My maternal grandfather volunteered for the British Army in September 1914, along with his younger brother. He was sent off to the 16th (Public Schools) Service Battalion (the Duke of Cambridge’s Own) Middlesex Battalion. He became a battalion sniper; he was a talented football player and very good shot.
When aged around nine years old I recall him telling me about the trenches and his sniping. He did not enjoy the taking of another's life in what was, for that war, a somewhat personal way. I also recall him telling me about spotters who would stand out in no mans land inside a made up tree. I researched this and apparently a suitable tree remnant would be reproduced by the Royal Engineers from a metal cage with a hessian or similar material around it, then painted and made to look as much like the real thing as possible. The real tree would then be extricated during the night and replaced by the replica, into which was inserted a spotter, who reported back to the sniper with potential targets.
Like many Englishmen he went over the top on 1 July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, near Beaumont Hamel. He was injured and lay in a shell hole out in no mans land under the burning sun. He was a religious man anyway and there he prayed and promised God that if he survived he would devote the rest of his life to the church. When early evening came he crawled to another shell hole, where he had heard someone crying out. Together they crawled back to their battalion lines. He was sent back to England and eventually re-joined his regiment for the rest of the war. He subsequently went to theological college and was ordained as a Methodist minister, devoting the rest of his life to God, as he promised.
And what has this to do with Lee Enfield's? He would have used one to snipe with. And when I was thirteen, in the mid 1960s, I became a member of my schools shooting team, using the .303 Short Magazine Lee Enfield No 4 service rifle, fitted with target sights. I ended up in the shooting VIII, shot at Bisley and subsequently went on to shoot for my own Regimental shooting team when I served.
Must run in the genes!
Tim
