Bruno Sutkus joined the Wehrmacht in 1943, and, despite his young years became one of the most prolific snipers of the war, claiming 209 kills in just six months on the Eastern Front. There are a number of equally superb memoirs which explore this deadly art, the methods they employed, and their insight into what makes a successful sniper; Sutkus does all of this, but what sets his account apart is the extremely rare inclusion of notes from his log, recording the date, place and brief circumstances of every kill. This alone would make it one of the most valuable narratives on the subject, but the second half of the book is just as compelling, telling the story of his extraordinary and harrowing struggle for survival in the post-war Soviet Union. Forced to join the Red Army, he immediately deserted and attempted to join the Lithuanian Resistance, but eventually fell into the hands of the NKVD, who tortured him before banishing him to a Siberian Gulag. He was released after 12 years hard.. Read more
Pegasus Archive

Featured ON THE BOOK SHELF with Neil Smith
Wargames Illustrated, November 2019

[b]Rating[/b]: 5 out of 5 stars Girl with a Sniper Rifle was a surprise. It was about World war 2. The surprise was that it was about how the Russian women were so Important to the war. Yulia Zhukova of Russia, whose hometown was Uralic, joined the Young Communist League as a young girl. She wanted to help defend her country and people. She was brought up with a love for her country. She became a sniper for the Red Army. Training was very hard. There wasn’t any rest and not much food. She was a woman who shared with men all the horrors of war. She has written in such details about her life at the front and she became very close to her frontline friends, both men and women. She was awarded many medals. She did Cadet training at the Central Women’s Sniping School. Went to the front end in 1944. War ended and she arrived home on August 6, 1945. I think the reason that she wrote her story is so that the young people of Russia would remember the war of 1941 to 1945 and respect the veterans... Read more
NetGalley, Jean Blankenship

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Wargames Illustrated, November 2018