“It is not,” he said, “only that a good shot strengthens his unit, but he adds to its moral—he raises the moral of his comrades—it raises the moral of the whole unit to know that it contains several first-class shots.”
These are not the exact words which Sir Charles used, but they are as near them as I can remember.
* * * * *
Now that I had got my chance I was at first extremely happy, but later, as I could not go to my new work at once, I became a little nervous of failure, and pictured myself unsuccessful in my attempt to dominate the German snipers. I began to wish that I had gone to my work a month earlier, for when the Third Army took over from the French, the Germans offered any amount of targets, whereas I now heard that they were becoming more cautious. I, therefore, cast about for some way in which I might hope to make certain of success, and to this end, having conceived a plan, I went down to Neuve Chapelle, where my friend, Captain A.C. Gathorne-Hardy, 9th Scottish Rifles, since killed at Loos leading his men and within ten yards of the German wire, was in the line. We obtained from the old German trenches a number of the large steel plates from behind which the German snipers were wont to shoot, and these I took home with me to England, for I had obtained a week’s leave before taking up my new duties.
I proceeded to try on these plates all kinds of rifles, from the Jeffreys high velocity .333 to heavy elephant guns of various bores, and was delighted to find that the bullets from the .333, as well as the elephant guns, pierced them like butter. Here, again, Colonel John Buchan came to my assistance, and obtained for me a fund, to which Lord Haldane, Lord Glenconner and Lord Finlay kindly contributed the money, and which enabled me to purchase the necessary rifles. Later on, Mr. St. Loe Strachey, the editor of The Spectator, continued to keep up my fund, which really was of incalculable value to us, and out of which everything from dummy heads purchased at Clarkson’s to football jerseys for the splendidly-appointed Sniping School, which finally eventuated, were purchased.
At length I was free of my work at G.H.Q., and went down to the Third Army, where I was attached to the 7th Corps, the 4th Division, and the 10th and 12th Infantry Brigades.
It would be out of place to describe in detail the days that followed. Suffice it to say that very early in the proceedings it became clear that snipers must always work in pairs, one man shooting and one man finding the targets with the telescope. The regulation issue of the latter was at the time, I think, about eight telescopes per battalion, and these were used by the Signallers, but Lord Roberts’ Fund, administered with extraordinary energy by Mr. Penoyre, came to the rescue, and soon a certain number of telescopes dribbled down into the 4th Division line. As to the heavy and armour-piercing rifles, they did their work exceedingly well, and no doubt caused a great surprise to the enemy.
One day I obtained leave to go to Amiens, where I visited the French Camouflage Works, and found to my delight that they had made a number of papier-mâché models of the heads and shoulders of British soldiers. Of these I was able to purchase a large quantity, and had no longer any need to buy in London, where the heads were rather theatrical properties than the real thing. The uses to which the heads were put were varied. They were, in these early days before they were too much advertised (for they afterwards became an issue in our Army), most useful in getting the enemy to give a target. It was also possible, by showing very skilfully the heads of Sikhs or Ghurkas in different parts of the line, to give the German Intelligence the impression that we were holding our line with Indian troops, and I have no doubt they were considerably worried to account for these movements.
One day I received orders from Army Headquarters telling me that Colonel Langford Lloyd, D.S.O., had now started a telescopic-sight school in the 10th Corps area, and ordering me to go there and to collaborate with Colonel Lloyd in a book upon sniping and telescopic sights. I went and found a splendid school running, in which the instruction in telescopic sights was rapidly correcting these rifles in the 10th Corps.
I had the opportunity at Colonel Lloyd’s school of learning a great deal that I did not know about telescopic sights, and many other matters in which Colonel Lloyd is a past master. He listened with great interest to the various ruses, of which there was now quite a long list, that we had employed in the trenches.