June 1944 D-Day American soldiers pause cautiously in the shadow of a building, searching for German snipers in the post D-Day allied advance in Normandy, France.

June 1944 D-Day American soldiers pause cautiously in the shadow of a building, searching for German snipers in the post D-Day allied advance in Normandy, France.

Although 75% of American casualties in Normandy were as a result of mortar and artillery fire - snipers were a threat that drove perhaps more fear into the hearts of soldiers fighting in Normandy - both Commonwealth and American. Normandy, particularly the American sector, was an area dominated by the hedgerow. 

These hedgerows; thick, impassable, and often ancient walls of brush, trees, branches, etc provided perfect cover and concealment for the defending Germans. 

“Each one of them was a wall of fire” a soldier in the 30th Infantry Division wrote, “and the open fields between were plains of fire.” Snipers made use of this terrain to great effect. 

Ernie Pyle, the renowned and beloved American war correspondent, reported that “There were snipers everywhere, in the trees, in buildings, in piles of wreckage, in the grass. But mainly, they were in the high bushy hedgerows.” 

German snipers were incentivized with a sliding scale of rewards for confirmed kills. 10 corpses - 100 cigarettes; 20 corpses - 20 days leave; 50 Corpses - Iron Cross First Class and a wrist watch from Himmler. 

The concealment that hedgerows provided and the omnipresent threat of Germans waiting in them was constantly weighing on the mind of the Allied soldier in Normandy. As one soldier wrote “I lie in the grass pondering whether to take the chance. Yes-no-yes-no.”