"Now you can see what we're up against," he went on. "The Germans out there, or as the French call them, the 'Boches,' can get at us in no other way than by raids and sniping. We have driven off two raids and we have lost three men by sniping—three good men, too. Now, it's up to you to see to it that these snipers get sniped; to lay for 'em and get 'em as they come. It'll be hunting men who are hunting you, and the best hunter and shot wins. Dangerous business, my boy. Somehow I think that you personally are equal to it, even though you've never yet been under fire and you may get nervous. But are your men equal to it? It's not like a charge or phalanx firing, nor company action. I've been there; in the Philippines and at Santiago. Private then. Your boys have all got to have their nerve with them, as well as their skill. I hope they have not made a mistake in sending you here before you were tried under fire. We shall see. But I suppose one place to get used to it is as good as another.
"There is this about the situation also: You not only have to beat the Hun snipers' shooting, but you've got to see them first. It's pretty certain you can't always do that.
"And here's another feature: You've got to be good runners, for if you're hunting for snipers, night or day, you may suddenly run into a bunch of raiders. In some cases, too, you may be placed so as to hold these fellows off a bit until you can get word to us. You see there are many situations possible and there will be still more that you can't think of; circumstances totally unforeseen and sometimes mighty hard to comprehend in a hurry. Just the other day we had one.
"The gun boys were giving her a cleaning up—they keep her pretty nice, you see, just like a fire company does its engine; take a real pride in it. Well, they were working away, or five of them were—four were sleeping. My men were mostly loafing and sleeping, too, and some were on guard and lookout, one fellow at the listening point. I was making out reports and accounts—there's too much of that. There wasn't a gun to be heard for miles; all quiet, except for the big guns over on the French sector, ten miles away, that you heard a while ago.
"Then, all of a sudden the men at post called out: 'Airplane high up! French machine coming back from the Boche line! They're shooting at her!'
"We heard several guns go off over in their trenches, but as she kept on we didn't think any more about her. It's a common enough sight and I had gone back to my papers and the boys to their duties.
"And then, it didn't seem to me to be five minutes before the awfullest kick-up of dust and rocks I ever saw, or hope to see, upset the whole bunch of us—it was right on the outside of the pit, though we've got it pretty well smoothed over now. It blinded one of my men permanently, poor chap; sent him back yesterday. And it laid another up for a bit; struck in the back with a big flying stone. Blew all my papers so far I've never been able to find half of them. You see this is war!
"That was no French plane; it was a Hun. He had painted his blamed machine so it looked like a Frenchman; mebbe it was a captured one in the first place, and then, when he got well over our lines, he turned and shut off his engine and dived right down over our pit. Did it so quick nobody got on to him to shoot at him until he had dropped his bomb and if that had hit our shelter top it would have got every one of us and upset the gun.
"But they got him beyond just as he was going over their trenches; our gun men had luckily just slipped a shell in and the corporal jumped and sighted and let Mr. Birdman have it just once, and, by jingo, it got him! Busted twenty feet to one side of him, turned him clear over and dumped him on the ground; smashed the machine all up, of course. What it did to the man you can guess.
"Oh, this is war, my boy! Real war! As I said, I haven't been able to find half of those reports yet."