US Army

Ace sniper of the Army - France 1944

T/ Sergeant Frank Kviatek was a forty-six year old platoon commander and sniper in a heavy-weapons platoon. During the first world war he spent nineteen months as a machine-gunner. He had spent twenty years in the same platoon and his soldiers called him 'Hardtack Murphy'. By the time this photo was taken Frank had killed twenty enemy soldiers with his Remington 1903A4 snipers rifle and two with hand grenades. He has also killed a dozen Germans with a tommy gun but he didn't count them because he wanted to be able to see his enemy in the eyes when he killed them: "I like to see him drop. When he drops, I can almost see my brothers smiling at me. I like shooting snipers especially; they're so sneaky." The first sniper that Kviatek shot was encountered when his unit was stopped outside Cerisy La Foret. The sniper had chosen to place himself at a crossroad- a good position. After the sniper had killed a number of men the company commander asked for a volunteer to eliminate the sniper. Kviatek volunteers. He prowls through the woods until he was about twenty-five meters behind the sniper who was positioned behind a road marker. Sergeant Kviatek lifts his rifle to shoot the sniper but then discovers another sniper about thirty meters to his right. He first shoots the sniper to the right and then the sniper behind the road marker. A few minutes later Frank Kviateks company has begun to advance again. He walks behind to give rear protection. Suddenly he discovers a hedge move slightly, he becomes suspicious since it moves in the opposite direction of the wind. He sneaks up to the hedge until he sees a German. He then shouts "Hey!" The German turns around and Kviatek fires a shot and the German falls to the ground. At first he thinks it was a common soldier but later learns that it was a fallschirmjägerhauptmann. Once one of Kviateks men stuck his head above a hedge to shoot but is shot by a sniper. "His brain splattered all over my face...I have never been so sick in my life, " Frank Kviatek remembers. Private Floyd Rogers and Kviatek decides to get the sniper. Kviatek tells Rogers to hold up the dead soldier’s helmet on his signal. Kviatek moves away about forty meters and then gives the signal. The sniper fires immediately. Sergeant Kviatek gives the signal to Rogers to stick up the helmet again but at another position. Kviatek now sees the snipers head and shoulders stick out from a tree. "Then I let him have it. All it took was one shot. Those bastards don't give you more than one shot." Private James W. Justus remembers Sergeant Kviatek as a good leader. "The only trouble is, he wants to finish off the war by himself. Every time I see him, he's looking at a tree. He's going to be a very sad man when the war is over and there are no more snipers to kill."