98 World War II Snipers Part TWO - The Men, Their Guns, Their Story

Mark Petricevic's wife's grandparents' house in Yugoslavia. Partisan's hid in the basement during WW2. In the other half of the basement lay a bunch of Germans. The partisans knew about the Germans but the Germans didn't know about the partisans!

Harry Furness

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Hello again and welcome back to part two of this sniper special, featuring the book World War II Snipers - The Men, Their Guns, Their Story by Gary Yee

I've got another great line-up of stories for you featuring female snipers, British veteran Harry Furness, the psychology of sniping and stories from Crete and Sicily along with one or two more surprises

I’m Paul Cheall, son of Bill Cheall and this is Part two of the latest sniper feature. So if you haven’t heard episode 97 yet, I’d recommend you stop listening to this episode, 98 and jump back to 97.

Just before I start and to make sure I don't forget, a quick shout out for Andy Phillips who literally just posted a 5 star review on Apple podcasts UK. Andy thanks so much for making the effort.

Mark Petricevic ww2 memoirs

And I’m going to start this episode, not with a sniper story, but a family story from Mark Petricevic  who featured in the last episode as well.

Mark’s from West Michigan. He’s written:

My wife’s family was in occupied Yugoslavia during the war.

Here is a story from her Grandmother.  (to set the visual it is a very small -, rural village – just 3 houses - and she was not even 5ft and maybe 90 lbs – 6.7 stone.

They lived in a small village in what was Yugoslavia.  Near Krupa Na Verbasu.  There was no road to the village until about 15 years ago.  The nearest road was about 5 km away.  

Listener I’ve posted a photo of the house that Mark sent me so you can picture the scene.

 If you recall the history of the area they were fighting an internal Civil war as well as the Germans.  You had the Chetniks (loyal to the govt at the time of the German invasion) the Partisans (communists) and many people who worked for the Germans like 

the Ustase (Croatian Facists) they were all active in the area. 

The house sits on a Mountain side with a basement which is part exposed on the downside of the Mountain Slope. It is a small 3 room house that has been around for centuries.  The basement is divided into two sides by a wall of interwoven branches coated with a mud to separate the two rooms. 

One part of the basement acts as a cellar and is accessed by a trapdoor under the kitchen table.  The other is a walk in door from the outside (downside of the slope) and animals are usually kept there. 

Grandmother is home with her 5 children and is approached by the Partisans (keep in mind if the Germans found out you helped any of the parties against them the entire village was executed) 

She is told to give them food and a place to spend the night.  They were not asking and refusal was not an option. 

She makes a meal and right after she’s finished up, she sees Germans Approaching down the valley.  She tells the partisans to get in the basement thru the trapdoor.

The Germans arrive and want food and a place to spend the night.   Again she has no choice in the matter.  But now she is thinking there is no way that the Germans won’t not notice or hear the Partisans in the cellar.  Or perhaps one of the young children will give it away as innocent children do.  She thinks she is done for as well as her five children and the entire village who will be executed for harboring the enemy.

The Germans eat and decide to sleep in the other side of the basement (they did not notice the trapdoor) as well as the barn.  So there is a thin wall of woven branches with some mud separating the Germans and the Partisans for  the entire night as her and the children have a sleepless night right above them.  If one of the Partisans would have coughed, snored, passed gas etc the charade would have been up and she’d have had a battle in her house. 

The next morning the Germans were up early, ate breakfast and departed.  Grandma, all 90 lbs of her, rips open the trapdoor starts beating the Partisans with her broom and, using the ever present Serbian Cuss words, unceremoniously ushers the Partisans out of the house while continuing the beating.

They all knew what they had narrowly avoided and how they had endangered the family and the village. 

She swears her hair turned grey that night. 

In the US we sent Soldiers to fight on Distant Battlefields. Where my wife grew up the war was in their house!

Mark thanks for that story and just a quick plug by me for your company because I took a look at your web site and it’s called World War Supply, and you’re a military accessory dealer. You’re veteran owned and you supply historically accurate repro militaria from around the world. And you supply reenactment groups, prop houses, US Military groups, collectors and more.

Link

www.WorldWarSupply.com

I think I need a new segment for this show called the ‘just before’ segment because there seems to be so many times when I'm about to do something and I say ‘just before we get to this I'm gonna do something else’ and on this occasion this is again so true because I was going to talk about women snipers but just before I do this I want to talk about Gary yee because I've just been reading the Blurb on the back of the book about Gary and I think his pedigree deserves a little bit of recognition because this is this is what it says:

A former law enforcement officer, armourer and firearms instructor Gary yee has written extensively on the muzzle loader sharp shooter. He has been a guest curator for the San Francisco veterans Building and Francisco fort for. No stranger to firearms upon retirement he studied gunsmithing at Trinidad state College where he is presently an adjunct  instructor. When not writing Gary builds flintlock rifles hunting pouches and powder horns. Besides belonging to the contemporary long Rifle Association, the honorable company of horners, he is also a life member of the National muzzle loading Rifle Association, the national Rifle Association and the company of military historians. So I think that just about qualifies you to write this book Gary. Well done that man for such an illustrious career.

On top of that, Gary has previously written another book called Sharpshooters (1750-1900): The Men, Their Guns, Their Story, so this new one is a kind of first cousin to it being called WWII snipers …

Moving back to Gary Yee’s new book

About the book

It's actually a spin-off on my first book on blackpowder sharpshooters, Sharpshooters (1750-1900): The Men, Their Guns, Their Story. That other volume was an exhaustive study of riflemen and sharpshooters and I wanted to keep the titles somewhat consistent (like a Vol. 1 and a Vol 2). The deceptive thing about the new book is that there is quite a bit on the female sniper experience. Gary

PS 2 Market-Garden ww2

Here is a similar incident that followed after Market-Garden. This is from Chapter 5 of World War II Snipers: The Men, Their Guns, Their Story.

At the end of October, 1944, the 101st moved up near Arnhem. Co. E of the 506th relieved Co. B.

Edward “Babe” Heffron and his machine gun squad set up in a roofless barn whose sole occupant was a dead SS officer who had the night before demanded Co. B’s surrender.

Their response was to shoot him. The Co. B troopers left the officer’s body by the cow because they figured that’s where he belonged.

This was the condition when Co. E relieved them. In the morning, a German a long distance away stood up from his foxhole, put his thumb on his nose and grabbed his crotch to taunt them. He did it again the following day. Co. E called for snipers and got two British snipers. Heffron and the rest of the machine-gun squad anxiously watched:

“The morning after that, we had two British snipers sent to our line to take him out. They set up positions twelve hundred yards away, he did his nose-thumbing thing, and they shot, and missed!” Twelve hundred yards was pushing the .303 Enfield bullet to the extreme. Six to eight hundred yards would have been more reasonable.

Heffron tells how their tormentor was finally dealt with: “A sergeant with the 377 Para Artillery that was attached to us devised a plan to get rid of him. He said, ‘I’ll have a surprise for him tomorrow morning.’ Next morning, the kraut stood up and did his thing.

The sergeant picked up the phone, called in the coordinates, and said, ‘Fire,’ and the shells flew over our heads. They gave him what they call ‘air burst.’ The shell blew up before it hit the ground, and took the German soldier with it. We were all hooting and hollering…. We have a law in combat: If you’re a wise guy, you’re on your own.”

Gary

Here goes:

And the final word goes to Sgt Carbonero, a guy who posted this story on reddit some time ago. Link.

PS4 Sgt Carbonero said:

https://reddit.com/r/ww2/s/7zhCVvj7sr

Years ago as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). I transported a lot of vets.

There was this one guy told me he was trained as a sniper. He didn’t want to be a sniper because he had heard what befell snipers who got caught, so he traded his sniper rifle with a Garand on the first dead GI he saw.  

One day they were assaulting a hill. He looked up and saw a Japanese soldier with round glasses peering over the edge of an embankment and he took a shot. The guy disappeared back behind the berm." He kept looking back over the embankment and I kept taking shots at him, but I missed every time, I couldn't understand it.

Eventually, we took the position and there were 5 Japanese soldiers on the ground

All dead,

all with round glasses".

I’d nailed every single one.  

TR Laugh!!

Oh dear …

I’m PC