SNIPERS CUNNING

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2688, 7 February 1916, Page 8

SNIPERS CUNNING

THE FATE OF THE NEW HAND. I These ' nico "& boys," full of enthusiasm and energy, and what they believe pAV™! I ? B ( ,^ tes - Jlr ' Prevost Battersby in the Morning Post"), come mto the trenones each determined to account for a German at the earliest possible moment, with the. result that » ne^ My ' the P erman a«*onnts roi tan. "no youngster geneially be?n?i y f SS ?! ns What he takes to bs the spike of a German helmet. The Germans do not,-as a matter of fact, wear helmets in their fire trenches, but, being posted m the fact that a new army battalion, quite, greeii to the business tbm, tl" ° Vertr l enches front of them, they supply the particular . bait for whidh, their subtlety tells them a man new to tlie work will be most anxiously looking. Even if the vounrr. ster has been, told that caps, and not helmots, are the enemy's wearing, this &?, V hat ° b^oUßl y * a will only the more rivet his attention, as prooi that some sort of superior anil exceptional being is making a round of the lines. Ho sees the spiko again, and beneatlf t am ]f > +| SOn p tllil,S & -° SSy black Deneath it. If the German is an artist he may even, reraov,e the spiko as though fearing detection, a p i ece 0 f iaading winch, of course, only makes the youngster .keener. He now trains his. riile with infinite care on the suspicious spot, and waits for the reappearance of the helmet. This is sure to take place from a slightly different direction which compels him to alter the line of ' his rifle, arid the arrangemont Oio has inado m ills "cunning" to secure his observation. This happens several times, ho becomes bored by the frequent changes it involves in his protective devices, and grows more careless each time in replacing them-. • At lost, when his eagerness in keeping his : sigjits on the object Las made his concealment quite peifun'ctory, the top of the helmet slowly rises above the opposite parapet; he leans his cheek against the butt of his. rifle, increases the pressure of the second joint of his forefinger, and falls back dead with a bullet through the brain. It is to prevent the recurrence of that sort of catastrophe that the joung idea is being trained in German trickery, whidh tihus sots its bait of a helmet while wat-ching from quite different positions for the rise of the untutored fish. '