CHAPTER VI. AN OBSERVER'S MEMORIES
AS I have already said, when sniping was started in the B.E.F., we owed our fairly rapid and certainly very definite success in the task of dominating the Hun to a single factor. Whereas the German sniper usually worked alone, we put up against him two men, one of whom, " A," used the telescope and kept a close watch for " targets " upon a good sector of the enemy's line, while " B," his comrade, used the rifle and shot at the " targets " which " A " found. The result was that at a hundred points along the line you could daily hear a conversation such as this :
A.—" Black Sandbags—left—two feet—'alf a 'Un's ?ead showing. D-! he's down ! "
B-—" Hope he'll come up again."
A.—" He's up ! "
B.—(Fires).
A- " Close shave—six inches high—bad luck, ole son! "
Now the total result of the above passage was in all probability not only that a German in the trench opposite had been fired at and missed, but that " A," the telescope man, had seen certain details which might prove of interest. These details " A," at once, as a matter of routine, entered in his log book. He enters the time—11.18 a.m. let us say. The place is C3d.25.85 on the squared map. So far all was simple ; but the next entry as to what he had seen was important. A Hun's head, or a yellow-bearded Hun, or an ugly Hun, meant nothing; but a Hun wearing a Prussian cockade, or a Hun wearing a helmet with No. 119 on the cover—these things were of importance, and soon, under instruction, sniper-observers gave up reporting black-bearded Germans who leaned over the parapet, and realized the value of the all-important game of identification. They entered besides the details already given, a note of the action taken and the result : In the case we have imagined, " Fired one shot—missed."
It will be further understood that a sniper's observer (and do not forget that the observer's work is much the more trying, and that " A " and " B " change places every twenty minutes to rest the observer's eyes), saw a great many things happen in the enemy lines which did not come under the heading of " targets." Earth being thrown up usually meant work in progress. The occurrence was, of course, noted down in the log book, with a map reference at which it took place and the spot, if worth while, bombarded with trench mortars. Or the observer might spot a machine-gun emplacement, or locate a minenwerfer.
But it will be seen that the possibilities are endless, and as the war went on the snipers provided a mass of detail, much of which was confirmed by raids and identifications taken from prisoners or from the dead, and very little could happen near the enemy's front lines without our Intelligence being at once aware of it. An interesting question which arose was whether a sniper should enter deductions as well as facts in his reports, and this question was often asked me. The reply was that he should invariably do this provided he marked his deductions very clearly as such.
The most brilliant piece of deduction that I came across was that of an officer in the Royal Warwick¬shire Regiment, and it had a remarkable sequel. At one point of a supposed disused trench, a cat was ob¬served sunning itself upon the parados. This was duly reported by the observant sniper, and in his log book for three or four days running came a note of this tortoise-shell cat sunning itself, always at the same spot.
The Intelligence and Sniping Officer of the battalion, on reading his entries, made his deduction, to wit, that the cat probably lived near by. Now at that part of the British line there was a terrible plague of rats which was probably at least as troublesome upon the German side. So our officer deduced that the cat was a luxury, and that this being so, it had most certainly been commandeered or annexed by enemy officers and probably lived in some enemy officer's headquarters—possibly a company commander's dugout.
Some aeroplane photographs were next taken and studied, with a result that an enemy headquarters was discovered, located and duly dealt with by one of the batteries of howitzers which made a speciality of such shoots.
I give the full details of this incident in a later chapter. In fact, in trench warfare there was a great deal of scope for deduction.
