During
World War I, snipers appeared as deadly sharpshooters in the trenches. At the start of the war, only
Imperial Germany had troops that were issued scoped sniper rifles. Although sharpshooters existed on all sides, the Germans specially equipped some of their soldiers with scoped rifles that could pick off enemy soldiers showing their heads out of their trench.
[8] At first the French and British believed such hits to be coincidental hits, until the German scoped rifles were discovered.
[8] During World War I, the Germans received a reputation for the deadliness and efficiency of their snipers, partly because of the high-quality lenses the Germans could manufacture.
[8]
Soon the British army began to train their own snipers in specialized sniper schools. Major
Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard was given formal permission to begin sniper training in 1915, and founded the
First Army School of Sniping, Observation, and Scouting at
Linghem in France in 1916.
[13] In 1920, he wrote his account of his war time activities in his book
Sniping in France, which is still referenced by modern authors on the subject.
[14][15][16] Hesketh-Prichard developed many techniques in sniping, including the use of spotting scopes and working in pairs, and using
Kim's Game to train observational skills.
[17] On the Eastern Front,
Imperial Russia never introduced specialized sharpshooters or snipers, allowing the German snipers to pick off their targets without danger from counter-snipers.
[8]
The British did use
papier-mâché figures painted to resemble soldiers to draw sniper fire. Some were equipped with rubber surgical tubing so the dummy could "smoke" a cigarette and thus appear realistic. Holes punched in the dummy by enemy sniper bullets then could be used for triangulation purposes to determine the position of the enemy sniper, who could then be attacked with
artillery fire.
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Originally Posted by PunitorMaximus
