Looking for recommendations from the fine scholars of the Getbig community. Running a bit low on my reading selection and have another photography gig coming up for 20 days at the end of October that I would like some fresh material to load on my iPad.
Never one to ask without offering in return, last June when I did the photo gig in Korea and China, I went through these below :
1. Red Sniper On The Eastern Front -
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/red-sniper-on-the-eastern-front-joseph-pilyushin/1113059663 - this is an account of the Soviet sniper Pilyushin. Told from the Soviet point of view towards the war and how the German's behaved. I got the feeling most of the terrible things the Soviets did was ignored. Had an interesting part where he and his comrades would storm trenches and bunkers and find that the German officers had hand cuffed younger fresh recruits to machine guns in order to keep them firing so that the officers could escape.
2. Sniper on the Eastern Front -
https://www.amazon.com/Sniper-Eastern-Front-Memoirs-Allerberger-ebook/dp/B005586WRW - Allerberger one of German's most famous snipers. This book was REALLY good. Amazing story. This dude was originally assigned to the army as a machine gunner and due to the horrible high amount of machine gunner deaths decided he wanted another gig. He found a Soviet sniper rifle on the field and proceeded to teach himself how to shoot, adjust for wind and distance, etc... the Soviets were ahead of the curve in utilizing snipers during the war and the Germans were slow to catch up. He innovated many sniper techniques still used today just from his natural instinct. He went into detail about how the Soviets were brutal and butchered most of their captured prisoners. There was a squad of Soviets that encountered a field hospital and rounded up the doctors and made them watch as they went from bed to bed cutting the throats of all the patients there and then killed the doctors except a couple that ran and escaped. Another story had him hiding in a small village on observation duty when 23 Soviets stopped into town and gathered only 30 yards from his hiding place. They proceeded to rape a village girl over and over for hours until she passed out. They forced her husband to watch as they waited for her to start coming back around and then inserted a flare gun in her vagina and fired it, the flare cooking her from the inside out as she screamed and clawed at her stomach trying to dig it out until she died. Upon getting ready to leave they spotted an approaching German platoon heading their way and took up ambush positions. Unfortunately with his friends in sight, the sniper soon had 22 dead Soviets around and the sole survivor was a man they tied down to a cross and left as the woman's husband approached with an axe and started smashing his bones before (they assumed) using the sharpened end on him.
(I recommend reading the two above in the order I did and have listed.)
3. Sniper in Helmand. Don't waste your time. Written like a pimple face geek who just played his first game of Call of Duty. This dude sucked. He only had like 5-7 kills. Probably by accident. He wasted too much time writing about back slapping with his buddies and crap. Seriously, after reading the two books above about how those snipers had to lay motionless in grass or waste for hours in freezing cold weather to (hopefully) get a shot at someone through smoke, wind, rain, artillery attacks, etc... I had no real respect for this twit who relied a spotter to tell him where a target was after consulting electronic range finders, heat registering googles, satellite recon, advanced rifles that did everything but fire themselves, etc..
TL;DR - need decent book to pass time on flights.
