Free Inside the Crosshairs by Col. Michael Lee Lanning Page B

soldiers to bolster morale. The actual contribution of Soviet snipers in securing Stalingrad and counterattacking into the German heartland is impossible to calculate,but the Germans were known to respect and fear the single shot from the Soviet lines.
    Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, also appreciated the skills of his marksmen. On May 1, 1942, Stalin issued an order that advised, “Line troops must learn the rifle thoroughly, must become masters of their weapons, must kill the enemy without fail, as do our glorious snipers, the exterminators of the German invaders.”
    The German army was bested at Stalingrad, but the German sniper remained an efficient killer for the balance of the war. An article written by an officer that appeared in the
Hamburger Fremdenblatt
on May 9, 1944, praised German snipers for their service to the Fatherland. Referring to the performance of snipers against the Russians as “very satisfactory,” the unnamed officer provided an excellent description of the expert marksmen that would remain true for the rest of the war—as well as today: “Not everyone becomes or is able to become a sniper. Not everyone meets the necessary requirements. Natural proclivity, passion for the chase, fanatical love of firearms—these assure the results required of a sniper.”
    The German army continued to recruit and train snipers until the last days of the war. In 1944, to promote volunteers and encourage those already in the program, the German army authorized a special oval sniper badge composed of an eagle’s head and oak leaves. Twenty confirmed kills gained a sniper the first-degree badge, forty the second-degree badge and sixty the third-degree badge.
    Despite the successes of German and Soviet snipers on the Eastern Front the British high command remained unconvinced of the need for special riflemen on the mobile battlefield. Not until they encountered increased German sniper activity in North Africa and Italy did the British finally reactivate the sniper training they had used in World War I. In September 1943, the first British sniping school began training at Llanberis, in North Wales.
    In conjunction with the training school, the British decided to present to infantry battalion commanders two-day orientations on sniper operations before they deployed for the battlezones. This training provided information on sniper capabilities as well as instruction on their proper deployment.
    The acceptance of snipers in Commonwealth regiments accelerated steadily during the war. By early 1944 sniping instructors had established schools in the rear areas of battle zones to provide immediate replacements. Members of the unit that eventually became the 21st Army Sniping School landed at Normandy on August 17, 1944, and began their first instruction two days later. The unofficial definition of British sniping became “the art of drilling round holes into square heads.”
    Despite years of warning, the United States Army entered the conflict as ill prepared to field snipers as the British had been. German marksmen immediately took a toll of U.S. infantrymen from their earliest battles in North Africa and continued to do so until the war’s final fights. Despite their losses to German snipers and the success of Allied marksmen, the U.S. Army did not establish a central sniper training program or policy during the war.
    In the European Theater, the U.S. senior command left sniper training and employment to the individual units. Some division, regiment, and battalion commanders did not use snipers at all, while others actively recruited soldiers with extensive hunting or competitive shooting experience. The army’s minimum standard for designation as a sniper became the ability to strike a dummy target at 400 yards and to hit a head-size target at 200 yards.
    The War Department did provide some written guidance. Its Field Manual 21-75, “Infantry Scouting, Patrolling, and Sniping,” which appeared in