Sniping in France 1914-18. With Notes on the Scientific Training of Scouts, Observers and Snipers.

Publisher Supplied Statement: Sniping in France provides a detailed and richly-informative account of how the snipers of the Great War British army trained and fought, and measures taken against their German counterparts. The author was responsible for organizing a cohesive structure to the training of the snipers via the First Army School of Scouting, Observation and Sniping, established in 1916.

Sniping in France 1914-18. With Notes on the Scientific Training of Scouts, Observers and Snipers.

By Major H. Hesketh-Prichard D.S.O. M.C.

Helion & Company Limited, 176 pages, hard cover

Originally written in 1920, this book will be re-released in March of 2004 by Helion as part of the Helion Library of the Great War Volume 1.

(The reviewed copy is from the 1993 reprint that was obtained from a library)

Okay, imagine this. It’s 1915 and you are an English solider of the BEF in the trenches in WW1 France. You have only been on the line for a week. During that time, you have barely seen anything of an enemy of any sort. It is such a nice day right now. Finally, it gets to be too much, so you very slowly raise your head to take a peek over the nice neat English sandbag parapet….you see the German trenches about 200 yards away…funny, their sandbags are all jumbled and scattered looking. Then…...it is the last thing you see, because in that scant minute you are hit smack in the forehead by a Mauser bullet that keyholes on impact and scrambles your brain. Your body slumps forward. It’s over.

Such is the story that is told over and over by the author of this book on sniping in WW1 France. Except the story is told from both ways. A German officer gets too bold and pops up for a quick peek with his binoculars….his life ends the same way as described above. The author of the book is the original developer of the SOS (Sniping and Observation School) for the BEF (British Expeditionary Forces) in France starting in about 1915 and he describes the death by sniper fire of both British and German soldiers in a near nonchalant way.

The book is written in a sort of “instruction manual” way, with comparisons of sniping techniques on both the British and German sides, descriptions of actual events of snipers picking off and being picked off by both sides as well as the development of a Sniping and Observation school (a 14 day school) for the First Army in 1916 where top notch soldiers are taught how to correctly use a rifle scope and a spotting scope. The author starts out by simply stating that in 1915, the Germans were far advanced in both their sniping armament and technique, whereas the British were so ill prepared that many of their scoped rifles had not even been sighted in nor were being used by trained soldiers. As the war progressed, however, the BEF became very well trained in sniping and observation and took the advantage away from the German snipers because of better tactics and training.

He points out that even though there is an importance to have snipers taking out enemy soldiers, officers and machine guns (that is the gun itself), it is actually the spotter, working in tandem with the sniper, who has a much critical role to play in intelligence gathering. He describes a number of instances where something the spotter sees through his “glass” makes him call in artillery fire on targets or thwart off enemy attacks before they occur.

The author goes into great detail about the importance of a snipers “robe” (camouflage coat) and the building of “OPs” (Observation Posts) and “loopholes” (shooting holes in the trench wall) to help in the use of snipers and observers. In the opening paragraph above, the fact that the British had nice neat flat sandbag tops to their trenches proved very deadly indeed to many a curious solider in the early part of the war. Alternatively, the German side was very apt to build rugged and jumbled sand bag walls, there by breaking up the outline of the top of someone’s hat or head. There are also chapters on the training of Portuguese Expeditionary Force snipers and excerpts from training manuals.

The author does not really go into the armament details all that much, other than stating that in order to overcome the armor plating that some of the German soldiers and snipers used, some BEF soldiers made use of large game – large bore rifles and punched holes right through the plating. There is a section on the British Pattern 14 rifle, its maintenance requirements as well as how to correctly use the iron sights (before soldiers were trained on how to use a scoped rifle, they had to prove that they could shoot with iron sights first). He states that the Pattern 14 rifle was better suited for precision shooting because it used a better sighting system then the SMLE rifles of the time.

His writing contains, in some cases, purely English “slang” at the time and I found myself wondering what the heck he was trying to say, but eventually got the idea. Even so, the author’s style of writing is very readable.

Originally published in 1920, the book includes sketches and photographs to help illustrate what the author is discussing.