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It was not the time or place to hang about, so I hurried to the trench-mortar pit to finish my scenes whilst daylight lasted. I met the officer in charge of the T.M. "Keep your head down," he shouted, as I turned round a traverse. "Our parapet has been practically wiped out, and there is a sniper in the far corner of the village.
"Don't think of this as meant primarily to kill," says the Chief of the School, as he walks beside me "it is meant primarily to protect. We lost our best men young and promising officers in particular by the score before we learnt the tricks of the German 'sniper' and how to meet them." German "sniping," as our guide explains, is by no means all tricks.
Now it was nothing more than a heap of rubble. We waited for the remainder of the party to come up before proceeding, the idea being that in case either of us was hit by shrapnel, or picked off by a sniper, no time would be lost in rendering assistance. Resting awhile, we again proceeded in the same order as before.
Anything doing?" "Yes," I replied. "H.Q. says they are 'blowing' in the early morning, so I decided to come along to-night and fix up a good position for the camera, not desiring to attract the too earnest attentions of a Bosche sniper." "Whose mine are they blowing?" said he. "I suppose I shall hear any moment." Just then a message came through on the 'phone.
He had thought of the sniper as of one whose shooting is done peculiarly in cold blood, and he was surprised and pleased to find his friend in this romantic and noble rôle of holding back, single-handed, as it were, these vile agents of agonizing death. Arsenic!
"Stand-to" is the name given to the sunrise hour, and again that hour at night when every man stands to the parapet in full equipment and with fixed bayonet. After morning stand-to bayonets are unfixed, for if the sunlight should glint upon the polished steel our position might be disclosed to some sniper.
That meant in our clothes, with our belts and ammunition strapped on, ready to march at a moment's notice. There was a good bed, but it was sleep in your boots for me. The fact that a blighter of a sniper kept firing off three or four rounds of rapid fire at my headquarters every few minutes, his bullets rattling on the brick wall close to my window, was not very conducive to sleep or good temper.
Had a sniper with a blast rifle been stationed at a vantage point somewhere on the roofs today none of them would ever have returned to this field. And even a few spacemen with good cover and accurate throwing aim could have cut down their number a quarter or a third. He was developing a strong distaste for those structures. And he had no intention of returning to the city again.
He stepped for just a moment into the open; for just a moment he exposed himself, as he had to do, no doubt, to do his duty. And a German sniper, watching for just such chances, caught a glimpse of him. His rifle spoke; its bullet pierced John's brave and gentle heart. Tate, John's body-servant, a man from our own town, was the first to reach him.
If their eye caught the flash of a rifle, the instantly vanishing spurt of haze or hot air too thin and filmy to be called smoke that spot was marked down, long and careful search made for the hidden sniper, and a sort of Bisley 'disappearing target' shoot commenced, until the opponent was either hit or driven to abandon his position.
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