THE SNIPER’S WAY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 290, 25 September 1915, Page 2

THE SNIPER’S WAY.

Sooner or later every German sniper gets known. The other day (says a correspondent) I was in a position which is less than 30 yards from the Bavarian lines. I sat down beside an Irishman, and chatted. In a piece of mirror stuck up on the parados 1 could see the Bavarians at a distance less than tli e distance of an ordinary thoroughfare. I was told that a whitebearded Alleman used to potter about, but that on account of his patriarchal expression and manners his life was spared by our fellows. Moved by a sudden impulse, I touched the mirror to move it. The next instant two bullets struck the sandbags of the parados on cither side of the glass. The Irishman laughed. “They can’t hit you the way you have your head now, sorr, ” he warned. “But don’t be raisin’ yourself.” Hours of ceaseless watching in that narrow, cramped-up space, with death the penalty for an unreflecting movement, roasted by the sun, pestered by flies—this is the daily porton of 7non fighting for “a mere scrap of paper.” The German snipers have been pickoff old Colonel Brown and young Lieutenant .Tones with, amazing regularity of late. And somehow the bland and childlike British officer never drops to the game. Colonel Brown is generally wanted about midnight. A voice calls along the trenches that Brown’s presence is so urgently needed at Dug-out GOG that, if ho doesn’t get to it with lightning-speed, his commission and military reputation will go straight to the dogs. Brown dashes to the end of the trench communcaticn, where lie is promptly shot, by a waiting sniper. Next night the game is repeated in another locality. Captain Smith or Lieutenant Jones is called upon by the voice to rush at once to the trench end, and the German sniper never fails them. The appalling losses among the officers in the lirq line is making an inquiry into tins method of warfare urgent. The German General Staff appears be well informed concerning the names and whereabouts of every officer and regiment at the front. It is about time, though, that Colonel Brown gets the habit of not being sniped at midnight, and refuses to go somewhere in the black darkness when tile voice asks him to hurry up.