Experience of scouting in No Man’s Land showed that our patrols were most often spotted at the moment of leaving or returning to our own trenches, and great stress was laid on the proper way in which to get in and out of a trench. Another dangerous moment for the patrols was when they made a turning movement. The man who crept out with care and skill was apt to rise to his knees as he turned, and if a Verey light happened to be in the air at that moment, he was thus apt to give the whole show away.
There were many other subjects taught at the school into which I need not go, for those interested will find them all set out in the appendices, but special stress was always laid upon marching on compass bearings by night. It was an amazing thing how few officers really understood the prismatic compass, and indeed, how high a percentage of them did not possess a compass worth understanding. The advent of the gas mask, or box-respirator, added new difficulties to training, for it was necessary to carry out a good deal of our work under gas alarm conditions.
At least once on every course we had a scouting scheme. For this, the N.C.O.’s and men were told off in small parties, each under an officer, and were given a certain line to hold. They were to report all details of a military nature which they saw, all transport, etc. Some of our staff scouts were sent out early in the day, and were ordered to try and make their way back unseen through this line, and the staff instructors used to go out and see what they could of it. This scouting scheme gave great individual play to the fancy of the officer in charge of each party, and many of them used it to the full.
For some reasons a story was started that I had once gone right along the road which was the line that was being held disguised as a French peasant. I had never done anything of the kind, but the keenness to spot me when I did go round was always a matter of amusement.
The training of observers at the school, as distinct from the front line telescope work which I have described, was always extraordinarily interesting. I give in Appendix A the exact course the Lovat Scout reinforcement observers were put through. We were exceedingly lucky in having at the school so many first-rate glass-men, so that it was possible to get ahead with teaching the telescope very fairly quickly. Sometimes through pure ignorance a young observer, or an observer new to his work, would think he knew a great deal more than he actually did. It was only necessary to put him down for five minutes beside a Lovat Scout for him to rise a much wiser and less self-sufficient man!
Another branch of long-distance observation was the building of properly concealed observation posts, and by the time the school left Linghem, the plateau was honeycombed with posts looking in every direction.
Very early in the school’s career, a model sniper’s post was built, and all along one series of trenches we had model loopholes. One point that I always found when visiting the real trenches was that nearly all loopholes were made with three iron plates in the form of a box. This shape of loophole very much circumscribes the angle of fire. The true way to make a loophole is to set the two flanking plates at an angle of at least forty-five degrees, so that the field of fire may be enlarged.
One of the most important object lessons which we used to have was to send a sniper into the model trenches with orders to fire from different loopholes in turn. The rest of the class then watched the loopholes, and gave opinions as to which one the shot had come from. It takes a considerable amount of skill to fire from a loophole without giving away your position by the gas which comes from your rifle muzzle. These demonstrations also taught the snipers how in the dry weather the dust round the mouth of a loophole will invariably give it away, and how in cold weather the smoke will hang a little.
FIRST ARMY SCHOOL S.O.S.