Showing effects and importance of light and shade.
Lectures on aeroplane photographs were another side of our work, and one which was undoubtedly very necessary. All the school trenches and, indeed, the whole school and plateau and the woods around it had been photographed from the air. Each officer or N.C.O. student was provided with a photograph, and went over the actual ground, Captain Kendall accompanying them to explain all details. In this way a practical knowledge of what trenches looked like from the air was gained.
The demonstrations showing the use of protective colouring and the choice of backgrounds always interested the classes very much. Often the whole class arrived within twenty yards of a man lying within full view without being able to spot him. On one occasion during a big demonstration, one of the staff was lying out in a coat of the colour and contour of sandbags on top of a trench, and the whole party of staff officers were all round him without having spotted his whereabouts. When I pointed him out a foreign officer who was present, and who evidently did not understand me, thought I was referring to an object a little further on, and in order to see it better he actually leaped on to the camouflaged man!
As a matter of fact, this protective colouration scheme business can very easily be overdone, for the man who lies out in the open is at the mercy of the changes of light and shade. What is an absolute protective background at eleven o’clock may become quite useless at twelve. But it was necessary to teach it to a certain extent, as in open warfare the observer and the scout have to obtain safety by concealment rather than by cover from fire.
Another of the most useful lessons at the school was undoubtedly the practical one of judging distance. On the average I think students were worse at distance-judging than at any other subject, but a little practice made an enormous difference.
The ruling idea of the School was to make sniping as simple as possible, and for this purpose nothing was ever used in building a post or loophole which could not be obtained at once in any trench in the British Army. There were many very elaborate loopholes which could be indented for from the Special Works Park R.E. (Camouflage), but I do not think these were successful unless they were put in by specially selected officers, for in sending indents to the Special Works Park, Commanding Officers usually forgot to mention the background and the kind of earth in which their trenches were dug.
A demonstration that used always to interest the class exceedingly was one which showed the effect of different forms of ammunition on various kinds of loophole plates, British and German. Some time in 1917 the Germans produced an armoured mask for snipers. This was of steel, and of great weight and thickness, and indeed it looked as if no bullet could possibly go through it, so much so that one of my officers volunteered to put it on and let someone have a shot at him. This I, of course, refused to countenance for a moment, and lucky it was, for the first shot went clean through the armoured headpiece. Anyhow, I should imagine, whether the shot pierced the vizor or no, the man in it must almost certainly be stunned by a direct hit.
Although when first I became a sniping instructor, I used to have some firing practice at five and six hundred yards, when I went to the First Army School I gave this up. The chances of hitting a German head at six hundred yards with a telescope sight, if there is any wind blowing at all, are not great, for, as I have repeatedly said, a sighting shot is not possible, and I came to the conclusion that continual popping away with telescopic-sighted rifles at six hundred yards simply wore out their barrels. After all, a rifle only lasts at its highest efficiency for, in certain cases, as few as five hundred rounds, and every shot taken through a telescope-sighted rifle shortens the life of the barrel. We, therefore, until warfare became more open, never went back further than four hundred yards, and our greatest difficulty was to teach the snipers to appreciate the strength of the wind. The system by which wind must be taught to snipers must be both very accurate and very simple, for some of the best snipers who came to the school had difficulty in making calculations. Usually we found that the best way to begin to teach wind allowance was to take the man up on the range, and for one of the staff to demonstrate against the stop butt. The class all had telescopes, and the puff of dust gave away the exact point at which the bullet struck. This system had the further advantage of teaching snipers what a distance of two feet looks like at three hundred yards. But individual practice is the only way to learn wind-judging.
At the school we gave six different strengths of wind, gentle, moderate, fresh, strong, very strong, and gale, and it was, of course, in the judging of the gentle, moderate and fresh, that the difficulties lay. Our range had this advantage, that it was a good one on which to teach wind allowance by letting the men practise for themselves, for there was almost always a wind blowing.
Night firing and observation by moonlight, as well as many other schemes which the reader who is interested can see for himself in the curriculum which is set out in the appendix, took up the rest of our time; but, from the very earliest days, the moment the day’s work was over we used to adjourn for games. At first we used to play rounders and baseball of a kind. Later we made a rough golf course of three or four holes; but as soon as we got our Establishment and the school increased in size, games became a matter of great importance, and, as usual, football was by far the most popular. We had throughout a very good Association team, and sometimes were able to play two elevens on Saturday afternoons, and all the other days there were pick-up sides and punt-about.