In one hundred days, a Finnish farmer barely five foot three was credited with more kills than any sniper in recorded history. And he did it without a scope.

His name was Simo Häyhä. Before the war he raised crops and dogs in the forests of eastern Finland. Then, on the thirtieth of November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded, and Häyhä picked up a plain bolt action rifle with simple iron sights. No telescope. He said the glass fogged in the cold, it flashed in the sun, and it forced a man to lift his head. So he aimed the old way. He dressed head to toe in white, dug into the snow before dawn, and packed snow into his mouth so the steam of his own breath would not give him away. Then he waited, for hours, in forty below.

At a frozen stretch of front called Kollaa, Soviet soldiers began to dread one patch of forest. They called him the White Death. They shelled the trees. They sent their own snipers to hunt him. None of it worked. On his deadliest single day, he was credited with twenty five. Then, on the sixth of March 1940, an explosive round struck him in the lower jaw and tore away the left side of his face. The men who carried him off said he looked dead. They laid him among the bodies. But he was still breathing. He had fallen into a coma. And he woke a week later, on the very day the war ended.

Here is the part the legend gets wrong. Forget the rumored five hundred. The tally his own officers wrote down during the fighting was at least two hundred and nineteen with the rifle, and nearly as many again with a submachine gun. Still the most ever confirmed. He rebuilt his shattered face over dozens of surgeries, went home, hunted moose, bred dogs, and lived to ninety six. Asked how he became the deadliest shot alive, he gave one word. Practice. Asked, near the end, whether he felt any regret, he said only this. I did what I was told, as well as I could. There would be no Finland otherwise.

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