The men love to get these glimpses of the Germans. When the line is quiet, and the messages, “Nothing to report,” accumulate in piles on the table in the Operations Section of the General Staff, sniping is a welcome break in the monotony of trench life. I was in the trenches of the Leinster Regiment one day and presently found myself in an outpost established in the ruins of a farm which was only some 15 yards from the enemy. As it was not desired that the Germans should know the farm was occupied, the men in the outpost had strict injunctions that they were not to fire except in case of an attack. The men squatting in a narrow trench--to have raised oneself to one’s full height would have meant instant death--showed me the German trench a stone’s-throw away in a periscope. “’Tis a pity we mayn’t shoot now,” they whispered to me. “D’ye see that bit of tree beyond there? Sure, the Allemans is always potterin’ about there. There’s a fine big fellow with great whiskers on him comes out of that sometimes. Faith! you couldn’t miss him!” They spoke with such regret that I almost laughed. The Leinsters had given all the German snipers names. One, believed to be established in a tree, was known as Peter Weber, another was Hans, another Fritz. One of the Leinsters, an excellent marksman, spent the whole of his spare time sniping. He had his little corner, and when he came back he used to regale his friends with fabulous stories of old Germans with long white beards that he had seen. He had “got” an officer the morning of the day I was in those trenches, and the “frightfulness,” which always follows after a sniper’s bullet has found its billet, went on with great regularity all through the afternoon in the shape of half-hourly salvoes of whizz-bangs. The sniper’s job is no sinecure. Both sides are always engaged in trying to locate snipers, and once a sniper’s nest is discovered, a few rounds with a machine-gun will generally bring him down, however well concealed he may be. A sniper never knows but that an enemy marksman has found him out, and is waiting, finger on trigger, for the slightest movement on his quarry’s part to pick him off. Sniping is an integral part of trench warfare. The Germans attach so much importance to it that they have not hesitated to issue expensive telescopic-sight rifles to their picked marksmen. They keep machine-guns and clamped rifles trained on certain spots, and a man always ready to open fire immediately a movement becomes visible over a certain measured space with a good background. A certain amount of wastage from sniping is inevitable. The trench lines wind so much that it is not always possible to make trenches secure from every angle of fire. We have to buy our experience, and I have passed in our trenches many a newly heightened parapet or freshly constructed traverse, the price of which was a man’s life.