Sniping in the Great war

[TonyE]

Sniping in the Great War by Martin Pegler

Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2008, ISBN 978 1 84415 755 6

Martin Pegler was Senior Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, and now retired from that post lives in France and in recent years has written several books on the history of sniping.

Having enjoyed his previous book Out of Nowhere: A History of the Military Sniper, I awaited the publication of this work with a sense of pleasant anticipation since it covered an aspect of the war that was of major interest to me.

Having now read it, regrettably I have to say that my overall reaction was one of disappointment. Rightly or wrongly, it gave me the impression of a book hurriedly put together to meet a publisher’s deadline.

A good book should inform, educate and entertain the reader, and to a large extent Pegler achieves this on one level. The book is well written and easy to read. The content is presented in a logical sequence, starting with a brief history of sniping since the invention of the rifle and an analysis of the combatants’ rifles, equipment and ammunition. He goes on to discuss the initial advantage enjoyed by the Germans and the deadly toll they took in the early part of the war. Further chapters deal with the belated British response, the pioneering work done by Hesketh-Prichard and others and the selection and training of snipers.

The book deals with the sniping war in Gallipoli as well as that on the western front and also gives due attention to the snipers of the Commonwealth forces. It contains a good selection of personal reminiscences and diary extracts and some fine illustrations.

My disappointment was twofold. There is little new in the book, and in fact the chapters dealing with the Great War in Out of Nowhere I thought far better than this work. Much of the story is contained in Hesketh-Prichard’s Sniping in France which perhaps demonstrates what a seminal work that is. My main criticism though is that the book contains a considerable number of errors of fact, particularly about the rifles and ammunition used.

Pegler’s outline of the development of the Lee Enfield contains errors and his history of British armour piercing ammunition is quite simply wrong. Similarly in a later chapter there is confusion when describing the features of the Mark III* SMLE. Also, surprisingly, there are simple errors of numbers. At one point he states that there were about 5,130 German snipers on the 25 mile long Somme front, “roughly one for every 800 yards of front”. In fact those numbers, if correct, work out to one every 8 yards. Similarly when discussing the newly formed Small Arms School at Bisley he says that by the end of 1915 1.5 million men had passed through the gates. This is hard to believe since in December 1915 the army was only 1.8 million strong.

Sniping in the Great War is not a bad book, it is actually quite a good book, but it is a careless book. Martin Pegler is an acknowledged expert on the history of sniping and is a far better weapons specialist than this book suggests. Some might say that these are minor errors that do not matter, but in a book that purports to carry the authority of the former Senior Curator of Firearms at the Royal Armouries they simply should not be there.

Regards

TonyE

[Rob Connolly]

I have to both agree and disagree with your analysis!

Having only finished reading this book yesterday, if I may pontificate further: I can't dispute what you say up to "My disappointment ...", but as someone with 0% knowledge of sniping on the Western Front, and who has not read Hesketh-Prichard, the majority of this book is completely new to me.

As to rifles and ammunition, I bow to your superior knowledge - I barely know which end of a rifle the bullet comes out of, and as for different ammunition types - Mr Pegler and yourself know a lot more than I do. Some of the technicalities caused a glaze to form over my eyes as I read ...

However! The assertion that a German "battalion had 8 Maxim guns compared to the British 2" did make my hackles rise somewhat, as did the depiction of British higher command as being hide-bound, reactionary or simply dim. The sense of "Only snipers stood between utter defeat and victory!" is also somewhat overdone, I feel.

I would say that if a reader did not know anything about sniping (like me), this is a good introduction. For the expert, your mileage may vary.

[west coast]

i`v just been reading through the "irish guards" first one hundred years. theres a small snippet on the high rate of casualties in the trenches from small arms fire because of the sodden state of the parapet. on the 10th jan `15 , Lt the earl of kingston sent up a telescopic -sighted rifle, the war diary, as kipling puts it,"mercifully blind to the dreadful years to come" thinks! "there should be many of these rifles used as long as the army is sitting in trenches". forgive me for giong way out of era/conflict, for anyone interested in 'sniping' ,one of the best small books i read on the subject was of sgt carlos hatchcock during the vietnam war. i think it was called 'sniper'??. very descriptive in field craft and stealth etc. .... sorry for the little off track, ww1 is still my number one interest......mike.