Customer Reviews

With British Snipers to the Reich

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A reprint of a classic work describing the British sniping experience during WWII. The sniping enthusiast will be pleased to learn that the author discusses the training of British snipers and their equipment. Also examined are the weaponry of their Axis counterparts.

Past lessons from previous sniping or sharpshooting experience (starting with the King's Royal Rifle Corps -the 60th) through WWI are addressed in this work. While acknowledging little change in the value of the scouting and shooting aspects of sniping, Shore takes pain to describe how certain WWI tactics were obsolete by WWII, and the future of sniping.

Those looking for a McBride (ala "A Rifleman Went to War") style first hand account of the sniping in WWII may be disappointed since many of the sniping incidents reported by the author are second hand. Further, Shore neglects to provide references by which one may verify them.

Thomas Samworth, the original publisher, tried emulating WWI's McBride with WWII's Shore and R. Dunlap ("Ordnance Went Up Front") and didn't quite recapture the excitement stirred by McBride. For that you'll have to read Col. John George's, "Shots Fired in Anger." However, Shore's book on its merit is still good reading and a worthy addition to anyone interested in military sniping/sharpshooting.

If the readers want to find either the first hand sniping experiences or the detailed information regarding British snipers during WWII, then this is not the book for them.

Most of the book deals with Shore's personal experiences and thoughts on the military shooting in general during WWII -- actually, between the D day and late 1945. The sniping part were mostly "war stories" and not even his own! Also, it was very interesting to see that he entered the sniping game very late during the war. Maybe it was the contributing factor that there was not a lot of personal stories to tell.

Nevertheless, he did give some good accounts about the variety of small arms (allied and axis) he encountered during his tour of duty (of course, not at the receiving end!) But I am afraid that the readers would have to be reminded that those were only his OWN opinions.

One good point in the book was his discussions about the weakness of traditional military shooting instruction system and his ideas of improving it.

About the writing style, I found this book a little bit difficult to digest. There were some jumping threads of thoughts (although not entirely randomly) in the book that I just could not concentrate and easily finished it off. It took me four tries.

As a long time student of military rifle shooting, I looked forward to finally obtaining a copy of this book. After reading it I am disappointed. As the reviewer below states, author C. Shore gives a respectable account of various small arms used during the Second World War. But his work is sadly lacking with respect to the actual British sniper in western Europe. One is left with the notion that the author was a serious firearms enthusiast who missed most of the fighting and tried his best to make up for it in this book. It pales in comparison to Herbert McBride's "A Rifleman Went to War" and "The Emma Gees."