MY FIRST SHOT

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 14068, 26 November 1918, Page 3

MY FIRST SHOT

"S.T.W." writes in the London "Daily Mail:— I expect that every infantry soldier remembers the circumstances in which he ficred his first shot at th t > enemy. To me it was a momentous occasion; I had trained and lived, marched and dug, for a twelvemonth with the one object of getting fit, to take my place in the trenches, but I had not done anything up till then which actually endangered the life of a German. But with my first shot all that was changed: I was an enemy to be reckoned with, and in return for risking my life I had the chance of taking the life of a Hun.

My first shot was fired on a December night in .1915. How carefully I charged the magazine of my rifle, and transferred one round to the breech! " How firmly I. planted myself on the firestep and rested my rifle on a wet sandbag, taking careful aim at a spot where I reckoned the German parapet Avould be —I had not seen it up till then, for it was my first night in 11k 1 trenches. How loud the report sounded to me when at length I pulled the trigger, in the silence which is n® more profound than at night in the trenches in the intervals of firing. And the flash seemed sufficient to indicate my exact position to the enemy, though he was 400 hundred yards away. Of course nothing would suit me after that but that I must fire away nine more rounds straight off the reel, until a stream of machine-gun bullets playing along our parapet showed that I had drawn the attention of some vigilant sentry to my efforts to annihilate the German Army. Since then I have always been interested in watching new men fire their first round at the Germans —generally at night. One and all attach great importance to the event; some men fire as soon as possible, in a "Now I am really her% lot's get busy" spirit, wholly admirable; others wait till the breaking dawn gives them a more or less distinct target. One man, I remember, said to me as he mounted the firestep, "Xow I'll fire a shot,'' as much as to say, "This war has gone on long enough, it's time it was stopped. " I also recollect one man in the old trench-warfare who heard a cornet being played in the German line during his first night in the trenches. "I'll soon stop that," he. said. Sure enough, no more was heard of the cornet after he had fired, and he was as proud as a peacock for days afterwards, claiming in all seriousness that he had winged that German musician, or, at least, his cornet.