hist2004
07-08-2004, 09:30 PM
With a debris-strewn no man's land between them, wrote William Craig in his book Enemy at the Gates three decades ago, two hunters stalked each other in the way of ancient and fierce tribesmen. Their jungle, though, was the ruined cityscape of Stalingrad in the fall of 1942, a terrain littered with rubble, charred tank shells, and the stanchions of collapsed buildings. The Germanic tribe and the Soviet tribe had each chosen a champion to go forth and slay the champion of the other.
Around them the war still raged, but for these two the city might as well have been a vacuum, with no one else present. Never mind the crash and thump of heavy arms or the patter of the light stuff on the nearby streets-theirs was a personal duel, to the death. The search of these two snipers, each for the other, was intense, requiring full concentration.
The Soviet champion, one Vassili Zaitsev, had arrived first. With the German juggernaut stalled in the streets of the city next to the Volga, the great battle had degenerated into a struggle for every intersection or shattered building. Short of men and supplies, the Soviets made fortresses of the rubble piles and husks of buildings; they channeled the German panzers into chosen routes registered for devastating artillery fire, while their small arms erupted from every tumble-down cellar and cranny of the ruined city.
Stalingrad had become a great and deadly proving ground for snipers, for the sharpshooters of both sides. Russian or German, they had been finding their targets with cruel regularity. Sometimes the shots from nowhere even struck down civilians. In one residential area of Stalingrad early in the months-long battle, Mrs. Katrina Karmanova watched from a trench as a family of four suddenly appeared and raced toward the river.
But a German sniper had seen them too. As he went into action, the son, the father, and the mother all went down, one by one. Last was a small girl, who halted uncertainly by her mother's body. Soldiers in Mrs. Karmanova's trench yelled at her-"Run! Run!" Finally, the stunned child did. The sniper let her go.
Later in the battle, it was a German officer's turn. Late in October, the German Sixteenth Panzer Division was trying to subdue Soviets holed up in the shattered suburb of Rynok. A captain named Mues led his battalion through a difficult obstacle course of bunkers, pillboxes, stationary tanks, and trenches, all fiercely defended.
He and his men had reached the banks of the Volga and turned north, in hopes of linking up in the center of Rynok with other German units. Aggressive as a combat leader, courageous, loved by his men, Mues had no idea that in the fog and light snow he was being tracked by a Soviet sniper. But he was, and an instant later, he was down, fatally shot in the head. The men who gathered around him cried. Some collapsed. The news of his death demoralized much of his battle-hardened battalion.
In still another instance, it was the German marksmen who scored a small victory. In a guttered workers' district, eleven Germans from Combat Group Engelke dashed into the ground floor of an industrial building and set up a radio post. Only then did they discover that on a floor above them were several Russian troops, trapped by the Germans below.
The Germans calculated it would be too costly to storm them by the only stairway, and they also ruled out using the noisy freight elevator. As in the city-wide battle outside, it was a stalemate. The two groups passed one night in their shared building, then a second one, with only brief exchanges of satchel charges and automatic-weapons fire that produced no definitive results for either side.
In the hours following the second night, however, German snipers quietly took up positions across the street. They could see the Russians through the upstairs windows. The Germans on the first floor heard the shots outside and the screams above.
After a long silence, the Germans fearfully mounted the stairs and found their enemy-seven Russians, all fatally wounded by the snipers.
When the Siberian sharpshooter Zaitsev arrived in Stalingrad, both to conduct his sniping and to teach others, he already was a marksman widely ballyhooed in the Soviet press for his many combat "kills." The Germans also had seen the breathless stories, and they knew Soviet sniper tactics all too well by now. In Stalingrad especially, the sniper war was taking a dreadful toll among the German infantry.
Deciding to fight fire with fire, they called in their own champion of the telescopic rifle sight, a Major Konings who soon arrived from Germany proper and began to prowl the debris that once was Stalingrad. His particular mission was to find and kill the Great Zaitsev.
A careless prisoner then revealed the "supersniper's" presence to the Russians, and Zaitsev set out to find Konings before Konings found him.
For days the two scoured the jumbled ruins of the city, edging along the no man's land that lay between the opposing forces. Fellow snipers also searched on behalf of their respective champions.
The German had the advantage of knowing something about his opponent's habits and techniques from captured documents and press clippings. Zaitsev, on the other hand, had killed many a German sniper, but he had no idea of Konings's favored tactics such as camouflage, deceptions, or shooting techniques.
Except for the prisoner's tale, Zaitsev couldn't even be sure the German ace was "in town." But then someone, a real expert, shot down two Soviet snipers with single shots, one right after the other. Konings definitely was there.
Soon after, Zaitsev and his spotter, Nikolai Kulikov, found a prime position in the ruins between Mamaev Hill and the Red October Plant. They settled in and studied the rough ground opposite for any artificial change from its carefully memorized contours of the past weeks.
Toward the end of the first day, they saw a German helmet moving in a distant trench. It made a tempting sniper's target, an easy shot for a marksman like Zaitsev, but he held back. It could be a trick intended to lure his fire and thus reveal his position.
The next morning, the two Russians took up their hidden position again. For hours, they waited and watched. Directly ahead of them was a tank hulk to the left and a pillbox to the right. In between was an innocuous pile of rubble-bricks-and a sheet of metal.
The day passed uneventfully for the pair, and with the darkness of night they withdrew again. The hunt was still on.
The next morning, a political commissar named Danilov insisted upon going with them. The war raged loudly throughout all Stalingrad as the trio occupied Zaitsev's chosen position, again facing the tank at left, pillbox at right.
In a short time, however, Danilov rashly exposed himself. Incredibly, he rose and shouted, "There he is! I'll point him out to you."
A shot rang out, and Danilov slumped down. As Zaitsev noted with grim satisfaction, he was only wounded in the shoulder. The hidden shooter across the way wouldn't be that bad a shot. No, he wanted to draw out any companions helping the foolish Danilov.
It was a ruse worthy of Konings himself, and now, with his binoculars, Zaitsev studied the debris before him even more intently. Others carried away the wounded Comrade. Kulikov stayed by Zaitsev's side.
The tank they could dismiss outright. Too exposed, too obvious. The pillbox wasn't likely since its gun slot was sealed off. That left the rubble and sheet of metal. And the more Zaitsev stared at the spot, the more artificially arranged it began to look.
But how to be sure?
Zaitsev took a glove, raised it on the end of a stick. His opponent bit-with the crack of a rifle, a bullet whistled through the glove.
Now, the Russian champ was positive. So was his spotter. "There's our viper," hissed Kulikov. But now was not the time to act, with Konings surely on guard after the glove trick. Slithering and crawling away, the two Russians instead mapped out their strategy for the morn, then retired again for the night.
The next day found them settled still within view of the sheet metal and bricks, but at a new point in the arc of terrain facing the German ace's suspected position. This time, Zaitsev had selected a point that by late afternoon would place the bright sun at his back-in the German's face. In the morning, though, the Russians fired an errant, aimless shot, to get their quarry's attention . . . make him wonder.
During the long hours that followed, the Russians kept their rifles down to avoid any bright reflection revealing exactly where they were. The single aimless shot no doubt gave the German a fair idea-he still would be wondering, tense, what caused it.
By late afternoon, the sun had crawled behind the Russian pair; they now were clothed in a shadow.
Zaitsev intently watched the spot where the hidden sniper would be himself watching, in their direction, toward the source of the mysterious shot. And he would be facing the sun; its bright rays then were likely to . . . and they did!
Zaitsev saw the telltale reflection from glass. By plan, Kulikov raised a tempting helmet. The expected shot came. Play-acting, Kulikov screamed and briefly jerked into view, as if shot. Reflexively, the shooter stirred, raised his head to see his results.
The next shot was Zaitsev's. Just one, between the eyes. The historical accounts say it really was Konings.
The duel was over. The war went on.
Based upon Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig (Reader's Digest Books, New York, 1973).
Note: William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates was the basis for the previous story and an inspiration for the recent film of the same name. However, some sources have questioned whether or not there was a duel of sniper champions as described in Craig's work. According to BBC Online reviewer Neil Smith, the movie focuses upon "a widely discredited Soviet anecedote." In addition, Anthony Beevor, author of the book Stalingrad, recently was quoted as saying there is "no trace" in Soviet or German records of a German sniper ace being sent to Stalingrad specifically to fight a "duel" with the real-life Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev. On the other hand, the absence of specific reports does not rule out the possibility that one sniper from either side was sent out to eliminate the other.
C. Brian Kelly
Regards,
Hist2004
Around them the war still raged, but for these two the city might as well have been a vacuum, with no one else present. Never mind the crash and thump of heavy arms or the patter of the light stuff on the nearby streets-theirs was a personal duel, to the death. The search of these two snipers, each for the other, was intense, requiring full concentration.
The Soviet champion, one Vassili Zaitsev, had arrived first. With the German juggernaut stalled in the streets of the city next to the Volga, the great battle had degenerated into a struggle for every intersection or shattered building. Short of men and supplies, the Soviets made fortresses of the rubble piles and husks of buildings; they channeled the German panzers into chosen routes registered for devastating artillery fire, while their small arms erupted from every tumble-down cellar and cranny of the ruined city.
Stalingrad had become a great and deadly proving ground for snipers, for the sharpshooters of both sides. Russian or German, they had been finding their targets with cruel regularity. Sometimes the shots from nowhere even struck down civilians. In one residential area of Stalingrad early in the months-long battle, Mrs. Katrina Karmanova watched from a trench as a family of four suddenly appeared and raced toward the river.
But a German sniper had seen them too. As he went into action, the son, the father, and the mother all went down, one by one. Last was a small girl, who halted uncertainly by her mother's body. Soldiers in Mrs. Karmanova's trench yelled at her-"Run! Run!" Finally, the stunned child did. The sniper let her go.
Later in the battle, it was a German officer's turn. Late in October, the German Sixteenth Panzer Division was trying to subdue Soviets holed up in the shattered suburb of Rynok. A captain named Mues led his battalion through a difficult obstacle course of bunkers, pillboxes, stationary tanks, and trenches, all fiercely defended.
He and his men had reached the banks of the Volga and turned north, in hopes of linking up in the center of Rynok with other German units. Aggressive as a combat leader, courageous, loved by his men, Mues had no idea that in the fog and light snow he was being tracked by a Soviet sniper. But he was, and an instant later, he was down, fatally shot in the head. The men who gathered around him cried. Some collapsed. The news of his death demoralized much of his battle-hardened battalion.
In still another instance, it was the German marksmen who scored a small victory. In a guttered workers' district, eleven Germans from Combat Group Engelke dashed into the ground floor of an industrial building and set up a radio post. Only then did they discover that on a floor above them were several Russian troops, trapped by the Germans below.
The Germans calculated it would be too costly to storm them by the only stairway, and they also ruled out using the noisy freight elevator. As in the city-wide battle outside, it was a stalemate. The two groups passed one night in their shared building, then a second one, with only brief exchanges of satchel charges and automatic-weapons fire that produced no definitive results for either side.
In the hours following the second night, however, German snipers quietly took up positions across the street. They could see the Russians through the upstairs windows. The Germans on the first floor heard the shots outside and the screams above.
After a long silence, the Germans fearfully mounted the stairs and found their enemy-seven Russians, all fatally wounded by the snipers.
When the Siberian sharpshooter Zaitsev arrived in Stalingrad, both to conduct his sniping and to teach others, he already was a marksman widely ballyhooed in the Soviet press for his many combat "kills." The Germans also had seen the breathless stories, and they knew Soviet sniper tactics all too well by now. In Stalingrad especially, the sniper war was taking a dreadful toll among the German infantry.
Deciding to fight fire with fire, they called in their own champion of the telescopic rifle sight, a Major Konings who soon arrived from Germany proper and began to prowl the debris that once was Stalingrad. His particular mission was to find and kill the Great Zaitsev.
A careless prisoner then revealed the "supersniper's" presence to the Russians, and Zaitsev set out to find Konings before Konings found him.
For days the two scoured the jumbled ruins of the city, edging along the no man's land that lay between the opposing forces. Fellow snipers also searched on behalf of their respective champions.
The German had the advantage of knowing something about his opponent's habits and techniques from captured documents and press clippings. Zaitsev, on the other hand, had killed many a German sniper, but he had no idea of Konings's favored tactics such as camouflage, deceptions, or shooting techniques.
Except for the prisoner's tale, Zaitsev couldn't even be sure the German ace was "in town." But then someone, a real expert, shot down two Soviet snipers with single shots, one right after the other. Konings definitely was there.
Soon after, Zaitsev and his spotter, Nikolai Kulikov, found a prime position in the ruins between Mamaev Hill and the Red October Plant. They settled in and studied the rough ground opposite for any artificial change from its carefully memorized contours of the past weeks.
Toward the end of the first day, they saw a German helmet moving in a distant trench. It made a tempting sniper's target, an easy shot for a marksman like Zaitsev, but he held back. It could be a trick intended to lure his fire and thus reveal his position.
The next morning, the two Russians took up their hidden position again. For hours, they waited and watched. Directly ahead of them was a tank hulk to the left and a pillbox to the right. In between was an innocuous pile of rubble-bricks-and a sheet of metal.
The day passed uneventfully for the pair, and with the darkness of night they withdrew again. The hunt was still on.
The next morning, a political commissar named Danilov insisted upon going with them. The war raged loudly throughout all Stalingrad as the trio occupied Zaitsev's chosen position, again facing the tank at left, pillbox at right.
In a short time, however, Danilov rashly exposed himself. Incredibly, he rose and shouted, "There he is! I'll point him out to you."
A shot rang out, and Danilov slumped down. As Zaitsev noted with grim satisfaction, he was only wounded in the shoulder. The hidden shooter across the way wouldn't be that bad a shot. No, he wanted to draw out any companions helping the foolish Danilov.
It was a ruse worthy of Konings himself, and now, with his binoculars, Zaitsev studied the debris before him even more intently. Others carried away the wounded Comrade. Kulikov stayed by Zaitsev's side.
The tank they could dismiss outright. Too exposed, too obvious. The pillbox wasn't likely since its gun slot was sealed off. That left the rubble and sheet of metal. And the more Zaitsev stared at the spot, the more artificially arranged it began to look.
But how to be sure?
Zaitsev took a glove, raised it on the end of a stick. His opponent bit-with the crack of a rifle, a bullet whistled through the glove.
Now, the Russian champ was positive. So was his spotter. "There's our viper," hissed Kulikov. But now was not the time to act, with Konings surely on guard after the glove trick. Slithering and crawling away, the two Russians instead mapped out their strategy for the morn, then retired again for the night.
The next day found them settled still within view of the sheet metal and bricks, but at a new point in the arc of terrain facing the German ace's suspected position. This time, Zaitsev had selected a point that by late afternoon would place the bright sun at his back-in the German's face. In the morning, though, the Russians fired an errant, aimless shot, to get their quarry's attention . . . make him wonder.
During the long hours that followed, the Russians kept their rifles down to avoid any bright reflection revealing exactly where they were. The single aimless shot no doubt gave the German a fair idea-he still would be wondering, tense, what caused it.
By late afternoon, the sun had crawled behind the Russian pair; they now were clothed in a shadow.
Zaitsev intently watched the spot where the hidden sniper would be himself watching, in their direction, toward the source of the mysterious shot. And he would be facing the sun; its bright rays then were likely to . . . and they did!
Zaitsev saw the telltale reflection from glass. By plan, Kulikov raised a tempting helmet. The expected shot came. Play-acting, Kulikov screamed and briefly jerked into view, as if shot. Reflexively, the shooter stirred, raised his head to see his results.
The next shot was Zaitsev's. Just one, between the eyes. The historical accounts say it really was Konings.
The duel was over. The war went on.
Based upon Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig (Reader's Digest Books, New York, 1973).
Note: William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates was the basis for the previous story and an inspiration for the recent film of the same name. However, some sources have questioned whether or not there was a duel of sniper champions as described in Craig's work. According to BBC Online reviewer Neil Smith, the movie focuses upon "a widely discredited Soviet anecedote." In addition, Anthony Beevor, author of the book Stalingrad, recently was quoted as saying there is "no trace" in Soviet or German records of a German sniper ace being sent to Stalingrad specifically to fight a "duel" with the real-life Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev. On the other hand, the absence of specific reports does not rule out the possibility that one sniper from either side was sent out to eliminate the other.
C. Brian Kelly
Regards,
Hist2004