Do you have a nickname? I’ve had a fair share of embarrassing ones (my middle name is bad enough – thanks ever so much, mom & dad.) and it’s generally disastrous to one’s street cred to have such nicknames divulged.
However, there are some people whose actions – be they good or bad – have earned themselves a reputation, and supremely awesome nicknames to match. One of those people is Simo Häyhä, or known more notoriously as the White Death.
Häyhä, a Finnish farmer and hunter by trade, started this military career in 1925, at the age of 20. It was during the Winter War (1939–1940), when Finland was being invaded by the Soviet Union that he shot to fame. Armed with a standard bolt action rifle and dressed completely in white camouflage, Häyhä ventured out into the bitter cold, and amassed what is the highest recorded number of confirmed kills in any major war. Over 100 days, the sniper extinguished 505 Soviet soldiers with his rifle and reportedly offed a further 200 of them with a submachine gun, bringing the body count to a staggering 705! Isn’t that just mind-blowing?
The frustrated Soviets sent out counter snipers and even an artillery strike, but the attempts failed to down the now infamous, White Death. Häyhä’s career came to an end in 1940 when he was shot in the jaw – he survived, but the injury blew off bits of his face and crushed his jaw. When asked whether he felt bad about his actions, he said, “I did what I was told to as well as I could.” The White Death passed away in 2002.
Read more about the White Death on Wikipedia and check out Listverse’s article on the top 10 well deserved nicknames.
[thanks Ranz]
4 replies on “Simo Hayha, The White Death”
705 confirmed kills is mind boggling, and something i doubt i could live with. its one thing to drop a bomb, but to use a rifle with an effective range of probably no more than 500m, is something else.
while his exploits are impressive from a technical and skill point of view, the fact remains he killed over 700 people. that’s almost one person a day, every day, for two years.
another fact to bare in mind is that around a quarter of soldiers during ww2 fired their weapons, clearly people like Simo made up for the 75% of soldiers who keept their barrels clean.
Simo was a complete mentalist! I wouldn’t be able to do it either, but people are able to do unspeakable things in the name of war. I believe it was Patton who said, “War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours!”
I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it, being the gentle hippy type that I am, but I think this is one of those cases where it was justified (though bloody and awful of course).
He defended his country against a far, far greater invading force. It was self-defence by a country of 171 million. What Simo Häyhä did was a necessary evil.
Clearly this man was a full out pro and very good at his job. He would put snow in his mouth to hide his breath, pack snow down so it would not “fluff up” when he fired. Wow. Clearly a pro.