Valid story? You be the judge

Taken from: http://overlord.nucleardays.com/forums/ ... 18916e7cc8

My grandpa was in the 5th Ranger Bat. as a sniper. He was a replacement after the 1st platoon sniper was killed in Italy. My grandpa fought all the way from Omaha Beach: Easy Red Sector on June 6th, to the Elbe River, althought he didnt participate in Operation Market Garden. He had over 40 confirmed kills, 32 of which were head shots (good shot huh?).

I remember a story my grandpa told me when I was fourteen. His squad had jus arrived at the Elbe River (about 1 day after the 1st American unit linked up with the 1st Soviet unit.). My grandpa swam across the river with his squadmates, and there they saw three T34/85's and one SU-100. To the sides were Soviet infantrymen. My grandpa knew a lil russian (i'll tell ya how he knew it in a bit.), so he went up to one of the soldiers. They had a conversation for about twenty minutes. During which the Soviet soldiers took out some vodka and shared it with my grandpa and his squadmates.

After being wasted beyond imagination (my grandpa was 19, that was his first beer/alchohol.), him and the rest of the soldiers went into town. While in town, a shot rang out from the outskirts. A Soviet solder fell to the ground, bleeding out of shoulder. The Soviet's tried locating the sniper, but had no luck, thus loosing two more men. My grandpa thought he spoted the sniper, on a count of him seeing a glare. He questioned if it was images popping up in his head (He was still a little drunk.) or if it was the actual sniper.

He asked one of the Soviet soldiers if he could use his Mosin-Nagant rifle. The solder handed it to him and my grandpa pulled out a 12x scope from his musette bag. He did a make-shift attachment, and loaded the rifle with three bullets that the soldier handed him.

My grandpa looked through the scope, and it was the sniper. He moved to a more concealed location, and went prone. He took careful aim. It took him about three minutes to finally squeeze the trigger. Not knowing if he missed or not, he took out him .45 Colt, and moved to the posistion of the sniper.

The first thing my grandpa noticed was that the sniper was left handed (Ever heard of such a thing?). Anyway, he found the location and shot twice at the body, hitting the lower back. The body didn't move, and he went up to it and turned it on it's back. Now, this is very weird: The sniper was dead. Dead because my grandpa shot at such an angle that the bullet passed through the scope, and into the sniper's right eye, exiting out a little behind the right ear, killing him instantly.

My grandpa came back down to the village where five soldiers lied either wounded or dead. He took off the scope and handed the rifle back to the soldier. The soldier refused it, and told my grandpa to take it as a gift. A Red Army officer came to the American side of the river the next day and awarded my grandpa some medal for saving the lives of the Soviet soldiers in that village. My grandpa is still alive (at 77 years of age.) and still has the medal he was awarded, a picture of him and the soldier, and the Mosin-Nagant rifle he received as a gift from the soldier.

Now getting off subject, my grandpa learned russian from his brother (Joey), who went to Russia twice before the war, to look after his grandmother who lived about 40 miles north of Stalingrad. Unfortunatly, Joey was conscripted into the Red Army when he was in Russia. He fought at the late stages of Stalingrad all the way to Berlin. By the end of the war, Joey was a full Serzhant (I beleive it's spelt that way). He was awarded some medal for having 24 kills. And he too is still alive at the age of 79.

I got quite a history behind my family huh?

Pulls a Saving Private Ryan while drunk, using an unfamilure rifle, and using a make-shift scope attachment? Now, this is just me, but I think this guy is full of @#$%. Any thoughts?

 

mmm, it is the first case I hear, without proof, the only one I know is from a sniper in Vietnam armed with a remington rifle ( I 'm not sure but is a model 700?? ) saw it in the History channel

 

It's a great story, but no one can shoot straight with the first Soviet wodka he ever got still down his throat. And indeed, the weapon was completely unknown to him, he didn't even use a five-shot bolt-action rifle if he was in the US army. I'm afraid someone copied the sniper scenes from Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, combined them and made up a nice dream.

Other things I don't really trust on the story is the trust between the two Allied groups of soldiers and the willingness of a Russian soldier to hand out his rifle to an unknown drunk man. Most troopers of the Russian army in 1945 were armed with PpSh41s, so having a rifle would be an exclusive you wouldn't like to give away.

 

Barely believable until it gets to the point of putting the scope on a rifle it's not designed for and not "zeroed in". Then it's obviously baloney.

 

I soon as I read up to the part with the vodka, I could tell it was fake. My first alcohlic drink ever was vodka and from the little I remember, I wouldn't have been able to even pick up a rifle, let alone see the sniper, put on a scope properlly and what ever else this guy did.

If he was a sniper than he probably used the Springfield '03, a 5 shot bolt action rifle.

 

Some of it maybe probably, while some parts of the story are just too "coincidental".
I believe the part where the US and the Russians met at the Elber and sharing some vodka. It is common knowledge that russian soldiers received daily rations of Vodka, and it won't surprise me that they were having a few drinks, as the threat of German troops (outside of Berlin) were minimal at final stage of the war.
But the part that a drunk US sniper using a Russian rifle (for the first time) with an adopted US scope hit a German sniper right in the eye is too "unbelievable".

 

I agree; this is what we in the Navy call a "sea story". Very nice, but to be taken with a *big* grain of salt!

 

I thought the Springfield was a 4-shot rifle, and that the Garand sniper rifle was common among US soldiers after D-Day?

 

With the exception of the British Lee-enfied, I think most of the WWI bolt-action rifles such as Mauser, Mosin-Nagant, and springfields all carried 4 to 5 rounds in their chamber.
For further debate, please visit my post on "best bolt-action rifle" of WWI.

 

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

 

My point was simply that the two rifles, whichever the man used in the US army, were very different; not all bolt-action rifles are the same, and a Russian rifle is probably quite different in design and finishing.

 

My apologies for missing your points earlier. However, I do believe that for the US army in WWII, the 1903 Springfield was the "designated" sniper rifle because it was more accurate at long range than the Garand rifle.

 

You are probably right, but the Garand has the edge of semi-automatic fire of course. Well, just forget my note that the American had never used a bolt-action rifle, but the Mosin Nagant V would still have been a very strange rifle to him.

 

The M1 Garand was actualy able to match almost any bolt-action in first-shot accuracy.

 

In WW1 1918 the americans sent troops to Vladivostok asian russia and the Crimea in the black sea.(together with the british and the french) There they engaged the red guard. This was ordered by president Wilson to support the white tsarist russians. At that time the ammo for the standard american infantry weapons was very limited and they used russian mosin-nagant 1891 rifles and maxim 1910 watercooled machineguns.

Quite a lot of these weapons were brought back to the us in order to train the us soldiers in the use of other equipment.

Is it known if the us kept training us soldiers with the russian weapons untill ww2? I mean specialized units and officers?

It could be that this sniper received additional training with russian, and perhaps german, weaponry wich might explain his succes in engaging the german sniper.

 

I still disagree with that story, look's like a movie.
I talk with a viet vet, who was a sniper , and you need to be 100 % in your self to be able top do that kind of shot, and that guy was 1/2 drunk :-? , and as someone ponted, a different gun, and how did he fit the scoop, did he go to a hardware store, perhaps Aces or home depot
I simply do not buy that :smok:

 

All the seperate elements are possible, but combined in a single event it's just too improbable. The man was drunk, he just got that foreign rifle without an argument, fixed the scope (he wasn't carrying his rifle but still carried his scope?) with unbelievable ingenuity, then pulled off a shot that hit the enemy sniper and killed him SPR-style, without actually even seeing what he was shooting at. This is not realistic.

 

Agreed. This story wouldn't even make a good scene in a movie.

 

what a cow poo story...

"After being wasted beyond imagination"...wouldnt he be asleep on the ground? or stumbling around with his arm round a russian soldier singing a song? or laughing at the guys getting shot or something...you can't do any of that if you're "wasted beyond imagination" where did you get the story from?

 

Quite our point. Welcome to the forum, dayve.