GRIM RETALIATION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 150, 14 March 1918, Page 5

GRIM RETALIATION

A BRITISH SNIPER AT WORK

A DEADLY GAME

Tho British soldier has never taken kindly to sniping. The idea of deliberately shooting down an unsuspecting man is wholly foreign to hie nature. At the start of the war he knew little or nothing about the subject, with the result that the German sniper at first had things pretty much his own way. Tho German came- on the scene fully trained and equipped. He operated under the most favourable conditions for successful sniping—undeveloped trench systems, broad, unexplored No Man's Land, abundance of natural cover —and he took the fullest advantage of his opportunities. The number of times his name received mention in unofficial casualty reports during tho early months of the war was simply appalling. The natural reply was the British sniper. Retaliation is the only means of combating any hostile activity. Gradually the British sniping sections developed. The Jaeger was driven from No Man's Land and forced to take refuge behind steel-plate and concrete, and his notoriety faded away. The Briton is a slow starter, but a sure, stayer. Onco embarked on a sniping career ho soon attained to a pitch, of efficiency before which the beet of the enemy sharpshooters broke, and today the unfortunate German infantry are being repaid tenfold for the havoc wrought by their Jaeger brethren at the beginning cf the war. The Briton does not like the work. But for the activities of the German sniper when the latter had no organised opposition, sniping would not be the deadly scientific method of warfare which it is today. A council of war is taking place in the sniping officer's dug-out. The evening "stand-to" has just been finished. Aeroplane maps of the 6ector are being carefully studied, and the officer is speaking earnestly to the men assembled. Five men are present besides the officer. They are the super-snipers of tho section, men who hunied the Jaeger before snipers were officially recognised as a regimental unit, and who from tho experience of many months' campaigning in the salient have now garnered a store of sniper-craft which no German can equal. Three of them were present at the retreat from Mons. One of them, the corporal, saw his wounded son shot down by an enemy sniper, after tho ill-fated fighting near the Petit Bois in the spring of 1915. Tho officer always calls them into consultation when any important project is on hand, for' the section is managed on the linos of a brotherhood, with those most worthy as its council of elders. Half an hour later, armed with picks and shovels, the six set out for the firing-line. .Their task is finished with the first flush of dawn. A small sap has been dug from the firing-line to a slight rise in No Man's Land, and here a four-loopholed sniping post has been made, cunningly camouflaged with the careful skill of men who know that their lives depend on their expertness. The rise at best is only a foot or bo above the level of the parapet. But in the low levels of Flanders an elevation of a foot may represent the difference between observing and being observed, and from the loopholes of the sap the snipers command the upper portion of the German main communication trench. The aeroplane maps had given the sniper officer the hint, and now any German soldiers walking in the tenyard stretch between e their firing-line and the first traverse, or showing themselves above the parados of the further reaches of the trench are at tho mercy of his men.

A Gorman working party is coming up the trench. Their progress can be traced by the shovels and mattocks appearing above the parados. "Hold your fire till tho trench in front is full of them," said the sniper officer quietly. "You and I, Corporal, will take the fore half. Haggarty and Saunders cover the rest. Bo ready to switch on to the beads behind the traverses."

Hound the nearest traverso into the exposed portion of the trench swings a German officer. The rays of the early morning sun sparkle on the shiny peak of his eap, and light up his red healthy face. Behind him come a string of grey-blue figures, burdened with. trench tools and material. The front-line parapet creeps up to the ' officer's neck as he leads the party forward. Behind him the trench is awriggle with waving spades and heads. "l''irel" whisper? the sniper-officer. The reports of the , rifles cut short the word of command. The corporal's first shot takes the German officer in the forehead, and lie disappears beneath tho falling forms of his men. Before the Germans in the rear of the party realise what is happening a scattered' volley flicks their heads away from the parados. Four of them wbo escape come blundering round the traverse and sprawl over the forms of their fallen comrades. Four shots ring out, and they cease their sprawling. The German officer at tho rear of the party crawls cautiously out of the treuch to see what lias happened to the van. Before he has cratyled a yard a bullet stretches him lifeless across the parados. The surprise has boeri complote, and tho working party is annihilated. From the sniping post the British snipers can see a dishevelled grey-bluo mass in the trench, like a heap of sandbags dislodged by a shell from the parapet.. The black peaked cap of the dead German officer shot at the rear of the column has fallen from his head, and but for the shiny bald spot in the centre of his close-cropped crown ho would have been indistinguishable from the dull grey sandbagging on. which he lies. The cries of dismay from the survivors are fading away down tho trench.

The four snipers crawl back to the firjng-line. ■ It has been the greatest sniping success of their career, but no sign of jubilation shows in their attitude, "l'uir deevils!" says theooled e Scottish corporal—the man who saw his° wounded son sniped down by the Petit Bois.