Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

113 Chapter Ten War and its Aftermath So, at the start of 1915 Hex was at a desk in the War Office, having been appointed an Assistant Press Officer, censoring news rather than passing it on. At the beginning of the war the Army had attempted to put very tight curbs on news and no press correspondents were allowed in the war zone. One thing that the Army had learned was that reporters couldn’t make you look stupid if they didn’t know what was going on, so they did not want anybody sending back actual reports from the front: everything was to be sanitised. But this was not going down well at home, and the reports that the War Office put out under the name of Eyewitness , virtually devoid of information, were not taken seriously by anybody. So the War Office decided to allow six correspondents with selected officers appointed as their minders, and Hex went out to France as one of those minders. The technique was in some ways ahead of its time: as in recent years we have seen ‘embedded’ journalists who go native, fully accepting the values and approach of the units which they join. Hex arrived at GHQ in France on 1 March 1915, and escorted reporters to the front, then went back to GHQ and ‘extracted from the day’s operations what can safely be communicated to the press’ . In May he was not too busy to write to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who had of course been a survivor of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition and ultimately wrote about it in the classic The Worst Journey in the World. Hex wrote about his wartime experiences so far and about a proposed meeting. Immediately, escorting correspondents who had little idea about trench warfare, and writing of one who within 200 yards of the enemy was asking questions in ‘a high and penetrating voice’, Hex became all too aware of the importance of sniping. He wrote ‘it is not only by the casualties that one can judge the value of sniping. If your trench is dominated by enemy snipers, life in it is really a very hard thing, and moral must inevitably suffer.’ 57 The Germans had seen it, and in 1915 the German Army had adapted 18,000 Gewehr 98 rifles to fit telescopic sights. The British Army had none of these, but on returning to the front, in May 1915, Hex took with him a number of rifles fitted with telescopic sights, either his own or borrowed from friends, and carrying one with him at all times. Hex remarks that for game shooting he felt a telescopic sight was somewhat unsporting, but that it was useful to ensure when shooting rabbits that the animal was killed rather than wounded. But one of the lessons being learned in France 57 H.Hesketh Prichard, Sniping in France: 1914-1918, Hutchinson and Co, 1920, p.2.