Review of "Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger Knights Cross," edited by Geoffrey Brooks

 Review of

Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger Knights Cross, edited by Geoffrey Brooks, ISBN 1844153177

Five out of five stars

A dutiful and lethal soldier

 No single soldier can have the influence on a battlefield more than a talented and effective sniper. Able to deal out death blows over hundreds of yards while maintaining complete cover, such soldiers can keep large numbers of the enemy tucked away within whatever cover they are able to find. Knowing that sticking any part of your body above the parapet will get it shot focused the mind and keeps the body flat on the ground.

 Sepp Allerberger was one of the best snipers in the German Army during World War II. He likely was responsible for over 500 kills of the enemy and was always in demand to join units under stress. He was often called on to engage in a rear-guard action, killing a few of the enemy, slowing them down long enough for the other members of his unit to retreat in good order.

 Even though Allerberger received several patch awards for his sniping skills, he always threw them away. When it seemed possible that he would be captured, he would throw his sniper rifle away. When the Red Army captured snipers, they always tortured them to death. Furthermore, when in combat, the enemy sniper was always a high priority target.

 This book is much like a diary, in that it is a rendition of Allerberger’s experiences in fighting the Red Army in the Second World War. It was a brutal conflict where live prisoners were a rarity on both sides. He also describes some of the horrific actions of the Red Army once they entered the area of Eastern Europe where people of German extraction lived.

 Wounded several times, Allerberger closes the book with the most telling sentence. “We were soldiers, and we did our duty, and that was all there was to it.” That explains why the German soldiers fought to the bitter end, even though they were continuous witnesses to death and dismemberment.

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