Sniper

“ The sniper had shot him, and now he was out for plunder. [53] When we had this sniper in hand we found that we had got hold of a very dangerous customer, a man who had done a lot of mischief amongst our fellows. He had gone about his sniping in a very business-like way, and had established himself in a spot which commanded points which had to be continually passed by our stretcher-bearers and working parties. A good many of the R.A.M.C. chaps were hit, and it was curious that most of the wounds were about the knee. ”

“ From the right a bullet sang across the road. It was a single shot, from the rifle of some sniper concealed somewhere in advance of the German lines. At a speed of fifty miles an hour he must be a difficult target even for the most expert of marksmen, and he hoped that speed would save him. Another shot whistled by his ear; that was a narrow escape, he thought; but there had been no volley from the German trenches: apparently he had not been seen except by the sniper, and it was only a stream of shot from rifles or machine guns that he had to fear. ”

“ In the Army there has always been in certain quarters a prejudice against very accurate shooting, a prejudice which is quite understandable when one considers the aims and ends of musketry. While sniping is the opportunism of the rifle, musketry is its routine. It would obviously never do to diminish the depth of your beaten zone by excess of accuracy. But this war, which, whatever may be said to the contrary—and much was said to the contrary—was largely a war of specialists, changed many things, and among them the accurate shot or sniper was destined to prove his extraordinary value. ”

“ To take a telescope sight off a rifle occupies not two seconds of time, and to think that a sniper could or would ever do rapid fire through a telescope sight, or need to load with a clip, shows nothing short of incredible ignorance. ”

“ Since you have been at the Front you know the use of the dummy—the enemy sniper shoots a hole in it and the men in the pit, by tracing the direction of the bullet through the pierced composition, are able to locate the spot where Mister Sniper is hidden. ”

“ The mark was often but a head or half a face, or a loophole behind which lurked a German sniper, and no sighting shot was possible because it " put down the target." The smallest of big game animals did not present so small a mark as the German head, so that sniping became the highest and most difficult of all forms of rifle shooting. At it, every good target shot, though always useful, was not necessarily successful, for speed was only less necessary than accuracy, and no sniper could be considered worthy of the name who could not get off his shot within two seconds of sighting his target. ”

“ The German sniper is really a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief. When I say a sniper I do not mean a sharpshooter who fires into our lines from the German lines. I mean one of those horrible creatures that goes about clad in a stolen uniform or the clothes of a Flemish farmer during [164] the day, and at night takes a Leuger automatic pistol and haunts the billets and roads in hope of killing some lone British or Canadian soldier or sentry, whose duty calls him abroad during the night and relieving the dead body of any money or valuables that may be on it. ”

“ The British or Colonial sniper was pitted against the Bavarian or the Prussian, and all along the front duels were fought between men who usually saw no more of their antagonists than a cap badge or a forehead, but who became personalities to each other, with names and individualities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sniper, those who held this view said, was a man whose first duty was offensive action against the enemy, whereas a scout’s duty was not to fight, but to obtain information. We at the school could never see it in this light, for there must be occasions when a scout must fight to get his information back, or indeed, to obtain it, and it seemed futile that in the morning a man should ask himself, “Am I to-day a sniper or a scout?” ”

“ He had to be a really high-class shot, a good and accurate observer, and a good judge of distance, wind and light.
Suffice it that in the more open warfare many a sniper killed his fifty Germans in a single day, and whether as a rifleman or scout, he bore a part more perilous than that of the rank and file of his comrades. If you who read this know a man who served his year or two in the sniping section of his battalion, you know one whom it is well that you should honour.
A position which was much used by German snipers is supposed to have been trees. ”

“ PART I Care of Arms, Grouping and Range Practices:
It is essential that the Sniper shall have a really clean rifle if he is to obtain the extreme accuracy that is required of him. By a clean rifle I mean a rifle in the cleaning of which not only have all the normal precautions been taken, but, in addition, the bore has received a very high polish. This high polish is of great importance to accurate shooting, and to be efficient as a Sniper you must be far more accurate than the average Service Shot. Hence the necessity for going rather deeply into Care of Arms. ”

“ Then snipers began to make themselves all agreeable. One of them, in particular, gave our fellows a good deal of trouble. This sniper, armed with an old German needle-gun, rarely missed his aim. One day Corporal Gallinshaw, on duty in the trench, had occasion in the early hours of dawn to repair some wire entanglements that had been badly wrecked by shell-fire. He had not been long at his work when the crack of the deadly needle-gun reminded him of the close proximity of the sniper. A bullet flung up a rain of stones in his face. ”

“ I am here, however, going ahead of my narrative, but I want early in this book to state definitely that the sniper is not, and from the first, as I saw him never was meant to be, a product of trench warfare. In modern war, where a battalion may be held up by a machine-gun, it is invaluable to have in that battalion a number of picked shots who can knock that machine-gun out. ”

“ Most of us try our hand at sniping, with more or less success—climbing up and down these hills in search of what we call "big game"—but although I am a tolerable shot myself, I [Pg 154] have come to the conclusion that your true sniper, like your true poet, is born, not made. I have heard it said that a good tennis-player makes a good sniper (providing he can shoot) because he has the knack of anticipating his opponent's movements. ”

“ We had, therefore, turned our minds to think out plans and "ruses by which the enemy might be persuaded to give us a target. We had noticed the extraordinary instinct of the German Officer to move to a flank, and thinking something might be made out of this, we collected all our officers and went back to the place where G. and I had spotted the Hun sniper or sentry at the end of the sap. ”

“ Freedom of movement is necessary to the observer, and as to the sniper, I always felt that it was wrong to send him out except on a definite quest, for the man behind the trench is always in a superior position to the man who is lying on open ground without any chance of escape.
So far I have dealt with what is known as front line observation ; but besides this we have to con¬sider the very wide subject of back area observation. The sniper's duty is to watch the enemy's front and support lines. ”

“ In sniping, as the movement grew and sections were formed, one relied to an enormous extent upon the skill of the section to which the individual sniper belonged. A really first-rate man in a bad section was thrown away. First-rate men under a moderate officer were thrown away, and, worse than all, a good section under a good officer, who were relieved by the slack and poor section of another battalion, often suffered heavy casualties through no fault of their own. ”

“ The observers on Nos. 2 and 3 Posts mostly concentrated their attention on the ground in the vicinity of the Pinnacle. From there a sniper was taking shots at any object which appeared above our parapets or at a loophole. Very rapid and accurate as he was, it was soon found that a certain amount of skill was required to camouflage and look through a periscope without having one's eyes destroyed with broken glass. ”

“ GUILTY The sniper is ever prevalent on the western front. A certain Colonel, who was by the way quite unpopular with his regiment, was one afternoon sitting in a shack, when a report was heard and a bullet whizzed over his head. ”

“ The Snipers can, by making each enemy periscope and loophole a target, render the enemy to a great extent blind in Front Line Observation. Before the actual assault has commenced, our snipers can be established in shell holes in “No Man’s Land” from which they can command any known machine-gun emplacements. They should always carry a few rounds of armour-piercing S.A.A., and should look upon the breech casing of the gun as their target rather than the gunners. ”

“ Then we learned the biscuit-tin-finder trick for locating snipers. It's only approximate, of course, but it gives a pretty good hint at the direction from which the shots come. It doesn't work in the daytime, for a sniper is too clever to fire at it. But a biscuit tin, set on the parapet at night in a badly sniped position, is almost certain to be hit. The angle from which the shots come is shown by the jagged edges of tin around the bullet holes. Then, as the Gloucester said, "Give 'im a nice little April shower out o' yer machine gun in that direction. ”

“ The enemy had an immense preponderance in trench weapons such as minenwerfer. The result was that a too successful bout of British sniping sometimes drew a bombardment. The activity of snipers was therefore not always welcome to short-sighted officers, who distinctly and naturally objected to the enemy riflemen calling in the assistance of the parapet-destroying engines of war, in which, they so outclassed us. ”

“ For killing or wounding an English private, the sniper gets one mark. For killing or wounding an English officer he gets five marks, but if he kills a Red Cap or English General, the sniper gets twenty-one days tied to the wheel of a limber as punishment for his carelessness. ”

“ Nine times out of ten a German sniper—there were many of them in the vicinity—would put a hole in it with a bullet.
These snipers caused us a great deal of trouble, particularly when we wanted water, which was procurable only at a little brook on our left flank. To get it was such a risky proposition that there were no “detail parties” formed in the daytime, and any one who went in quest of it, did so at his own risk. [Pg 150] Many a one who did so venture paid for his daring with his life. The snipers were always busy, even at night, and seemed to have a line on this spot. ”

“ But the actual teaching was only one side of the work of the school, for it was soon thoroughly known throughout the Army that if any Division, Brigade or Battalion wanted its telescopic sights tested, or if any individual sniper found himself shooting incorrectly, all that had to be done was to apply to the First Army Sniping School. The divisional snipers came up in ’busloads, and single snipers often came on foot. This continual testing of rifles kept Armourer Staff-Sergeant Carr busy both on the range and in his armourer’s shop. ”

“ It is wonderful what can be done in a single week by sixteen accurate shots along the length of line held by a battalion. You must understand also that the success of the German sniping rested largely upon the deeds of certain crack snipers, who thoroughly understood their work, and who each one of them caused us heavy casualties. The first work to be done in the trenches was the organized annihilation of these skilled German snipers, and I think this was the easier in that they had it their own way for so long. ”

“ When discovered, these snipers had in their possession enough food and water for a considerable period as well as an ample supply of ammunition. Although this seems a [16] murderous kind of warfare, there is no question as to the pluck of the sniper, of whatever nationality, for he has little chance of getting back to his comrades and small likelihood of quarter if caught. ”

“ It is not enough to see your man and have a "pot" at him, for the chances are that just as you let go, he stoops down to pick a pretty flower, or he stumbles over a scrub-root. Now, the successful sniper is he who anticipates that stumble, or with an uncanny sort of second sight sees that pretty flower which the enemy gentleman is going wantonly to pluck, and aims low accordingly. Only by some such sort of intelligent anticipation could some of our men have put up the astonishing records that stand to their credit. ”

“ In dealing with trench warfare sniping a very100 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 reason once advanced for claiming a hit was that the Germans had been shouting for stretcher-bearers, but a question as to what was the German word for stretcher-bearer brought confusion upon the young sniper, whose talents were promptly used elsewhere! ”

“ Only the man who actually was a sniper in the trenches in 1915 can know how hard the German was to overcome. At the end of 1914 there were, as I have said, 20,000 telescopic sights in the German Army, and the Duke of Ratibor did good work for the Fatherland when he collected all the sporting rifles in Germany (and there were thousands of them) and sent them to the Western front, which was already well equipped with the military issue.
The Sniper's End
Armed with these the German snipers were able to make wonderfully fine shooting. ”