I still think this is the most sensible and effective method I have heard. The sentry called Halt! If the command was not obeyed it was repeated, if still disregarded the sentry shot without further parley. If the command was obeyed and the party halted, then the sentry commanded, “Advance one”, then one man of the party advanced close enough to be recognized or identified by the sentry. “Pass friend”. The sentry carried this out from cover or concealment when possible. I tried it out the next night and they certainly did not wait for a second command when challenged.
After two nights here we were sent in again with some of the London Rifle Brigade. Here was a contrast. Their breast’works were poorly built, there were no board walks in the bottom of their trench, and they slopped along through the water and stood ankle deep in it. Their shelters from the weather were very poor, leaky and wet. The men stood humped up shivering with wool scarf’s wound around their necks on sentry, snapping and snarling like husky dogs. The officers and sergeants prowled up and down steadily, every time they passed you could hear some poor private being browbeaten, lectured savagely always ending up with the old refrain. “Take that mans name sergeant, and the poor devil was put on the crime list ending up in the orderly room next morning for more browbeating or worse. They sure did love one another in that outfit. Holy Mackerel! It was all discipline and no brains there, with a vengeance.
Col. Lipsett had some of the boys build a log cabin in Canadian style about a quarter mile back of the line before we left the Plug Street Wood. We had lots of lumberjacks in our outfit and that was a treat for them.
Labutillere
After finishing our term of schooling in trench routine we were shipped to Fleur Baix and took over a section of front line trench on our own at a place by the name of Labutillere just to the left of Neuve Chapelle.
Here the scouts got busy in real earnest, and we worked day and night during the eight-day terms that the battalion was in the front trench. When our battalion was out of the line in supports, we rode up on bicycles working day and night behind and in front of the other units of the 2nd Brigade.
I was put on sniping as soon as we went in, varying this with some observation work, panoramic sketching from points of vantage during daylight, and at night going out on patrols with the scouts between the opposing front lines in what was known as no mans land.
We were the only battalion scouts in the brigade at that time that is the reason we were used on the time and frontage of the other units. Some of the other battalions had what they called company scouts but they were under their respective company commanders and not in a position to get trained or organized in any effective way.
The ground here was low and wet making it impossible to dig trenches, so the front and support lines were built up with sand bags to about shoulder high. This breast’work or parapet had loop holes in it near the top for shooting through. We used to stuff an empty sack into the hole when it was not in use. This kept the light from showing movement behind.
We used crude methods in those early days. Some of the men who came out in 1917 and 1918 will no doubt laugh at some of them, but we did the best we knew how, making use of what was available for offense and defense, and that was not much, I can tell you.
We had a couple of batteries of thirteen pounders (horse artillery) in the hedge rows and willow clumps a few hundred yards behind the front. Further back there were just two sixty pounders that we had brought from Valcartier and one of them blew up quite early in the game. That was the sum total of our artillery support. For machine guns we had three colts guns to a battalion, and we later got hold of an old Vickers maxim and nursed it into service. Brigade M G Cox’s, Div, and M. G. Corps along with various other able supports were unheard of. For hand grenades, we had milk and jam tins filled with any kind of small scrap, loaded with a bursting charge, and with a fuse attachment that had to be lit with a match.
There was another elaborate sort of rig called the hair brush bomb, so called because it had a flat handle and a wee wooden box built on one side were the brush part would be in a long handled hair brush. This was lit the same way. There were generally some men behind in a dugout or shelter on fine days busy at the manufacture of these weapons.
The trenches were anywhere from 200 to 500 yards apart along this sector and the first few days I certainly took a very keen interest in bombarding anything that looked as though it would do for a target. I had a long Mk 3 Ross with an aperture sight on the receiver bridge and hooded front blade sight. It had a perfect barrel making for some wonderful shots and I enjoyed myself immensely.
As yet we took it all in good spirits and more in fun than otherwise. I remember how we used to laugh about it when Fritz occasionally spread a salvo of whiz bangs or 16 lb shells along our trench and made the sand bags fly.
I got a lesson quite early in the game that set me to thinking, leading me to temper my enthusiasm with the use of a little caution and better judgment. I had been doing a lot of target practice from one particular loophole. There was a stove pipe sticking up over the German parapet a foot or two, ordinary stove pipe. When Fritz fogged up the stove good to boil his kettle at meal time I used to slam a bullet through the pipe and Fritz would choke of the smoke right away. These sort of games went on for a couple of days until one day I had just fired two or three rounds from aforesaid favorite loop hole, got down to one side, a shade lower and was busy with the pull through cleaning my rifle –when–Crack-Snap -Crack- Snap-just like that. Two bullets came through the loophole and two came through the top of the breast’work right where my head would have been a minute before.
This was real shooting (by gum) and carried out by two real snipers working as a team. I began to watch for any well-aimed shots that came over and tried to dope out the spot they came from with the view to making a comeback that would count. We found out some months later that these snipers had all along been equipped with telescopic sights and powerful glasses for spotting us, and furthermore were organized into companies and relieved by sections in the line at regular periods. The relief coming in took over posts, information gathered and range cards of the ground on their front. The wonder is that we held our own so well and even at times got them cowed down so that some days there was scarcely a German bullet came over our lines.
Sniping was a deadly business the first two years of the war and the toll taken that way was heavy. There were a number of reasons for this. Communication trenches at that time were non-existent or at best in very poor repair and shallow. The men were comparatively new at the war game and took more foolish chances than necessary. They were often taking short cuts across open ground in daylight and in other ways exposing themselves. Three seconds exposure in daylight is time enough for a trained sniper to get in his shot. Then the new men were unnecessarily noisy when reliefs were on, careless about making smoke, showing movement and lights. All these things drew hostile fire and the sum total of loss from these causes over given periods was heavy.
This applied to both sides for there were few days that we did not have something to write into the sniping report that had to be sent in nightly. All shots were checked by an observer with a telescope that worked along side the sniper and verified hits and helped to locate targets.
Sergeant Knobel got busy as soon as we arrived on this front putting out night patrols between the opposing lines to gather information about the lay of the land, the enemy’s wire entanglements, position of their listening posts and activity of their moving patrols if any.
One night while up close to the German trench in a muddy flat piece of ground covered with Indian corn stumps or stubble our patrol must have been heard or dimly seen. Perhaps the sentries fancied they heard or saw something for they began to shoot up flare lights one after another and then started to sweep the ground with machine guns. We felt we could crawl into a rat hole if one was handy. The tearing ripping sweep of these guns would come roaring and snapping
