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Updated: May 8, 2025
We found later on that the road we had taken did go to the village that we wanted to visit but that it went through the German trenches en route. At the point where we had turned, which was only four hundred yards from the German trenches, thirty men had been killed by snipers during that month while getting water at one of the wells in the neighborhood.
Each was determined to give a good account of himself should his presence be discovered. It was unusually quiet along the front this night. It was too dark for opposing "snipers" sharpshooters to get in their work, and the voices of the big guns, which, almost incessantly for the last few weeks, had hurled shells across the intervening distance between the two lines of trenches, were stilled.
As the guns and tripods were very conspicuous objects they naturally became the especial targets for enemy riflemen and snipers and the casualties among machine gunners ran far above the average for other troops. It was this that caused the Emma Gee sections to be named Suicide Clubs.
The enemy were only thirty yards away, and we could often hear them shouting at us and would answer back. Many of our men were hit by snipers, while the shelling was often terrific, but we stuck on, as we were holding a part of an important military position.
Several soldiers were staying at the "Metropole," and as I saw the Sinn Feiners watching us, I suggested their changing the khaki into mufti, if only for the safety of the civilians for on all sides soldiers were being shot at sight by snipers a suggestion which found acceptance, for most of the officers were young subalterns on leave, and therefore unarmed.
On his map Zaidos marked the positions of the guns with an A. Behind the snipers are the barbed wire entanglements, a nightmare of tumbled wires piled high in cruel confusion. Close behind this are the observation trenches. There was no firing from these small trenches; they were simply what the name implied: look-outs.
Passing over to the Su wang-fu, you realise the extraordinary difference between the danger points along the British Legation northern and western barricades, and little Colonel S 's command. Here you are in direct touch with the enemy, for the snipers of forty-eight hours ago have been strongly reinforced, doubtless attracted by the possibility of loot.
Much patrolling was done to discover the exact position of the enemy's forward posts, while the snipers of D Company from their commanding position in Guillemont Farm claimed several victims. At sunset on the 29th the 7th Worcesters relieved us, and we went back into billets at Villers-Faucon. The long winter had ended, and spring arrived with a burst of sun and warmth.
On one occasion when he had crawled out and into a building to collect wood, as he crawled back through the doorway we saw little clouds of dust rising from the brick-work surrounding him, which showed that the enemy's snipers had spotted him, and we shouted to him from the trench to "keep down."
Our artillery had made things unbearable for the Germans by this time, and they pulled out, leaving only a few snipers to harass us. McMurchie crawled over with a bomb and brought two of the snipers back with him.
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