"Why are you dodging like this? They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." - Gen John Sedgwick
Uh...that would be the late Gen. Sedgwick.
Doesn’t seem like a good idea to talk smack about someone that could take you out from over a mile away. Maybe it’s just me.
I can think of few things that instill fear and paralysis among the enemy more than an effective sniper.
Snipers save the lives of those living in an evil regime, but not participating it it's evil.
We had a sniper in our unit when I was in Vietnam. I’m not sure why as we were a river and coastal unit, but once a month they would send him up near the Cambodian border to sit in a tower and snipe at the VC base camps in Cambodia a few miles away. His job was to make sure that they didn’t get a good night’s sleep. I don’t think he killed many of them, but they never stayed out in the open for very long.
HA!
I work for the worlds largest defense contractor and THEY edited my in-house resume.
From: Nuclear Weapon Specialist
To: Weapons Specialist
As for long shots:
The Mk 12 Re-entry Systems take out targets at 7,500 miles.
It is best to realize that. You can try to educate them when they are in a responsive mood.
But on resumes you have to play to the lowest common denominator.
I’ll be heading out on one of my rare visits to a movie theater tomorrow to see “American Sniper”.
In the final analysis, veterans of all kinds can be congratulated, because what they did is somewhat nebulous. Snipers, on the other hand, kill. No bones about it.
Psychologically, the difference is great, though hypocritical. An A-10 or bomber pilot might have racked up a hundred times as many enemy killed, but there is a psychological gap there. Likewise, a field artilleryman might splash any number of bad guys without a psychological hitch.
But a sniper put a bullet in an enemy fighter. That is very easy for the mind to grasp. And it is unfortunate, but it is a fact of life that there is prejudice against snipers because of it.
The ‘sniper’, more correctly named ‘long range marksman’, has a long American history, not to be tarnished by those who neither understand their importance, or what their actions do to the hearts and spirits of those, ‘downrange’.
Remember, it was the ‘Colonial marksman’, armed with that devil’s tool, the Pennsylvania long rifle, that has the honor of downing a British officer in the field at, in those days incredible, 300 yards distance.
The man ‘on the line’, may have a face or two that remains with him, as may our long range marksmen. That is the price that is paid for doing their duty, and accepted as part of serving our country, for they are not the men who lie below the waves, unleashing weapons, or those who fly at all heights above the heads of the ground troops, delivering all sorts and types of ordnance, and never seeing the eyeballs of the recipient of their deliveries.
I always thought of snipers as kind of the goaltenders of the military. They’re a bit different, maybe even weird, but you really shouldn’t take the field without one.
During the early years in Iraq a journalist asked a Marine sniper what he felt when he sighted in on a enemy target and took the shot ... his response ... recoil.