Free Inside the Crosshairs by Col. Michael Lee Lanning

American Civil War, in which generals frequented the front lines and artillery crews were easily visible, World War I found senior officers only in rear areas and artillery placed mostly out of sniper range. As a result, the primary targets of snipers on both sides were junior frontline officers and regular infantrymen—as well as their counterpart marksmen on the other side of no-man’s-land.
    Most of the noted snipers of the period were officers who gained their recognition through postwar writings. Many in uniform, as well as the civilian population, still saw the sniper as a somewhat sinister character who killed indifferently from a great distance. Most accounts of successful World War I snipers mention the number of their kills without providing complete identifications of the shooters. Several World War I sniper stories mention a “former Canadian trapper” who claimed 125 kills but do not include his name.
    In 1915, a Viennese newspaper printed an account of German snipers identified only by their last names. According to the article, German “Private Herrenreiter” had accounted for 121 sniper kills of French soldiers. It also claimed that a sniper by the name of “Fark” killed sixty-three Russians in a single day. †
    The late entry in the war of the United States limited its opportunities to innovate sniper operations, but the influence of the single, well-aimed shot, both outgoing and incoming, made an impression on those who occupied the trenches.American snipers talked and wrote little about their work, and few first-person stories of their experiences exist. Interestingly, “The Sniper,” one of the most descriptive accounts, originally appeared not in official reports but in the popular pulp fiction periodical
Weird Tales
. Even then it did not make its way into print until nearly a decade after the war and focuses on Allied and enemy rather than American snipers.
    The Marine Corps magazine
Leatherneck
eventually reprinted the article, by Arthur J. Burks, in its August 1926 edition. According to “The Sniper,” a Canadian infantry company had just taken over a portion of the frontline trenches when a single round struck one of the soldiers in the forehead. Over the next three days, eleven more of the company’s infantrymen fell to the unseen sniper’s fire.
    Although the shots came from a cemetery at the edge of no-man’s-land, the Canadians could not locate the sniper’s lair. Finally, on the third night, a sergeant and a private requested that the company commander permit them to conduct a countersniper patrol. Reluctantly, the captain agreed.
    The article continued by stating that the two men departed and returned. Early the next morning the captain asked, “ ‘Did you get him, Sergeant?’ ”
    The sergeant replied, “ ‘Captain, there will be no more bullets from that particular sniper. But for the sake of your own peace of mind, don’t ask us what happened in the still watches of the night! Yet, rest assured, sir, that whatever we did to him was not enough to pay him for the death of twelve of our buddies; that he had twelve lives to give that would still have been insufficient. On his part it was cold-blooded murder!’ ”
    According to the story’s narrator, the sergeant would reveal nothing further except that there had been a crypt. The captain let the matter rest. He did nothing about the incident until shortly before shipping out for home after the war ended. The captain once again visited the former front lines easily finding the cemetery because it was “etched unforgettably” in his mind.
    In the graveyard he found the concrete-and-metal crypt the sniper had used as a “hide.” Next to the heavy slab covering the grave lay a short stick for propping open the cover justenough for a rifle and scope to protrude. The former infantry officer continued, “ ‘I lifted the slab and drew it away. Then horror seizing me in its grip, I turned hurriedly away and did not