Rean an extract from Martin's first book Out of Nowhere: A History of the Military Sniper
Read an extract
Chapter 6 – Global War
At the end of the Civil War in 1865, sharpshooters were mustered out of service as quickly as possible and more than a few of them contrived to take their rifles with them. For many men across whose home states the war had raged, what little they had owned had now gone and there were few reasons to go back to their old lives. Although they had learned a great deal about killing, most were sick of war and all that it entailed, and the desire to start a new life and try to wipe the slate clean was a strong one. While the war had primarily been waged in the east, there had been much fighting in the west and southwest as well, but the level of destruction here was not so marked across such a huge expanse, and feelings did not run so high in the immediate antebellum years. There were thus many compelling reasons to head west, in particular to California, Oregon, or Texas, where land was plentiful and easy to buy, in some cases even being offered free to settlers.
The postwar period saw the trickle of emigrants heading west become a flood over the next decade. In need of feeding and protecting, these pioneer families used many a Sharps, Enfield, and doubtless the occasional Whitworth to fend off Native American attacks and provide meat for the wagon parties, with many ex–soldiers becoming professional guides and hunters. Their services were sorely needed too, for as the white people encroached more frequently into Indian lands there were renewed and savage attacks made upon them. The experience many of these men had with their rifles held them in good stead in defending both themselves and their charges. With the demands of war behind them the gunmakers in the east had to find a new market for their weapons and the pioneers were the perfect customers. As well as new weapons, there were also tens of thousands of surplus firearms for sale, which had a ready market. Ex–Berdan Sharps rifles could be had for $25 a piece and Enfield rifles were $11, while a Springfield could be had for $8. Other, lesser muskets could be purchased for as little as $2 each. However, the war had taught everyone — the Army, firearms manufacturers, and soldiers — a great deal about the practicality of their weapons and the one thing that all were agreed upon was that the days of the large–caliber, muzzle–loading rifle were already numbered.
As if proof was required, within a year of the war’s end the US Department of Ordnance had 5,000 M1865 Springfields converted to the new Allin breech–loading system. In Britain a similar modification, the Snider, was being used to upgrade the old Enfields. These conversions were designed to provide practical stop–gap measures between the old and the new technology, without costing their respective governments too much for what were essentially converted but obsolete rifles. Like all compromises, this worked well enough, but the new breech–loaders had their limitations. While the single–shot rifles were accurate enough up to 500 yards, they were comparatively slow to load and fire and they still held only one cartridge at a time. Breech–loading rimfire rifles, which had appeared during the war, had gained a considerable following, but by the late 1860s they had already reached the zenith of their development due to limitations in cartridge manufacture and their relative lack of power.
As usual it was the commercial sporting market that was to lead the way in design and manufacture of the new technology. The importance of this market had been clearly evident during the war with the introduction of many new breech–loading rifles, all of which had come from commercial manufacturers: the Sharps, Spencer, Hall, Greene, Ballard, and Henry (destined to evolve into the famous Winchester). The Spencer’s rimfire design incorporated a useful tube magazine that enabled up to seven rounds of ammunition to be fed one after another into the chamber and fired as quickly as the action could be worked. It suffered from underpowered ammunition, though, and was not a good long–range rifle. Yet its mechanical design was both clever and strong and the magazine capacity gave it a level of firepower that was almost unique. The Henry also initially used underpowered rimfire cartridges, but its weakness lay in its lever–action mechanism, which could not cope with the increasingly powerful ammunition that was being developed. Though it was limited as an accurate long–range rifle, in its subsequent guise as the Winchester it gained a huge following as a shorter–range hunting rifle. Most single–shot breech–loaders suffered from extraction problems due to their primitive cartridges and this was because postwar gunmakers were predominantly reliant on the newly introduced Berdan or Boxer primed cartridges. These predecessors of the modern brass cartridge used a separate metal base with primer inserted in the center, riveted to a foil–wrapped case in which was contained the powder charge. They were not particularly durable and they suffered problems from verdigris in moist climates, which would effectively cement the fired case into the hot breech. Worse, the poorly attached bases often ripped off when the breech was opened, leaving the frustrated shooter frantically digging with a knife blade in an attempt to extract the remains of the cartridge. It would be a decade before the advent of the brass–cased, centerfire cartridge. When this appeared, however, it would herald a tremendous advance in shooting technology.
The New Bolt Action
The problem with all of the weapons described above was that somewhere in their design they had serious shortcomings — single–shot capacity, low–powered ammunition, combustion gas leakage, difficult loading or extraction, and so on. The gunmaking industry knew what was needed, of course: a rifle that was simple to operate, robust, and able to chamber a powerful cartridge then shoot the bullet accurately out to long ranges. This was the Holy Grail for cartridge firearms, in the same manner that solving the problems of accuracy and windage had been for muskets. Experiments began in 1872 when the Ordnance Department began to purchase and test a new type of rifle that had become increasingly popular in Europe, but had yet to make any real impact in the United States. This was termed a “bolt–action” rifle and its use had been pioneered by the Prussians in 1841 when they adopted the radical Dreyse system. Although still a single–shot weapon, at the time it had a 3:1 advantage in firepower over contemporary muskets and in 1866 France followed suit when it issued the Chassepot rifle. The effectiveness of these guns was well exhibited during the Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71, when their rate of fire resulted in such massive casualties that one pundit commented, in a London Times article, that they “would witness the end of civilized warfare.” Switzerland, Germany, France, and Russia had adopted bolt–action rifles by the late 1870s, Russia ironically using the Hiram Berdan–designed Berdan M1870 rifle in which the US government had shown no interest, producing over 3.5 million up to 1891. All of these weapons used a rotating locking–bolt system operated by a handle, the bolt body having lugs that engaged in machined slots in the receiver, ensuring it was locked solid once closed. The conservative Ordnance Department decided to examine all of the best American designs then available — Burgess, Chaffee–Reese, Remington–Keene, Ward–Burton, Winchester–Hotchkiss, Colt–Franklin, Sharps–Vetterli, and Lee — before making any rash decisions; the tests they undertook seemingly continued endlessly. They were still being conducted in 1887 and had proved little, other than what was already well understood, which was that single–shot, large–caliber rifles of any type were outdated for military use. Just as it began to look as though no decision at all would be forthcoming, the development of the rifle was materially assisted from some unexpected sources. In this instance the catalyst was an invention by a Swiss major named Rubin allied to the results of experiments in chemical combustion undertaken by a small laboratory in France.
A serving soldier, Major Rubin had reasoned that the old solid lead bullets were both inefficient and too heavy. Manufacturing technology had by the 1870s finally solved the problems of being able to manufacture brass that could be spun or lathe–turned to produce cartridge cases that were strong, durable, and reusable. The increasingly powerful charges often resulted in such high velocities being generated that lead bullets stripped themselves as they moved up the bore, being unable to grip the rifling. Rubin developed a lead–cored bullet that could be made in a much smaller caliber than normal (at this period typically .45in or 11mm caliber) with a thin but hard copper jacket that enabled the bullet to grip the rifling. The bullet allowed higher velocities and thus greater range and accuracy. It happened to be a very timely invention, for a French chemist by the name of Marcel Vielle had been experimenting for some time with new chemical propellants, in particular one called nitro–cellulose. He had found that a mix of 58 percent nitro–glycerine, 37 percent nitro–cellulose, and 5 percent mineral jelly produced a virtually smokeless propellant that generated far higher pressures than black powder. Vielle had perfected it by 1885 and so impressed was the French government that in 1886 it ordered the wholesale adoption of a new rifle, the 8mm Lebel, to replace its old service rifles. In their own unique way the French solved the problem of patents relating to copper–jacketed bullets by producing solid copper ones.
France’s adoption of the new rifle rapidly forced all of Europe to reassess their infantry rifles as these new–generation smokeless powder weapons were in every respect so much more efficient that their acquisition became a matter of political and military expediency to ensure no one was lagging behind in the arms race. Indeed, some historians have argued that, in adopting the Lebel, France actually steered Europe on an inevitable course for war. By 1888 most countries of any military significance had adopted magazine–fed, bolt–action rifles in the new caliber, which averaged around .30in (8mm) and almost all were modified to fire the new ammunition. In practice, the new powder was initially quite unstable and several French military magazines were damaged by explosions, but such minor problems were soon solved and “nitro” was to become the predominant propellant for all subsequent small arms.
It is not quite true to say that every country had adopted the bolt–action rifle, for the United States was still prevaricating. In 1890 the military had begun yet another exhaustive series of tests that were to last two years, covering rapid–fire ability, accuracy, reliability, ease of maintenance, rust resistance, and high–pressure ammunition testing, at the end of which only three rifles, the Lee, Mauser, and Danish Krag–Jorgensen, were left. Surprising some ordnance men, it was the Krag that was chosen, in part because it had a side–mounted box magazine that could be isolated from the chamber. The board was particularly concerned about the likelihood of troops wantonly squandering government ammunition by rapid fire and the Krag’s magazine was a design feature that appealed strongly to it. The fact that the locking lugs on the Krag’s bolt were only just strong enough for its not overly powerful .30-40 cartridge did not seem to concern them unduly. In 1892 it was adopted into service, but it was not to remain so for long for improvements in ammunition design meant that it was unable to make use of the more powerful cartridges that had been developed, and in 1898 the hunt for a new rifle began all over again.
Not all of the lessons of the Civil War had been lost on the Army, however, and while there was general disagreement over the actual weapon the Army should adopt, it had been widely agreed that marksmen should be issued with a suitable rifle, preferably equipped with an optical sight. Krags used by the Norwegian Army had already been successfully fitted with side–mounted telescopic sights, and when they were adopted for US service an example was acquired from Norway for evaluation. The results appeared to surprise the Ordnance Department:
As a result of this test the Board is of the opinion that the use of this telescopic sight appears to be of especial value in hazy or foggy weather and at long ranges. In either case the target can be seen with remarkable clearness, and the marksman can be absolutely sure he is aiming at the proper object. This would be of especial importance to sharpshooters acting independently.
Testing was taken to extreme ranges of 2,000 yards, at which distance the Department commented “With a telescopic sight a man could be distinguished easily.” The result was the production, on June 8, 1900, of the US Army’s first ever bolt–action sniper’s rifle. It had a tube scope manufactured by the Cataract Tool and Optical Company of Buffalo, New York, and followed quite closely the method of mounting used by the Norwegian rifle, which was in practice little different from some side–mounted scopes in use during the Civil War. Yet, oddly, nothing further appears to have been done about equipping any more service rifles with optical sights. Possibly this was due to the short service life of the Krag, for tests were already well underway to find a replacement and the new rifle was to come from none other than Springfield Armory.
The Model 1903
The “United States Magazine Rifle, Model of 1903” was officially approved for service on June 19, 1903. Although it was to become the most iconic and longest–serving rifle in US military history, it owed much of its design to the Mauser. In fact, somewhat paradoxically for a weapon soon to be used against Germany, the US government had to pay royalties to the Mauser Company for the use of their bolt and locking mechanism design and the clip–loading arrangement. The original Springfield design had been created in 1900 with a 30in barrel chambering a cartridge similar to the old .30-40 Krag. However, tests soon proved the ammunition to be underpowered and the barrel too long, so it was shortened to 24in, enabling it to be used by infantry and cavalry alike. It was re–chambered for a more powerful .30-03 cartridge that produced more useful velocities of around 2,400fps.
Production commenced at the Springfield Armory in mid-1903 at the rate of 225 rifles per day. A significant later modification was the introduction in October 1906 of a new standard cartridge, the .30-06. This had been hurriedly brought about by the adoption in Germany the previous year of a radical new design of pointed (as opposed to round–nosed) bullet called the Spitzer. This new bullet was streamlined, providing it with greater range and improved stability, and it was to set a new world standard when it was introduced by Germany. Used in the Springfield, the new .30-06 increased the maximum range from 2,400 to 2,850 yards and provided a higher velocity of 2,675fps. As far as the Department of Ordnance was concerned, the M1903 was the very best that could be provided for its army and it was indeed to prove to be an enduring and reliable weapon. While the adoption of the Springfield rifle was not in itself such a remarkable event, the Ordnance Department actually still considered it a necessary requirement to furnish some designated marksmen with an optically equipped rifle, something no other army in the world was doing. In view of their lack of enthusiasm for sniping per se, this was indeed a forward–thinking decision. Even in Germany, long the bastion of expert riflemen and scope–equipped hunting rifles, there had been no consideration given to equipping soldiers with anything other than the Mauser Gew98 rifle, adopted as standard in 1898. The Department’s immediate problem in deciding on a suitable optical sight was to become a perennial one.
Scope Developments
By the 1900s there were a large number of telescopic sights available commercially in Europe. Manufacturers had benefited from still more advances in optical technology, in particular improvements in glass manufacture that had originated around 1884 at the Glastechnisches Laboratory in Jena, Austria. A method of mass–producing near perfect optical glass had been patented, and the company (later named Schott Glasswerke) began to provide most of the raw material for optical sights around the world. At this period in the United States there was still a shortage of both good scopes and scope manufacturers, although within 20 years the availability of both would have increased dramatically with the appearance of makers such as Stevens, Fecker, Winchester, and many others. In 1903 there was a fallow period, though, and the Ordnance Department was limited to one suitable scope. The Warner & Swasey Model of 1903 was a 6x prismatic pattern manufactured in Cleveland and based on similar types of artillery optical sight also being manufactured by the company, but its price was a then prohibitive $80. Recommendations by the Department that a simplified pattern be developed were taken seriously and in 1908 a new scope, “The Telescopic Musket Sight, Model of 1908,” was submitted for trials. Reports from the Chief of Ordnance indicate it was mechanically and optically satisfactory with the exception that its very short eye relief of 11/2in caused problems for the firer: “Recommendations were received that the sight be moved forwards on the rifle to prevent the eyepiece striking the eye upon recoil; also that the rubber eyepiece be made of softer rubber.” At least one sniper who was to use the Springfield/Warner combination recalled that shooting it could “make a flincher out of a cigar store Indian.” Men were taught to adjust their shooting positions and allow for the recoil accordingly, not pressing their eye too hard against the eyecup. Those who did found that it had suctioned itself to their eye socket, whereupon one veteran noted dryly that “It took three strong men to pull you loose from the fool telescope.” Later production eyecups sensibly had holes in them to prevent this.
The scopes were equipped with range and elevation drums, the ranges being marked up to 2,000 yards. In addition, the horizontal stadia lines on the reticles were placed so that they spanned the height of an average man (5ft 8in) at a distance of 100 yards, giving the shooter some ability to estimate range by height comparison. Concerns about the ingress of water, the fragile mounting system, and the power of the scopes caused a number of revisions to be suggested by the Department, which were duly adopted by Warner & Swasey into their final pattern, the M1913. This had its power reduced slightly to 5.2x, a more secure fitting for the eyepiece, and a locking nut for the range drum (prone to working loose under recoil), and it was to be the final variant adopted into service. At $58 apiece, they were still expensive and by the time they were to be used in combat there already existed a plethora of better alternatives.
Springfield rifles to be mated to these scopes were specially selected for quality of manufacture and the barrels in particular were examined for uniformity of rifling. Quite literally every inch was checked to ensure the lands and grooves fell exactly within design tolerance and that the barrels were perfectly straight. Those deemed satisfactory were star–gauged, with a small star stamped onto the crown of the barrel at the muzzle. All parts were checked for flaws and the rifles test fired. Each scope was fitted and numbered to its rifle and every designated marksmen was issued with a leather rifle sling, the Pattern 1907, a brilliant design that doubled as a carrying sling but also as a shooting support, being quickly adjustable to enable it to be looped around the left hand, helping take the weight of the rifle and providing a steady rest. So good was the design that it was to remain in first–line service until well after the Vietnam War and many can still be seen on military sniping rifles being used in the current Iraqi conflict.
The Great War
Although it is generally believed that the inaugural use of the Springfield/
Warner combination was in the trenches of France in 1917, in practice they first saw limited service in 1916 as US troops chased Pancho Villa into Mexico. One unit, Lingler’s Sharpshooters, was equipped with scoped Springfields, and there is evidence that a small number were even fitted with silencers. These, based on a 1911 design patented by Hiram Maxim and manufactured by the Maxim Company, probably made the use of such weapons a double first in the history of military sniping. There appear to be no surviving records of the efficiency or otherwise of these scoped rifles, and the Mexican campaign was halted when in 1917 American relationships with Germany deteriorated to the point that war had become unavoidable.
As it became clear that it was only a matter of time before the United States became involved in the European conflict, the Army took stock of its resources. Of the total of 5,700 Warner scopes purchased up to the end of 1918, only 1,530 were actually fitted to rifles. Most of these had been acquired prior to 1913 and in the three subsequent years up to 1916 only 30 new scopes were delivered by the factory to Springfield. Indeed, of the total purchased most were stored, and it is one of the reasons that the Warner telescope is found with relative ease in today’s collector’s marketplace. To a great extent, the reluctance of the army to issue them was due to the increasing number of problems with them being reported from the Western Front. Its practical use in France is quite difficult to document today as few records remain of the use of these sniping rifles.
When the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) arrived in France their entry into the trenches was to be a shocking baptism of fire for many. For four years German snipers had been honing their skills and by 1917 they were very adept indeed. It was estimated that only three seconds of exposure of any part of the body was sufficient for a sniper’s bullet to be the net result and many curious American soldiers paid the ultimate price for taking a quick peek over the parapet of their new homes, as one soldier reported: “We lost three men today as a result of sniping. One, a tall fellow, simply forgot himself and stood upright in a shallow portion of trench. The bullet struck his helmet and penetrated it, killing him instantaneously.” The US troops were eager to give the Germans a taste of their own medicine. There were certainly many excellent shots in the Army, but by 1917 sniping had become a science and failure to learn the rules properly would result in its having a very brief service career. US marksmen were therefore detailed to attend British sniper schools on a ten–day course where all of the basics were taught. Major E. Penberthy, an instructor and commander of a sniper school, was impressed by the quality of American recruits:
A large number of officers and men passed through our schools and were distinguished by their passionate desire to learn all they could, in order, as more than one man said to me, “to make up for lost time.” They started schools of their own, modelled on ours … they even borrowed some of our officers to go to America and give instructions at the training camps.
All snipers were introduced to the ghillie suit, named after the eponymous Scottish highland guides and deer–stalkers who had invented it in the
19th century. There was no set pattern for these suits, each man making his own, but it basically consisted of a robe made of several pieces of loose dark–colored material, covered with strips of cloth in varying shades of brown and green. The camouflage varied according to the terrain and the requirement of the sniper, and the trainees were expected to produce effective suits and then use them to learn how to move from one location to another under the eagle eyes of their instructors without being spotted. For most of the neophyte snipers the actual mechanics of shooting posed few problems, for most were expert riflemen who understood range, elevation, and windage estimation. They had also mastered smooth trigger operation and the need to hold a part–lungful of air to cushion the chest and steady the heartbeat. However, few of them had ever seen a telescopic sight before and learning to master its many intricacies required some patience on the part of the instructors. A scope had to be zeroed with its rifle to ensure the point of impact of the bullet coincided exactly with the aiming point of the crosshairs; moreover different batches of ammunition had varying ballistic characteristics and the students were urged to find a reliable batch and keep as much of it as possible solely for use in their own rifles. Failure to do so would mean re–zeroing their rifles. Other broader lessons had to be understood as well, and a leaflet supplied to American snipers who attended the British First Army School of Sniping listed the following three primary headings: Observation, Shooting, and Cover and Concealment, with the duties of a sniper being:
1. To dominate the enemy snipers, thereby saving the lives of soldiers and causing casualties to the enemy.
2. To hit a small mark at a known range, but without the advantage of a sighting shot.
3. To keep the enemy’s line under continual observation and to assist the Intelligence of his unit by accurate and correct reports with map references.
4. To build up and keep in repair his loopholes and major and minor sniping posts.
Neither was the reason for employing snipers simply to kill enemy soldiers. At lectures provided for NCO sniper instructors at the British Second Army School of Sniping in France, the primary reasons for their employment were listed as:
1. To shake the enemy’s morale.
2. To cause him casualties.
3. To stop him working.
4. To retaliate against his snipers.
In practice this was not so different from the employment of sharpshooters during the Civil War, although the psychological impact of sniping had now been recognized to a far greater degree. By 1918, by which time the majority of US troops were engaged in frontline combat, the rules had changed somewhat, as the methods they had been taught relating to trench sniping had largely been usurped in the wake of a more mobile form of warfare. In open country, it was realized that the scouting and observation skills of the snipers were worth considerably more than their sheer shooting ability, and it is from the battles of very late 1917 and 1918 that there began to be a shift in the focus of the employment of snipers. An update sent to scouting officers of all corps on the Western Front dated mid-1917 explains why:
In view of the more open nature of fighting which is now taking place, scouting and observation have become of increased importance, as opposed to sniping and the use of telescopic sights of trench warfare. It is considered that teaching in the two last mentioned subjects should, therefore, take a subsidiary place.
By this date soldiers of the AEF had access to their own locally set up sniping schools, albeit these were often assisted by British NCOs. Despite the training, the number of US snipers killed in their first months of the war was disproportionately high. It was not until late in 1918 that the US troops began to gain the upper hand when facing such a cunning and experienced foe as the Germans, and they slowly mastered the lessons taught to them. Generally it was believed that a sniper who survived his first two weeks in the trenches had a reasonable life expectancy.
It was not only the US Army that was engaged in the sniping war, for wherever there was fighting, the US Marine Corps was never far away. Never a Corps to follow Army dictates, pre–World War I the Marines had not accepted the Warner as their operational optical sight. Their decision was materially assisted by the Winchester Company’s introduction of a new telescopic sight, the Model A5 (Model A, 5x). It would not have been unfamiliar to a sharpshooter of the Civil War, being a tube scope, mounted on brackets of a pattern first devised by John Ratcliffe Chapman back in the 1840s. The fact that the Marine Corps was to adopt a sniping rifle in advance of the Army was due not to Marine insistence on providing frontline snipers, but rather to their desire to ensure their competitive rifle teams had the best tools for the job. The Marines were always keen to foster competitive shooting within their ranks and they always fielded one of the best shooting teams in the country. When Winchester produced their new telescopic sight in 1910, Marine armorers mounted a number to match–grade Springfield rifles. The entry of the Marine Corps into the war saw a quantity of these scoped target rifles finding their way to France with them. Although prewar 400 were procured by the Ordnance Department, the exact number supplied to the Marines is unknown. The A5 was mounted above the bore, a great improvement over the
side–mounted Warner, but it had a drawback in that it was primarily a sporting scope designed for target use and it had not fared well in military tests, among the reasons being cited:
The field of view is so small on account of its power … the spacing of brackets is only 6 inches apart, considered a source of weakness … the bolt on the rifle cannot be operated unless the scope is pushed forwards from its firing position … the exit pupil [objective lens] is so small that the sight is of no use in poor light.
In fairness, the scope was never designed to survive hard military service and, despite the criticisms leveled at it, both the British and Canadian armed forces placed contracts for it, some 907 being fitted to British Lee–Enfield rifles. The Marines believed with some justification that the scope was the best then available, as the optical quality was excellent and the body itself robust, and they soon improved on the rather weak Springfield dovetail mounting blocks by utilizing a heavier dovetail block and finer click adjustment drums for elevation and windage. The problem was that the Marines’ official order for 500 scopes was not made until comparatively late in the war and few of these contract rifles and scopes ever actually made it to the front in time for combat. In fact, the problems over scopes did not really matter as much as they might have, for there were in the ranks of the AEF many snipers who had learned to shoot excellently just using open sights, and it appears that in combat a large number preferred to do their sniping unencumbered by a delicate telescopic sight. One man, Alvin C. York, used his skills as a champion match–shooter in his native Tennessee to wipe out no fewer than four nests of German machine guns in October 1918, killing 25 of the crews with head shots from 300 yards. He eventually forced the surrender of some 132 enemy soldiers. In this ability he was not alone, for as one German soldier recorded in September 1918:
We had great trouble from the [American] riflemen who were very accurate shots. Three of our troop of machine gunners were shot down one after the other and no one was prepared to take their place. With no fire support from the [machine] guns we were soon overrun and forced to surrender. It was a bitter blow to us who had fought so hard and so well.
There were doubtless dozens of unwitnessed acts of fine shooting by soldiers of the AEF during the hard fighting of 1918. While it is hard to find any accounts of the specific use of snipers, a few glimpses of their use rise to the surface in official reports, such as that to HQ of the US 1st Division, based around Ansauville, which mentions that “effective shooting by the Division’s snipers materially assisted the advancing troops. In particular they were able to prevent German snipers from taking too heavy a toll on our men.” Such spartan and bland comments belie the quiet heroism of the snipers, many of whom did not survive to tell their tales. Curiously, of those who did see the war to its conclusion, few ever talked openly of their exploits afterwards. No better example exists of this than the almost unknown tale of Herman Davis, a dirt–poor farm boy from Manila, Arkansas.
Drafted after initially being refused for army service (he was 5ft 3in tall and weighed 110lb), Davis arrived in France in late June 1918 as a member of the 24th Division’s 113th Infantry Regiment. His slight build and deep knowledge of fieldcraft and backwoods tracking and hunting made him an ideal candidate as a scout and runner. His solitary acts of heroism would have passed unnoticed had not at least one been accidentally witnessed by an officer unconnected with Davis. This event involved dealing with a German machine–gun crew who were pinning down his platoon near Molleville Farm in the Verdun sector in October 1918. Never having actually seen a German, Davis reasoned that as they had a machine gun and were speaking in a language he did not understand, they must be the enemy, so he crawled to within 50 yards of them and shot all four of the crew. The act was witnessed by an artillery observer, who found out Davis’ name and reported the quiet act of courage. Blissfully unaware of this, shortly afterwards Davis spotted a dugout from which German reinforcements were pouring. Taking aim with his Springfield he shot
11 Germans one after another, but never thought to mention this event to anyone, until a casual conversation with a hunting friend some years after the war. Later in the month he was observing German troops setting up a machine gun at a distance of about 1,000 yards. When he enquired why no one was doing anything about it, he was curtly told it was too far for rifle shooting. “Why, that’s just a good shootin’ distance,” he said — and then proceeded to shoot five of the enemy before they dispersed in panic. These were the events that were known of; if there were others Davis never thought them worth mentioning. Probably no one was more surprised than Davis himself when in 1919 he was awarded not only the Distinguished Service Cross, but also the French Croix de Guerre with palm and silver star and Medaille Militaire, and was named number four on General John Pershing’s list of the 100 Heroes of the World War. Typically of his breed, for the rest of his sadly brief life he refused point–blank to talk publicly about his exploits, refuted any notions of heroism, and never wore his medals (in fact, he kept them in his fishing-tackle box with his beloved lures and flies). He died in poverty on January 25, 1923, aged 35 as a result of tuberculosis brought on by gas poisoning. In 1925 a monument and statue to the State’s greatest war hero was raised by public subscription, an event that would doubtless have sent Herman heading into the swamps for a lengthy hunting session.
It is impossible to determine the success or otherwise of the American snipers during their tenure in France, but there is little doubt that once they had adjusted to the rigors of total warfare, they became very adept at their task. With regard to the equipment they were using, there is little doubt that the Springfield rifles were certainly as good as any other combat rifle then in use, but the Warner & Swasey had not proved so reliable. The weight of the scope, at 23/4lb, caused the mounting screws attaching the base to the receiver to loose or even shear, requiring the base to be soldered in place, and the catch on the scope body could come loose allowing it to slide on its rails, causing loss of accuracy. In order to ensure a reliable zero, some snipers put a strong elastic band around the mount and scope body to ensure it remained in position, but this was hardly good practice. The fact it was offset to the left was not in its favor either, causing the rifle to be canted over to the left unless the shooter was very careful. The Ordnance Department had, by the end of the war, reversed its original judgment of the scope, damning it by stating it to be unsuitable because of its “offset mounting, the closeness of the ocular lens, too high a magnification and too small an exit lens, excessive weight and bulk, problems with moisture and dirt ingress, too much slack in the windage and elevation adjustment.” Nevertheless, it is easy to be critical of the Department for adopting it in the first place when there was so little else available. Perhaps the most pertinent comment on the Warner was made by Herbert McBride, a Canadian sniper with much sniping experience of it, who said, “in my opinion ..… when compared to the others we had at the date and time, it was a pretty good sight.”
Throughout World War I, there were continual attempts by the School of Musketry at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to find improved telescopic sights and mounts for the M1903 Springfield. Many were tried and rejected, including a German Goerz scope with a very practical rail mount of a type that was to reappear in World War II, a commercial Zeiss prismatic (curious in view of the fact one would have thought the army had learned its lesson with prismatic scopes) and scopes manufactured by Frankford Arsenal, Stevens, and Winchester. It was the Winchester M1918 that at least initially proved the winner. Further tests revealed a number of deficiencies, including lenses coming loose and brackets fracturing. Despite a number of initial improvements being made and an order being placed with Eastmann–Kodak of New York, the order was never completed as still more modifications held up the manufacturing process. This foolish situation continued for almost seven years until 1925, when development work was stopped by the Department of Ordnance and few of the orders for 32,000 were ever supplied. As a result the Army sniper program was left in limbo and this sorry state of affairs was to continue right up to 1941, when American involvement in a new war suddenly brought home the pressing need not only for sniper training, but also for a rifle to train with.
Chapter 8: A question of morality
The Army and Marines have at last appreciated the fact that no amount of technology or training can turn a man into a sniper, for the basic elements required for this job are hard-wired into the brain of the individual. Some men are born hunters, others are not, and despite the attempted use of psychological profiling there is no infallible test as to whether a man can look at his enemy and pull the trigger. Most can, a very few cannot, and the majority of snipers have no qualms about their past or current employment and are content with their chosen profession. I have spoken to many snipers, past and present, and they tell the same story. "I did it because every enemy soldier I killed meant some of our boys lived" is a nearly universal raison d'etre and it is also a sound and honest one. The enemy soldier a sniper shoots may just be the one who would, the following day, have killed their officer, NCO, or a fellow sniper.
One method of dealing with the business of killing is the de-humanization of the enemy. This is not unique to snipers, of course. It is a trait shared by front-line soldiers across the ages who adopt nicknames for their enemy: "Redskins, Redcoats, Yankees, Rebs, Heinies, Huns, Krauts, Commies, Chinks, Gooks, Charlie, Slopes, Skinnies, Ragheads, Towlies," the list is almost endless. Unlike other soldiers, though, regardless of what he calls his enemy it is more difficult for a sniper to disassociate himself totally from his actions, because there exists none of the remoteness in killing that protects other specialist such as an artilleryman or machine-gunner. As Captain Robert Russell succinctly commented in Vietnam , "Sniping is a very personal war, for a sniper must kill calmly and deliberately, shooting carefully selected targets, and must not be susceptible to emotions…they will see the look on the faces of the people they kill." 1 It was axiomatic that few enjoyed seeing the results of their shooting at close-hand, and some snipers I met exhibited post-conflict qualms about what they did, with certain incidents remaining embedded forever in their minds. One Vietnam veteran was distraught at the time for having had to shoot a heavily armed and pregnant VC woman; another recalled shooting a sniper in Bosnia who turned out to be 15 years old. James Gibbore, a Vietnam sniper who shot fourteen VC in one night, found that it raised uncomfortable questions he could not easily answer. "Could I, would I, have I taken a man's life just because he was the enemy? Could you do that? Think about it? Now think about how it would feel to carry that picture in your mind all the days of your life. Fourteen men lay dead ... this is only one of the pictures I carry around all the days of my life." 2 Every sniper had his own method of dealing with his job. Jack Coughlin wrote that after any action he would retire somewhere quiet to allow himself a "private two-minute nervous breakdown," after which he returned to duty as normal, but he added, "I remembered each target vividly, seeing them again just as I had with my scope when I blew away the last moment of their life. These regular little sessions with myself are as close as I come to thinking of the enemy as individual human beings who might have families and dreams and identities of their own. Today they were trying to kill Americans, so I had no choice but to do my job before they could do theirs." 3
Others put their past behind them and successfully returned to civilian life. Chuck Mawhinney, the highest scoring marine sniper of the Vietnam War said of his return home: "I just got on with work and raising a family and trying to earn enough to get by. I did what I had been trained to do to the best of my ability and I always slept well." His words were echoed by most other ex-snipers, who filed away their experiences in a secure mental compartment and got on with the difficult business of just living. Snipers regarded their profession as necessary and their war as private. While they would occasionally talk among themselves about their shared experiences, few cared to discuss it with outsiders. Yet, interestingly, many still hunt for relaxation, although some said they had never subsequently picked up another rifle. "I killed enough," was one Korean War veteran's comment. None I met exhibited any pleasure in killing, although there was clear satisfaction at the results of good shooting resulting in immediate kills. In some cases, maturity and retrospection had clearly replaced youthful callousness but this is nothing new, one Civil War sharpshooter recalling that he once shot a Yankee officer solely to steal his fine boots.4 As one Vietnam veteran said, "We were 18, 19, we had the guns, the training and a mandate to use them. I liked being able to hit at Charlie…when you've got a bolt-rifle with a thousand yards of range you are a battlefield god. You're the one to decide who lives or dies."
…Yet even in the callousness of war, there was humanity; a point at which a target ceases to be an object but a human being and crossing this line can be almost an epiphany for some. One World War Two veteran told of helping staunch the blood from a young German machine gunner he had just shot:
"I knocked out the gun and our boys took the position with no casualties so I saw no reason not to help the kid. I chose to shoot him, and I chose to try and help him." During Operation Iraqi Freedom, sniper Jack Coughlin had twice shot a running Iraqi soldier, eventually losing sight of him in the chaos of events.
He was soon called to see a wounded prisoner who had two gunshot wounds:
I looked at the wounds and they looked about the right size. Was this the guy I had shot? The Iraqi refused to talk and his dark eyes flashed in anger, but there was some fright. He said the first bullet hit his left arm. then another shot went through his shoulder. I asked why if he wanted to give up, he didn't throw down his rifle and take his boots off. He said if he tried to do that his own side would have killed him. Weird conflicting emotions swept over me. I was glad that I had not missed a target, but I was also strangely delighted that this guy had survived. Never had I felt a personal responsibility for the safety of an enemy combatant, so this sudden kinship was unexpected, and it was kind of cool. I felt he had earned a new lease on life. I called him 'Achmed' because I didn't know his real name. By doing so I crossed the invisible line of humanizing my enemy. 5
- Pegler, M. The Military Sniper Since 1914 ( Oxford, 2001)
- Gibbore, J. Soldier ( New York, 2001)
- Coughlin, Sgt J. and Kuhlman, Capt. C. Shooter ( New York, 2005)
- Ray, F. L., Shock Troops of the Confederacy ( North Carolina, 2006)
- Coughlin, op cit.