David Healey: Winter Sniper

It was an ungodly long way to shoot a rifle.

Hess carried a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle that had an accurate range of five hundred meters. Beyond that, it became hard to see the target, let alone hit it. But even at five hundred meters, a good marksman could put ten shots within an area of two feet square.

Hess could cover his grouping at that distance with his hand.

But Hess wasn’t just good. He was gifted with a rifle. His father had taught him to shoot when he was barely old enough to hold the old single-shot rifle. When they hunted, Hess had to prop the rifle on a rock or in the fork of a tree. He had learned a hunter’s patience as a boy.

At the SS sniper school outside Einbeck he had shot the highest scores of anyone before or since. He might even have stayed on as an instructor or at least have returned there to teach after a few months of combat. But even during his training there was a coldness about Hess that other men found unsettling. He sensed that he made the others uneasy. “You were made for killing,” one of his instructors at the academy had said, a touch of envy in his voice. “Not for teaching. You see it yourself, don’t you, Hess?”

After Poland and then Russia, it was hard for him to remember when he hadn’t been a killer.

Now, staring across nearly a thousand meters of battlefield that resembled a scene from a frozen hell, Hess felt himself slipping into his sniper’s trance. Long-range shooting was an uncertain proposition at best, even for the likes of Hess. A tremor of the hand, a breath of wind, even an imperfection in the bullet was enough to send the shot off target. He ignored the winter chill that crept into him from the ground and the brittle morning air. His body settled deeper into the crater, letting the Russian soil hug him and steady his arms. A shot like this required the steadiness of the earth.

The rifle barrel rested atop a scrap of blanket. He had positioned himself so that not even the muzzle protruded from his sniper’s den. Only a small opening allowed him to canvass the battlefield with the telescopic sight, giving him a limited range of vision. It would be enough. In Stalingrad, he had learned that the only way to stay alive as a sniper was to hide yourself well and limit your exposure as much as possible.

His world was reduced to the magnified field of the scope. He could see the Russian officer stalking back and forth. It was impossible at this distance to determine the man’s rank, but he could see red shoulder boards flashing like the bright plumage of a bird. Only a fool would wear those on the battlefield. A fool — or an officer of some importance.

Your pride is your destruction, Ivan .

Hess liked to imagine that his bullets struck like a lightning bolt from some Teutonic god. He enjoyed the idea of his rifle being a divine instrument, striking flesh with a sound like a butcher’s cleaver.

Too much thinking. He forced his mind to go blank. His breathing slowed and nearly stopped. In the last few moments before he fired, he wouldn’t breathe at all. His heartbeat began to slow like the winding down of a watch, until there was scarcely a flutter in his chest.

The Russian officer stopped and appeared to be staring right at Hess, although he knew it was impossible for the man to see him at that distance. It was a trick of the telescopic sight. In a space between his own gentle heartbeats, Hess let his finger take up the last fraction of tension in the trigger.

The rifle fired.

It took a full second for the bullet to cover one thousand meters. In that instant the Russian officer might move or some stray wisp of wind might alter the bullet’s course. But Hess watched through the telescope, he saw the Russian collapse. Several aides rushed toward him while others brandished pistols at the rooftops. The body at their feet twitched once, twice, then lay still.

One thousand meters. That would give those Ivans something to think about.

He worked the bolt action and swept the sight over the Russian lines closest to him.

Sure enough, a head appeared. Curious about the sound of a gunshot. The telescope made it seem as if the Russian was just a few feet away. He was a very young man with blond hair poking out from under a knit cap. Hess drove a bullet between the boy’s eyes.

Before noon, he had shot six more Russians. Hess felt no emotion after shooting, only a sort of hollowness, much as he felt after being with a woman. He wondered sometimes if there was something wrong with him; worse, that some sign of his pleasure showed on his face when he was done shooting. Perhaps that was why he was not on the staff at the SS sniper school.

He welcomed the emptiness, savoring the fact that it meant he was still alive. In war, that was all that mattered. He put the Mosin-Nagant aside and finished the vodka in his canteen.

When darkness fell, Hess left his lair and crawled with painstaking care toward the German lines.

A new sentry was on duty.

“We knew you were out there,” the soldier said. “We were watching through binoculars. You had the Ivans scurrying like ants.”

The sniper grunted a reply.

“I know you now,” the sentry said. “You’re Hess. I’ve heard about you.”

“The Russian snipers will be looking for me here tomorrow,” Hess said. “They’ll shoot anything that moves. Keep your head down if you want to stay alive.”

“What news from the Eastern Front?” asked Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler by way of greeting the tall colonel who swept into his office and gave the Nazi salute.

Colonel Hurst Brock took his time peeling off the leather gloves he wore before answering. Himmler noticed that Brock immediately went to the huge fireplace at one end of the office and stood in front of the feeble flames to soak up what warmth there was. Winter was coming on in Berlin; in Russia the snow was already getting deep.

“It is not good, Herr Reichsfuhrer,” the colonel finally admitted. He seemed to weigh each word carefully. “The Russians have us surrounded at Stalingrad. We are short on supplies. Our soldiers are hungry. They are running out of ammunition. Men freeze to death every night.”

Himmler nodded, a gesture that made his eyeglasses flash daggers of reflected light at Brock. The reichsfuhrer was of average height with narrow shoulders, but he always stood so straight that he appeared taller. He had a square mustache that seemed an imitation of Hitler’s and an unflattering haircut that left his pale scalp showing high above his ears; the hair on top of his head was so short that it stood straight up. Somewhat idly, the colonel considered that as a schoolboy, Himmler would have been just the sort of boy the colonel and his friends picked on. Himmler had a weak chin and a square of wispy mustache that made the top part of his face seem heavier. The eyes, however, were shrewd, and his mouth was set in a permanent scowl. He seemed to study people with the same professional interest that a butcher appraised a side of beef, cleaver in hand. The colonel resumed standing at attention, his back to the fire, Himmler’s silence making him wonder if he had been too honest about conditions on the Eastern Front.

Himmler had sent him to the front to observe the situation first-hand. Fortunately, the Luftwaffe still controlled the Russian skies so that a few planes got in and out of Stalingrad if they could dodge the anti-aircraft fire. But air power provided the Germans with an advantage, not victory. The battle of Stalingrad was being fought on the ground, one block, one street, one building at a time.

“The only hope is to break out and save what we can of the army,” Brock continued.

“The Fuhrer will not allow it,” Himmler said.

“Then we have lost Russia.”