When one thinks of what the life of a sniper is like, it is a common misconception, probably
as a result of modern-day films like American sniper, that snipers in the field are always
out there taking out bad guys and carrying out high-risk, secret missions.
While that is undoubtedly the case as part of their job description, both historically
and today, the life of a sniper has varied widely due to both the country and conflict.
In today's video, we will look at how the life of a sniper has evolved from its humble
beginnings to the professional marksmen they are today.
Snipers in American military history first came about during the French and Indian War.
However, if you called any of these skilled marksmen and backwoodsmen sniper, they would
probably look at you funny.
That is because back then, through the Civil War, snipers were known as sharpshooters.
Sharpshooters during the War were usually men selected for not only their prowess with
a rifle, but also their ability to track and hunt down the enemy in rugged environments,
operate independently for long periods of time, and report back vital information on
enemy movements.
For that reason, the first American sharpshooters were men who had a wide range of experiences
operating in the backwoods.
The first organized unit of sharpshooters, Roger's Rangers, organized by Major Robert
Rogers, came about during the French and Indian War.
Before this time, sharpshooting and tracking were seen more or less as a dirty, non-honorable
way of warfare.
British and other European commanders looked down upon these "savage" modes of fighting
beneath the classic line style fighting designed for European battlefields.
However, in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland, new methods of fighting
had to be tried after several disastrous defeats of British regulars at the hands of the French
and their Native American allies.
Luckily for the British, they found their answer in Major Robert Rogers.
As a boy, Rogers had witnessed the aftermath of a French-led Native American raid on a
nearby town.
After being forced to pull down the inhabitants' entrails and body parts that were strewn about
in the trees, he made a promise that he would avenge these people and fight back just like
them.
After joining the British army, his ideas were not met with much enthusiasm until 1757,
when he was finally authorized to recruit a crack unit of sharpshooters to counter strike
at the enemy since the War was not going well for the British.
Roger’s Rangers soon grew to seven companies strong and were made up of the most rugged
backwoodsmen and marksmen that the new colonies could muster.
These men were tasked with bringing the fight back to the enemy any way they could.
They were ruthless in their fighting style, with one of Roger's standing orders stating
that after engaging the enemy with their rifles, they were to close with their hatchets to
finish the job.
They were also paid a five pound sterling bounty, worth almost 1000 US dollars today,
for each French or Indian scalp they brought back from raids.
Roger's Rangers were also always expected to be on the move and travel lightly save
for a large quantity of powder and ammunition since they were always expecting to do a lot
of shooting.
The men operated mainly as a sort of what is today called a quick reaction force.
Whenever there was an attack, the Rangers were sent out to find, track, and ambush the
enemy responsible.
When they were not doing that, they would embark on their long-range patrols of scouting
enemy positions and ambushing anyone they could anywhere they found them.
Throughout their existence, Robert's Rangers were involved in hundreds of skirmishes and
battles throughout the North American wilderness.
Their prowess and capability cannot be underestimated as their consistent harassing attacks and
intelligence provided British commanders with the ability to maneuver their forces smartly
to avoid being cut off and surrounded like they were earlier in the War.
After the end of the French and Indian War, the American colonists formed their own crack
unit of Sharpshooters known as Morgan's Rifles during the American Revolution.
This unit, led by Colonel Daniel Morgan, would become the eyes, ears, and surgical precision
instrument of Washington's army.
Recruited from the same stock of men as before, their role still included plenty of scouting
and harassing of Native American settlements in retribution for raids earlier in the War.
However, as the War progressed, the men became less and less of a long-range reconnaissance
group and more of a tactical element to be employed on the battlefield.
One of the first instances of this was their consistent harassing of General Howe's army
as it retreated from New Jersey.
Along their entire march, Morgan's Rifles used their superior Kentucky rifles to snipe
at the Redcoats at distances of up to 500 yards, an unheard-of distance, and tactic
for the time.
As the men fought with the British more often, towards the end of the War in 1781, the men
formed part of a core infantry battalion that under the leadership of Morgan himself was
crucial in defeating the British in the Battle of the Cowpens.
This battle forced Cornwallis to abandon his invasion of the South and seek refuge at Yorktown
for rest and refitting.
After that, well, you all know the story.
After the American Revolution, it seems that the practice of employing sharpshooters fell
largely out of favor until the advent of the American Civil War.
It was here that sharpshooters would begin to become assets whereby their tactical decisions
would have long-term operational and strategic impacts on the War itself.
Shortly after the war broke out, sharpshooters began to take well-aimed shots at high-ranking
officers and generals on both sides.
The first general officer casualties to snipers happened during the first few months of the
War, and the practice of sharpshooters aiming to take out generals would become standard
practice throughout the War.
However, the life of a sniper in the Civil War and who could become a sniper was radically
different than before.
Prior to this conflict, sharpshooters would have acquired the skills necessary to become
a sniper years before joining the army.
However, now with the meat grinder of the War in full swing and no end in sight, the
Union needed to pump out several regiments of sharpshooters for frontline service and
did not have the luxury of waiting.
Initial qualifications to become a sniper were, of course, the ability to be a good
shot.
Their own commanding officer also had to be recommended as only mature, physically fit,
and intelligent men could become a sharpshooter.
Once passing a shooting test, those that made it were given a lot of on the job training
by veterans who had already experienced the horrors of modern combat.
One of the most significant changes that came about was how snipers would operate on the
battlefield.
Instead of scouting and harassing the enemy far behind their lines, their main job now
was to support the infantry and exploit weak points in enemy positions.
A perfect example of their life during this time comes during the Siege of Vicksburg,
Mississippi.
During the siege, the Confederates were holed up in a fortress of a city that had repelled
with heavy casualties several Union assaults to take it.
As a result, hundreds of sharpshooters were let loose about their deadly work to degrade
Southern morale and take out any Confederate that dared move around.
From the memoirs of a Confederate Captain who survived the battle, the effects of the
sharpshooters were astounding.
They would shoot at anything and everything that moved.
No matter the time of day or where they were, the men were always in a constant state of
fear.
Even looking over the parapets of the trenches for even a moment was a probable death sentence.
The snipers shot so much that it was literally impossible to move during the day.
Only at night could the men leave the comfort of their trenches, and even then it was still
risky.
While his men took serious casualties during several Union assaults, it was the consistent,
daily casualties from sniper fire that dwindled down his numbers and sapped the will to fight
from the survivors.
Such a strategic implementation of employing snipers had never been seen before on the
American continent and would not be seen as a terror weapon again until World War Two.
Though World War One saw extensive use of snipers, especially with the advent of new
technology such as telescopic sights, the use of spotters, and decoys, beyond these
tools their life did not differ much from that of an ordinary soldier due to the essentially
static nature of the conflict.
It was during World War Two, however, that the life of a sniper changed dramatically
due to the largest and most intense theater of War in human history: the Eastern front.
Snipers on the Eastern front faced a genuinely unique experience.
Due to the sheer scale of the German invasion and the need for practical tools to stem the
enemy tide while the Red Army recuperated from its losses, snipers here saw arguably
the most widespread use and, thus, were the most successful snipers in the history of
warfare.
A perfect example of how many of the highest-scoring Soviet snipers got their feet wet in the field
was none other than Vasily Zaitsev.
Beginning the War as a clerk in the accounting department of the Navy in its Far Eastern
Fleet, Vasily yearned for a chance to fight at the front.
After his request to go into combat was approved, he was attached to the 284th Rifle Division
and sent into the Battle of Stalingrad.
It was here in the autumn and winter of 1942 that Vasily would learn how to become a sniper
and change the course of history for Soviet and future snipers altogether.
In the rubble of the ruined city, he first began his forays on his own time after the
unit had stopped fighting for the day.
He would set out with his standard-issue Mosin Nagant rifle and attack any targets of opportunity
that he could.
Officers, artillery observers, machine gunners, radio operators, and, of course, other snipers
were the primary targets he would hunt.
Unlike the famous Finnish sniper Simo Haya, Vasily wanted to effect real change on the
battlefield with just his rifle.
As a result, though he would take shots at average German troops, he would always try
to take out high-value targets first so that the infantry would have an easier time on
the ground.
His tactics paid off, and within a matter of months, he rose from relative obscurity
to a national hero.
Soviet leadership, sensing his value as a trainer for future generations of snipers,
removed him from the frontlines and had him teaching new crops of snipers to carry the
fight to the enemy.
After Vasily’s successes became widely known, Soviet doctrine also began to change so that
by the end of the War, the average infantry platoon was assigned at least two snipers
for long range fire support.
However, life as a sniper in World War Two varied greatly depending on the front and
the combatant.
While the allies such as the Soviet Union, the US, and Great Britain all began embedding
snipers as a direct infantry support weapon, countries like Nazi Germany began to use them
as a terror tactic once more.
While professional German snipers continued operating through the end of the War in the
same way as their enemy counterparts, larger and larger numbers of semi-professional and
inexperienced snipers were employed to cause havoc beyond the frontlines.
It was quite common, especially on the Western front, that when German forces retreated,
they would leave dozens or sometimes hundreds of sacrificial snipers beyond to cause as
much damage as possible.
These snipers often times wreaked havoc on advancing allied troops who thought they were
safe from German gunfire only to be cut down miles behind the front from concealed snipers
in trees, bushes, buildings, and chimneys.
Though often successful in striking their enemy, these snipers were less trained and
less experienced than their counterparts, who had been fighting for years already.
Oftentimes, these were one-way suicide missions with massive retaliation in the form of artillery,
plane, and tank attacks being used to flush out these last-ditch defenders.
After the end of World War Two, snipers still retained this infantry support role.
During the Korean War, they proved vital at striking at the unseen enemy in the mountains
and valleys of the Korean peninsula.
In Vietnam, the American military began to employ them once again into what has morphed
into their modern-day role as a scout sniper.
The role of a scout sniper is two-fold.
Their primary job is to be inserted behind enemy lines to operate independently to report
on enemy locations.
Such actions were as vital then as today in fighting a guerilla war where large bodies
of troops can move unseen and are hence avoided by the enemy.
Snipers operating in small teams can easily blend in with the environment and report back
vital intelligence that can either be used to rain down indirect fire on an unsuspecting
enemy or help plan coordinated search and destroy missions.
Snipers today too are fortunate to have years of modern developments in ballistics, scopes,
and rifles at their fingertips.
Because of this, snipers in an infantry support role can now consistently hit targets over
a mile and even a mile and a half away.
Because of this, snipers can provide valuable top cover to infantry operations where they
can take out or at the least suppress enemy movements to cover advancing troops.