I had here an experience of being a sniper. I was on sentry-go in the front line one morning when an N.C.O. came up to me and inquired "what class shot" I was. I replied "first class"--which I was. "All right," he said, "you're the man we want. Come with me to the Captain." After putting another man on sentry, I followed him. He stated my qualifications to the Captain. "Just the man!" says the Captain; "the reason I sent for you is that we are persistently being troubled by a sniper, and I wish you to crawl out in front and bag him." "Very good, sir," said I--no good saying anything else; so I asked him the position he thought the German was firing from. "Half right," said he; "if you watch closely until those leaves blow aside, you will see his head"; which I did after a minute or so. "I want you to get that man," said the Captain. Off I crept over the top with loaded rifle, and, after going a couple of hundred yards, I lay down and waited, rifle ready cocked. As soon as the leaves moved I let drive my whole magazine at him. Then I waited again. The leaves moved once more, so he was still there. I got suspicious and crawled nearer; but found no enemy sniper--nothing but a post stuck in the ground! No more sniping for me! Our stay on the Aisne was drawing to a close, but I heard afterwards that two civilians--one an old man and the other a girl--had been shot as spies, the man for working an underground telephone and the girl for sending off carrier-pigeons. These people had lived the whole time along with other civilians in the little village behind the line; they were found out by the French Division who relieved us. Every day, as regular as clockwork, the enemy had shelled us for an hour after daybreak, and for an hour at midday, and again another hour at dusk, with an occasional burst during the night. Rifle-fire was always plentiful on the Aisne at night on both sides. We left the Aisne in the small hours of the morning of the sixteenth of October, being relieved by a French Division, after we had been in the trenches the whole of the time since the battle of the fourteenth of September. Whilst the French Division was coming up at midnight with the utmost quietness and on a pitch-black night, the enemy poured shrapnel into them, causing the loss of fifty-two to that Division, which simply went to show that the Germans had a pretty good idea of what was afloat. That morning we marched to Braine, and there we entrained for what we all thought was going to be a rest, but really proved to be a harder task than anything we had had before. CHAPTER VI THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES