The author of this book has 257 lives of Soviet soldiers in his combat account. This is the memoir of one of the best Scharfschutze (snipers) of the Wehrmacht. These are the cynical revelations of a ruthless professional about the horrific cruelty of the war on the Eastern Front, in which there was no place for either chivalry or compassion. In July 1943, the young machine gunner Josef Ollerberg was wounded near Voroshilovsk. In the hospital, he decided to experiment with a Russian sniper rifle that accidentally fell into his hands. A few months later, he returned to his regiment as a trained marksman and changed his military specialty forever. In the days when the Nazis had to continuously retreat under the attacks of the Red Army, Ollerberg became one of the most successful German snipers. Cunning and ruthless, possessing superhuman endurance and an animal ability to navigate the battlefield, he survived the most terrible battles of the Eastern Front, but paid a monstrous price for survival, turning into a complete killer.