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Updated: May 16, 2025
It was a spot in which there was always a feeling of something dreadful being close at hand; there was an air of expectancy about it and one felt there was a marked atmosphere of nerves about. You might be sniped from the house opposite, or blown out of the windows by a seventeen-inch shell. You never know.
The small boy who had been sniped while trying to get the soldiers a drink lay stiff now, and my mind went back to the scene of the night before as I made a little space of a couple of yards in the corner of the crowded ward, with everyone lying on the floor, while the good priest anointed him just before he died.
From there they got canned food and material for repairs, but their operations were greatly impeded by the hostility of a band of men amidst the ruins of the town, who sniped them and tried to drive them away. At Mogador, they stayed and sent a boat ashore for water, and were nearly captured by an Arab ruse. Here too they got the Purple Death aboard, and sailed with it incubating in their blood.
A Scottish unit has been alongside of the Australians for a considerable time. I was told that an Australian working party, while digging a forward trench, was sniped continually by a German machine-gunner out in front of his own line in a shell-hole. One or two men were hit. The line on the flank of the working party happened to be held by Scottish troops.
There was to be no carnival of death on our side, no trusting to the "luck of the British Army," no headlong rush into the arms of destruction, no waving line of bayonets. The Boer was to play a hand with the cards he loves to deal. He was to be shelled and sniped. If he wanted straight-out fighting, he had to come out into the open and get it.
Both men shook hands with the factor, while the priest drew up the other chairs to the stove, which he replenished with a fresh supply of logs from the corner of the room. "But I guess we're birds of bad omen," Kars went on, addressing Murray in particular. "The neches are out on Bell River, and they sniped us right along down to within twenty miles of the Fort."
I also took a few of the more important prisoners, among them the governor of Ana. He was a cultivated middle-aged man who spoke no Arabic but quite good French. It was mid-afternoon when we started, and I hadn't the most remote idea where I would find a sufficient quantity of petrol. During the run back we were sniped at occasionally by Turks who were still hiding in the hills.
Having refitted his men and collected some of the more efficient of the new Yeomanry, he was off once more for a three weeks' circular tour in the direction of Zeerust. It is difficult to believe that the oldest inhabitant could have known more of the western side of the Transvaal, for there was hardly a track which he had not traversed or a kopje from which he had not been sniped.
I cannot understand why we were not sniped; logically we ought to have been; but, fortunately, the enemy were not logical on this occasion. We found the party of the Cheshires and then crept back. We were walking over the same ground where the recent bombing raid had taken place. I am glad the enemy did not do a stunt while we were there! Kerr and Telfer were behind us, wiring.
"Ver-re-well, young-fella-me-lad, if you can stand it I can," said the youngster, for he knew full well that to go from there to Sniper's Barn in broad daylight meant to expose himself to observation from "Germany," only about five hundred yards away, and with a fat chance of playing the part of "the sniper sniped." Without another word they departed.
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