Medal of Honor

Written by Off Duty Gamers staff member, Rick "Lunch_Meat" Givens

Some would take issue calling the Sniper a weapon. After all, it is not the Sniper that is the weapon, but his choice of weaponry. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Sniper is a weapon. The effective deployment of Snipers in open warfare guarantees a strategic, tactical and psychological advantage. With Snipers, a commander not only controls the field of battle, but the feel of battle.

The term Sniper originates 1770s, from British Soldiers in India who attributed the term to hunters skilled enough to kill an elusive bird, the snipe. Since then the term was first attributed in 1824 to mean Sharpshooter.

The first Sniper Regiment was the Lovat Scouts, formed from Scottish Highlanders by Lord Lovat, and earned high praise under US Major Fredrick Burnham during the Second Boer War. These troops were skilled marksmen, adept in fieldcraft, tactics and the use of discretion. The Scouts were also the first known unit to wear the ghillie suit.

In World War I, the Imperial German Army was issued scoped rifles, where they operated in trench warfare, picking off unsuspecting Allied Troops. This tactic was largely considered coincidental shots, or plain bad luck, until the scoped rifles were first discovered. After this event, British Major Hesketh-Prichard started the First Army School of Sniping, Observation and Scouting in France during 1916. His wartime account, Sniping in France is still considered by modern snipers as the definitive work. His tactics led to the use of Scout/Sniper teams working in pairs, and observation drills still used by modern Armed Forces today.

In World War II, both the Soviet and German Army used snipers extensively, developing even more modern day techniques such as Shoot and Move, Reversible Clothing, and the ability to operate alongside standard combat units. Of the most famous, Captain Vasily Grigorevich Zaytsev, awarded the highest decorations of his nation, is credited 242 confirmed kills, 6 of which were snipers themselves. The snipers Captain Zaytsev trained are believed to have killed over 3000 enemy troops. In 1991, at the age of 76 and 10 days before the fall of the Soviet Union, Captain Zaytsev died in the city of Kiev. His final resting place is next to the Monument to the Defenders of Stalingrad.

Another notable Sniper is Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, United States Marines. Crawling four days and three nights over 1500 yards of open fields, almost being stepped on by an NVA patrol. GySgt Hathcock delivered a single shot to the chest of a NVA General, and escaped by crawling back across the field in an alternate direction. GySgt Hathcock’s weapons of choice were the Winchester Model 70, which he used to deliver a kill shot through the scope of an enemy sniper, and the Browning .50 caliber machine gun equipped with a custom mounted scope. The Gunnery Sgt’s sniper career ended, after the Amtrack Assault Vehicle he was riding in struck a mine. After pulling 7 Marines from the flamed engulfed vehicle, he jumped to safety himself. Later, he rejected the recommendation for the award of the Medal of Honor, stating he did what anyone else would do if they were awake. On February 23, 1999, he died in Virginia Beach after losing a long arduous battle with Multiple Sclerosis. In his honor, the 10th Special Forces Group designed the M25 Sniper Rifle, the White Feather, so named for the feather Gunnery Sgt Hathcock wore in his cover to mock the enemy forces and the bounty placed on him.

The longest-range kill in history belongs to a British Corporal of the Royal Household Cavalry. In 2009, armed with a .338 L115A3 Long Range Rifle, the Corporal engaged an enemy Machine Gun Crew, neutralizing the threat from 2707 yards, well past a mile.

Another notable shot is from a US Marine in Iraq, who successfully engaged an enemy machine gun crew from a mile distance. Armed with the Barrett Model 82 Sniper rifle, the USMC Staff Sgt neutralized the three insurgents with a single shot, as they were encamped behind a brick wall.

The sniper is not a frontal assault troop, they deploy, cause a little hate and discontent, and ghost out of there. The sniper is not concerned with getting the points, making the kills, leading the charge. His role is more insidious. That’s why gamers hate them as much as the terrorist. No one likes walking out of a building, just to catch a round in the chest or head. But the snipers are there, to reach out and touch someone.

So strong is the effect of snipers, their influence can be felt off the battlefield, in the uniforms and traditions of the Armed Forces. Never salute an officer out in the field, and those shiny little clusters disappear quick. Next time you have the opportunity, look at the top of a Marine Officer’s cover, the braided embroidered rope, called the quatrefoil, was placed there in the War of 1812, to identify the Officers to the Marine Sharpshooters, hanging from the rigging of Naval Vessels engaged in shipboard combat.

“Certainly there is no hunting, like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care of anything else thereafter.”  ~Ernest Hemingway

“He got that right. It was the hunt, not the killing.” Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock.

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