The enemy is moving again. It's not difficult to spot them, they plod along in the heavy snow with light brown uniforms, standing out like hay bale practice targets against the pristine white snow. Despite this being the height of winter, nobody bothered to issue the Russian occupiers winter uniforms.
Simo Hayha isn't one to complain though, if anything, he's grateful. Certainly makes his job easier. He doesn't use a modern telescopic sight the way many of his fellow scouts do.
Sure, the fancy glass is nice for really long range shots, but it also glints in the sunlight. He's seen too many of his friends get their heads blown off after a stray glint gave them away. Many of the enemy too- only this time it was him delivering death.
Besides, using telescopic sights means you have to raise your head just a few extra inches than you do with iron sights, and that's all it takes to get the top of your head blown off. If that wasn't bad enough, the cold weather often fogs up the glass, basically rendering a shooter useless. Instead, he uses good old fashioned iron sights on his antiquated SAKO M/28-30.
It's been in service since 1891 but most of the troops prefer newer models with fancier sights. For Simon though it's all he needs to do his deadly work, and he does it with deadly accuracy. Now, he watches the squad of Soviet soldiers trudging through the snow, slowly working their way towards his position.
He couldn't ask for better targets. The men stand out like a sore thumb in their brown coats, and their lack of snow shoes slows them down to practically a crawl. They can thank Stalin for that, he thinks as he scans the small formation and starts mentally assigning an order to each kill, it was Stalin's paranoid purges of the Red Army that saw it left with a bunch of idiots running everything.
That's the only way to explain the terrible performance of the Russian military to date- invading a country a fraction their size and barely able to move more than a few miles in weeks of fighting. The fools even drive tanks over frozen lakes without surveying them first, only to collapse the ice and drown their crews. Stalin's purge of any Soviet leadership he thought presented a threat to his rule has not just cost the Red Army its best generals and tacticians, but its most capable logistics personnel too.
What kind of idiot would send an entire army to fight in Finland in the middle of the winter without snowshoes or white coats to help camouflage the soldiers? Simon clears his head, he's done assigning his kill order. Whoever that idiot is, he's grateful.
Slow, steady pressure on the trigger and the old rifle barks out a sharp retort. Less than half a second later, a Russian soldier falls backwards into the snow. Perfect shot, right below the throat.
The Russians panic and begin to scatter. Some begin to return fire, shooting blindly into the snow covered landscape in front of them. Simon curses under his breath as he moves his sights to his next target- he had miscalculated the soldier's movement.
He meant to fire once the man had firm footing on his next step, that would have prevented him from flying straight backwards and thus giving away the direction of fire. Instead he'd caught him just a breath too late, with the rear foot already in motion and the soldier off balance when the bullet struck, leaving him with only one way for the massive kinetic energy of the impact to send him. A dead giveaway for a squad of professional soldiers- but these aren't professionals.
They're conscripts, hastily drawn up from farms and villages across the Soviet Union, given ill-fitting uniforms that often leave them suffering from frostbite or just dead from the extreme cold, and thrown into a disorganized, inept offensive in the dead of winter. His next shot catches one of the men firing blindly straight in the head. He had meant to kill him fourth, but the fool was getting lucky and rounds were starting to fall near Simon's position.
He has little fear of actually being seen, he’s spent hours in the dead of night building his killing cave, a hard packed hole in the snow that completely encompasses him. The hardpacked snow helps muffle the rifle and steady it. He allows the falling snow to accumulate over and around him, it helps hide the signs of the hardpack he surrounds himself with, but he constantly brushes away the falling snow from directly in front of him.
That way the rifle doesn't cause a tell-tale puff of snow with each shot. Bam! The next shot catches the man he meant to kill second in the upper chest again.
It's a clean kill, just like he was taught as a kid hunting deer, wolves, and other wild game. They may be invaders and occupiers, but Simon has no wish to prologue their suffering like they truly deserve. Vengeance is another man's game- Simon is here simply doing his job and nothing more.
Only seconds have passed since the ambush began, and the panicking soldiers have finally settled into three predictable roles. Some have thrown themselves into the ground, seeking cover in the snow- not a bad idea really, except the snow does little to stop or even slow Simon's bullets. Numbers four and five meet their death despite burying themselves half a foot into the snow.
Others are running blindly, still unsure of which direction the firing is coming from. To their credit, some are trying to do as they have been trained- assault the ambush- but sadly have no idea which direction the ambush is coming from. Others are simply running for what looks like solid cover, a boulder here, the remains of a fence post there.
He ignores these for now. The third group is fleeing for their lives. In a panic, the Russians break and start to rush back in the direction of friendly lines.
You can't fight what you can't see, and demoralized already from the grinding war, poor equipment, worse food, and abusive leadership, the threat of an invisible attacker is too much for them to bear. So they run- but Simon doesn't let them. More than the men seeking cover and scanning the hills for him, these runners are now his greatest threat.
If one of them gets back to friendly lines and has the presence of mind to report his position, it could be a very bad day for Simon as artillery rains down around him. It won't be the first time that he's had to dig himself in through an artillery barrage meant specifically just for him. Normally, his priority target would be the radio operator- except like most Russian units these men aren't carrying one.
It's not just squads either, he's seen entire platoons of Russian infantry operating via a system of runners. No wonder they're having such a hard time against the mobile, flexible Finnish defenders, by the time they pin a target down and get word back to command, the Fins are already attacking from a completely different direction. It's like a bad game of whack-a-mole played blindfolded, and sometimes information is so late by the time artillery support comes in it's falling right on Russian heads.
That's why it's important to get the runners first, even if it interrupts his killing order. Three more rapid shots and there are now no more runners. Problem solved.
Simon scans the survivors, clearly visible due to their brown uniforms against the white snow. He almost feels sorry for them, but he can cope with the guilt later. Now he needs to finish his job.
He scans once more for any signs of a squad leader, really anyone who seems to be taking charge. Unsurprisingly, he finds nobody. The Russians have never been good about fielding a professional non-commissioned officer corps.
Explains why they're so awful at maneuvering. Satisfied that nobody is coordinating the panic-stricken survivors, Simon takes a moment to refill his mouth with fresh snow. He moves slowly, steadily and very methodically- otherwise he may give his position away.
The occasional rifle round falls near his position from the panicked soldiers below, but he's not concerned. It would take all the luck in the world for the amateurs below to spot his little den. The fresh mouthful of snow is vital.
It cools his breath before he exhales, so it doesn't give him away with a telltale stream of steam. Ready to continue his grim work, he brings the iron sights back to his eye again. He adjusts for the rising wind and squeezes the trigger.
Another Russian mother who'll never see her son again. You shouldn't have let a dictator send him here. Simon works slowly, methodically.
Even taking shots too close together threaten to give his position away, allowing soldiers to pinpoint his location by the sound of the firing. Instead, he takes a shot, then simply waits, mentally counting up to thirty seconds. Then he repeats.
Over and over again until finally, only one survivor remains. This one is well protected. He hid behind a rock as the ambush began, and Simon is having a hard time getting a good bead on him.
At least the Russian's figured out which direction the firing is coming from, and keeps the large boulder between himself and Simon. It has now turned into a standoff with only two outcomes. The first is the soldier gets lucky and another Russian squad or even armored vehicle happens by and he flags them down.
That could be problematic for Simon, he's certainly not equipped to deal with an armored vehicle and taking on an additional squad would be an issue- even if he doesn't run out of ammo first, sheer numbers will likely overwhelm him. The second is that the soldier chooses to be patient and simply waits. The sun is still high in the sky, but days are short in the Finnish winter.
A few more hours and darkness will cover the soldier's escape. There is a third option, Simon supposes. He could just let the man go.
There's already eleven fresh corpses in the snow, turning the bright white into deep crimson. What's a twelfth? Is killing just one more invader really going to end the war?
These are the internal struggles Simon details in his private memoirs, hidden from the world until years after his death. He calls it his “book of sins”, a personal, and detailed account of the five hundred plus soldiers that after the war he'll estimate ended up dead because of him and his rifle. He doesn't bother justifying, he's already killed so many that it's pointless really.
Instead, he decides, and then acts. His first shot strikes the boulder near the top. Predictably, the impact of the bullet causes the boulder to crack and sends fine slivers of razor sharp granite exploding outwards.
The soldier catches a few to the face and rears back instinctively. That's all Simon needs. The second shot ends the Russian's life.
But it's not a clean kill. It couldn't be. He only had two inches, maybe two and a half inches of exposed skull to work with.
Instead of an immediate kill by penetrating deep into the brain, the bullet struck the upper layers of the brain and shore them away as it exited out the upper back of the skull. This sends the soldier flying on his back, and immediately he begins to convulse as the brain tries to cope with the massive damage it's just suffered. Simon curses and forgets to regulate his breathing, letting out a brief wisp of steam.
This isn't right, kills should be clean- whether they are on prey animals or on invaders. He tries to readjust for a killing shot, but the boulder is still between him and the slowly dying man. The only parts of him visible to Simon are an arm and a leg, both convulsing as the brain struggles to process electrical signals to the muscles.
Neither of which will allow Simon to achieve his mercy kill. There's nothing he can do for him. A full minute and a half later, the Russian is finally still.
Simon curses again, and apologizes to the dead soldier. Or maybe it's to God. Later he'll have time for regret and repentance, but now he has to remain calm and alert.
The entire exchange seems to have gone on for days, but it's barely lasted longer than fifteen minutes. Most of the killing was in the first few minutes, then the rest was just a lot of waiting and mopping up. Now is not the time to drop his guard though, he may not be able to see any more Soviet soldiers before him, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.
It's been at least two weeks since domestic newspapers started running stories about him. The Finnish newspapers call him the “White Death”, the Russian newspapers don't report on him at all- specially not on the staggering number of casualties he's helped inflict on the occupiers. Later in life rumors will circulate that it was the Russians who gave him the nickname the White Death, but in reality it was always a Finnish propaganda construction.
To add to his mystique, the papers add additional titles such as “the magic shooter”, implying that his bullets can pierce even tank armor to achieve their one shot, one kill lethality. The Russian newspapers may not be running stories about him and his soaring kill counts, but that doesn't mean they aren't extremely aware of him and his actions. In fact, intelligence intercepts have confirmed that the Russians have dispatched their own snipers looking to eliminate him.
It's these he's now carefully scanning the countryside for. When the war first began he would have never dreamt that the Russians would use an entire squad of young conscripts as bait just to kill one enemy sniper, but after months of fighting he's witnessed Soviet tactics for himself. Often they send hundreds of conscripts to their deaths against Finnish machine guns and artillery just so their more veteran troops can have an easier go at it in the follow-up attack.
The Russians are fighting a war of attrition in the purest form, their men eating up Finnish bullets until all magazines and cartridges are exhausted. This is largely because they're simply too tactically incompetent to do much else. If Stalin is popular at home, he's more popular than ever with the Finnish military.
Unfortunately though Finland is a fraction the size of the Soviet Union, and the tactic is working. Today, Simon is concerned that this ambush was entirely too easy. These men were sacrificial lambs.
The day is silent except for the distant sound of tanks rumbling along somewhere miles away. Simon remains perfectly still. Snipers can't remain in one position for long or they'll become easy prey to artillery or counter-snipers, so most snipers will make their escape or reposition immediately after eliminating their targets.
Simon however stays absolutely still, maintaining the same careful discipline that's kept him alive for weeks on the front even as he penetrated deep behind enemy lines to go hunting. His position is good, he's situated on the downslope of a large hill where he spent several hours last night digging himself into the snow. He's avoided the tree line and the cover it provides only because as he was establishing his position in the dead of night, the snow had begun to fall again.
Once Simon was dug in sufficiently, the fresh layer of snow would erase all signs of his digging. The downslope position has two advantages. First, it makes the few parts of him that are visible more difficult to see thanks to the sun casting a shadow over his part of the hill.
Second, as the falling snow creates new snowdrifts, they fall down the slope and over his position helping camouflage him further. But he's picked this specific hill for a third reason- the winter sun sets quickly this time of year, and as it does it will fall mostly behind him. That means anyone hunting for him will be forced to do so with the sun in their eyes.
All Simon has to do is wait patiently, maintain his incredible discipline. His body aches to move and stretch after six hours of laying perfectly still, but he shoves these thoughts out of his mind as he continues to carefully scan the surrounding countryside for a threat he instinctively feels is there. Something, a third sense, has him on edge.
When the growing hunger becomes difficult to ignore, he doesn't deny himself the way other snipers might. Denying yourself food often leads to you becoming shaky, throwing your accuracy off. Instead, he carries small pieces of bread and sugar cubes in his pockets.
He moves slowly, deliberately, almost imperceptibly to remove a sugar cube and put it in his mouth. The effort takes him a half hour to complete, so slow and minuscule are his movements. The sugar cube is dissolved in a fraction of that time, but the boost of energy is enough to keep the shakes away.
Crows have begun to work at the bodies down below. He doesn't dare check his watch, but instead gauges how much time has passed by the lengthening shadows. Three, maybe four hours since the ambush- and still nothing.
But he can't shake that feeling of being hunted, something is telling him that death is out there, waiting for him to make one mistake. Maybe it's a sixth sense, or maybe it's just his knowledge that in his position, that's exactly what he would do. The lives of twelve men in exchange for the life of one?
With Simon's kill count approaching two hundred it's difficult for him to deny it's a fair exchange. He's stayed alive by always planning for all possible contingencies though, including this one. This ambush location wasn't chosen at random, and as the sun starts to set in the sky the reason why becomes clear.
With the sun now behind him, it is firmly in the eyes of any would-be hunter. And more importantly. .
. there! The hunt is over in less than a second.
That's the benefit of not using a scope. It narrows your field of view too much. It's nice for picking out details, but too many snipers spend their short lives staring down the lens of their scope and missing out on the bigger picture.
Not Simon. Using only his old rifle's iron sights he immediately spots the tell-tale glint of an enemy's scope in movement, searching and scanning for him. A few pounds of trigger pressure later, and the duel is complete.
He must have killed the Russian immediately because he hears no scream. The only thing that gives the well-hidden enemy sniper away now is the rapidly growing patch of crimson in the fresh white snow. But still Simon doesn't move.
His only celebration is a fresh mouthful of snow in order to continue cooling his breath and prevent his position being given away by steam. It's discipline more than accuracy that keeps a sniper alive. He eliminated one hunter, but there could be others.
Minutes turn to an hour, Simon still doesn't move. With the sun only twenty minutes from fully setting, it happens- he hears the tell-tale roaring of distant artillery. The sound is quickly followed by the screaming high pitch whine of incoming rounds that smash into a grove of trees to his right.
So there was another sniper. Only with the sun starting to set he knew his hunt was running out of time. Having failed to locate Simon, the Russian finally caved in and simply called for an artillery strike in the general area, hoping to kill him before the cover of night allowed him to slip away once more.
The artillery rocks the hill and surrounding trees. Most of it is falling onto the grove of trees to his right, and after that's been turned to matchsticks rounds start falling into the trees on his left. The fire is being guided by the enemy sniper, who's eliminating all the most probable hiding spots.
He'd never dream Simon was hiding in plain view this entire time- yet another reason a good sniper never picks the obvious spots. That doesn't mean he's safe though, as artillery is notoriously inaccurate. A round proves this point by smashing into the snow a hundred feet below Simon, throwing up massive plumes of snow.
He can hear the angry buzzing of razor-sharp shrapnel spraying into the snow around him. He stays cool though, all the time scanning for the enemy sniper. Panicking now would be a death sentence, as the moment he gets up to run for it, even under the cover of incoming rounds, he has no doubts that the Russian will take his shot.
This isn't the first time the Russians have turned to artillery in frustration, and it won't be the last time. The barrage continues fifteen minutes after the sky has turned dark. Rounds come uncomfortably close, but the falling snowplumes only help to add to Simon's camouflage.
The enemy has used artillery to sweep across the landscape in broad strokes, leaving little standing in its wake. Even the bodies below have been ravaged by incoming rounds or torn to shreds by high speed shrapnel. Yet Simon remains, and when it becomes clear that more rounds aren't incoming, he makes his move.
There's still a low fog of snow in the air from the thick plumes kicked up by the incoming artillery, and this, along with the cover of darkness, give him all the cover he needs to make his escape. Simon avoids the actual crest of the hill where he'll be highlighted against the stars and dancing lights of the far northern sky. Instead, he moves along the military crest, parallel to the battlefield below him, and heading into the cover of the twisted and splintered trees.
Once there, he follows the curve of the hill to a narrow valley where he'll be covered from observation on all sides. He's picked his escape route as carefully as his firing position, not leaving a single detail to chance. In minutes, he's left his old position and a frustrated enemy sniper behind, and within the hour he'll be back behind friendly lines.
He takes pains to announce his approach to friendly lines through a predetermined position that's been told to expect him and several other scout-snipers dispatched the evening before. Entering the camp, his commanding officer gives him a cursory nod. The man looks exhausted, spent after another day of repelling another fierce Russian assault.
The Russians have the numbers, but the Fins have the superior defensive positions and fighting spirit- they are proving a very difficult nut to crack. “It's good you did not die, Simon. ”, his superior remarks wearily as he points him in the direction of a hot meal- a rare luxury on the front.
“Was it a good hunt? ” Simon simply nods, gives a quick figure of total enemy KIA. Not all kills can be verified independently, but Simon is a humble man even in the midst of war, there is little reason to doubt his grim figures- specially because unlike others, he takes no pleasure in any of them.
It is simply his duty, carried out without hatred or malice against men who invaded his country, and the moment they pack up and leave, he'll stop killing them. Until then though he'll continue his hunt, killing as many of them as possible before he himself is killed in return. Simon has no idea that in less than four months he'll earn the title of history's deadliest sniper, with the highest body count in history- 259 confirmed kills and over 500 unconfirmed.
Then again, he is operating in a target rich environment, against an enemy who lacks discipline, motivation, or even proper winter equipment. Simon's body count- or his tally of sins as he'll view it later in life- is more a testament to the evil of dictators than to his own competency. But that's not to say that Simon Hayha is truly one of history's deadliest snipers, and there are thirteen fresh Russian corpses to prove the fact.
For now, he tucks into his hot meal and mentally reviews the actions of the day, seeking out ways he could have improved his efficiency further, probing his actions for any tactical weaknesses he can eliminate in the future. His mind is always working, always preparing for the next day's actions, even as it also longs for peace. Now go check out What Actually Makes A Sniper Bullet Different, or click this other video instead!
