limited as it was in France. Many times officers who ought to have known better advocated the shooting away of a mass of ammunition through telescope-sighted rifles at ranges of five or six hundred yards. It was hard to make these officers realize that the sole value of a telescopic rifle lay in its extreme accuracy, and that if the rifle were continually fired through, the barrel would become worn, and the best shot in the world, were he using it, would find his group spreading ever more widely upon the target. It was necessary, therefore, that the happy mean should be struck, so every officer and N.C.O. who came to the school was ordered to bring with him two rifles, one of them with open sights, and until a man had proved that he could shoot really well with open sights, he was not allowed to touch a telescopic-sighted rifle.
As a matter of fact, anyone who can make good shooting with the ordinary service rifle will find very little difficulty in improving his marksmanship when he is promoted to a telescopic sight.
One of the greatest difficulties that we had—the difficulty which literally haunted the whole of instruction in France, was the fact that the telescopic sights were set, not on top, but at the left-hand side of the rifle. This caused all kinds of errors. The set-off, of course, affected the shooting of the rifle, and had to be allowed for, and the clumsy position of the sight was very apt to cause men to cant their rifles, and some used the left eye. Worse than all, perhaps, in trench warfare was the fact that with the Government pattern of telescopic sight, which was set on the side of the rifle, it was impossible to see through the loopholes of the steel plates which were issued, as these loopholes were naturally narrow; and looking into the telescopic sight, when the muzzle of the rifle was pointing through the loophole, one got nothing but a fine view of the inside of the steel plate and the side of the loophole. Why the telescopic sights were set on the sides of the rifles was never definitely or satisfactorily explained, but it was always said that it was done so that rapid fire should be possible. I believe the decision was taken in the War Office, and if this is true, and the sight was set on the side for this reason (and one can see no other reason why it should have been so set)—then surely whoever was responsible can have had no knowledge whatever of the use of telescopic sights.
To take a telescope sight off a rifle occupies not two seconds of time, and to think that a sniper could or would ever do rapid fire through a telescope sight, or need to load with a clip, shows nothing short of incredible ignorance. At any rate, the Germans made no such mistake, though they made many others.