H. Hesketh-Prichard

“ An animal which is fired at and missed always stands tense for the fraction of a second before it bounds away, but when an animal is struck by the bullet there is no pause. It bounds away at once on the impact, or falls. Thus, a stag shot through the heart commences his death rush at once, to fall dead within fifty yards, whereas a stag missed gives that tell-tale sudden start.
In dealing with trench warfare sniping a very capable observer soon learned to distinguish a hit from a miss, but there were naturally many observers who never reached the necessary degree of skill. ”

“ A series of experiments carried out at First Army School by the Staff and some of the best Lovat Scouts proved that these colours were indistinguisable with the best Ross telescope at a distance of more than 150 yards, except under the most favourable circumstances. So if ever a sniper (who, of course, knew what troops he was faced by) reported the colours of cockades when more than 150 yards from the enemy, it was at once clear that his imagination was too strong to admit of his useful employment with an observer's telescope. Another great duty of snipers was the blinding of the enemy. ”

“ Unimaginativeness is a great quality in war, but when one is playing a very close game, in which no points can be given away, between skilled antagonists as we were doing in sniping, one sometimes wished for a little less wooden-headed " bravery" so-called and a little more finesse.
The Welsh were very good indeed, their 38th Division keeping a special sniper's book, and their sniping officer, Captain Johnson, was very able. I think that in early 1918, the snipers of this Division had accounted for 387 Germans in trench-warfare. ”

“ We soon found that a very skilled man with a telescope could tell pretty accurately whether a man fired at had been hit, or had merely ducked, and this was the case even when only the " head of the target " was visible ; but to be certain of his accuracy, it was necessary that the observer should have had a long experience of his work, coupled with real aptitude for it. The idea of how to spot whether a German was hit or not was suggested by big-game shooting experiences. ”

“ The Germans had a trick of multiplying their loopholes in this fashion. Many steel plates were shoved up on the parapet in the most obvious positions. These were rarely shot through, but they were certainly sometimes used. The German argument must have been that if you have thirty loopholes, it is thirty to one against the particular one from which you fire being under observation at that particular moment.
On our side there was no loophole whatever covering the area in which this German sniper worked, and any attempt to spot his post had perforce to be done over the top of the parapet. ”

“ From time to time wild geese crossed the trenches in the winter, and their appearance was usually a signal for a fusillade in which every rifle and machine-gun that could be brought to bear on both sides took part. Very rarely was one brought down, though it is possible that along the whole front in the years of war a dozen may have been killed. One in particular, on a wild and stormy evening, was shot by the British and fell in the German lines. ”

“ In such places our snipers had to redouble their efforts, and even then the enemy remained a thorn in our sides. There were other places, of course, where we had an equivalent advantage, and there we were soon able to force the Germans to live an absolutely troglodytic existence. In fact orders were published in the German army on some fronts, that when a man was off duty he was to remain in a dug-out. ”

“ It is, in fact, not too much to say that in these ways we were able from very early days to place the position of any sniper who troubled us, and, once placed, there were many methods by which the man could be rendered harmless. ”

“ Now this may have been correct, but, as a matter of fact, continued observation showed that a man shot in ordinary trench warfare very very rarely either threw up his hands or fell back. He nearly always fell forward and slipped down. ”