Being a Sniper

Another thing that helped an awful lot in my survival, I never mentioned any . . . you probably never interviewed anybody either, I was a sniper too.
Interviewer: Can you tell us about that?
There's not too much to tell about it I guess, but the . . . we went with the company . . . so most of the times we had to go in with the companies too, you know, they would put two of us in each company. Although we'd still be attached to one company or another. Then there . . . they went in and there was snipers, machines guns firing on you and you'd have to hold your position then we'd have to try to take one of them out. If it was a sniper or a machine gun, they'd call for us to do that. And there was times that we'd have to go out and maybe way out ahead somewhere. Lay low and you had to be awful careful because, you know, we never had no camouflage like they do today. Today the uniforms are all camouflage. We didn't. All we had was a little net about two feet square. We'd put it over our head so you couldn't see our face. And you'd have to pick your pretty good spot because, you know, they had snipers too and they were good, really good. And, make sure that they couldn't see you or find you. You can make a good hiding place, you get in sometimes houses that were pretty well blown down when you get in there and maybe hole in the wall or something like that. Then you had...there was a lot of things you had to look out for yourself. Even you could make sure there was no background there so that light would shine through because they could see you then. Each little move you make, they could see you. Make sure they couldn't see you.
Interviewer: Holding the position of a sniper is quite an undertaking.
It was, but like I say, there was a lot of times that I probably with . . . we didn't have to go in on with the fellows in the companies you know. They'd keep us in reserve like or back and then maybe after they got in, they got settle in they'd send for us to come up. So it was times like that, I think . . . we didn't have to go in every battle or we'd never have survived.