The Master Sniper

It was a business of sorting out dozens of details, of burrowing through the thickets of technical confusions that each tiny decision led them to. But this is what Vollmerhausen, a failed physicist, liked about engineering: making things work. Function was all. Vampir would work.

But would Vampir work at forty kilos?

That was another question altogether, and although his position officially demanded optimism, privately his doubts were deep and painful.

Under forty kilos?

Insane. Not without radically compromising on performance. But of course one didn’t argue with the SS. One smiled and did one’s best and hoped for luck.

But forty kilos? Why? Did they plan on dropping it from a plane? It would shatter anyway, and shock absorption hadn’t been tied into the specifications. He’d gone to Repp privately:

“Surely, Herr Obersturmba

Repp, frosty, had replied, “Sorry, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor. Tactical requirements, that’s all. Someone’s going to have to carry the damned thing.”

“But certainly there are vehicles that—”

“Herr Ingenieur-Doktor: forty kilos.”

Lately Hans the Kike had been having nightmares. His food bubbled and heaved in his stomach. He worked obsessively, driving his staff like a tyrant, demanding the impossible.

“Hans the Kike,” he heard one of them joke, “rather more like Attila the Hun.”

But he had come so far since 1933, and the journey was so complex, so full of wrong starts, missed signs, betrayals, disappointments, unfair accusations, plots against him, credit due him going to others. More than ever now, 1933 came to haunt him. The last year I was ever truly happy, he told himself, before all this.

A year of begi

These should have been extraordinary days for Vollmerhausen, and in a way they were. But his physics background, like a whiff of the Yid, clung to him. He could never shake it; the others gossiped behind his back, played small pranks, teased him unmercifully. They hated him because he’d once aspired to be a scientist; what scientists he now came in contact with hated him because he was an engineer. He grew into a somewhat twisted personality, with a tendency toward surliness, bitterness, self-pity. He was grumpy, gloomy, a great self-justifier and blamer of others. His head was full of imaginary compliments that he felt he deserved but that he never received, because of course the others were jealous of his brilliance. Out of all this was born the name Hans the Kike.

So when in 1943 he was offered a position at the WaPrüf 2 testing facility at Kummersdorf, he jumped at it. A new project was under way. The army had learned in Russia of the terrors of the night and had let a contract for Vampir 1229 Zeilgerät, the Vampire sighting device, Model 1229, based on the data that Herr Doktor Kutzcher, now dead, had developed back in ’33. Vollmerhausen had an extraordinary background for the undertaking: he knew both the physics of the project and the ballistics. It was a job made for him.

In its wisdom, Waffenamt had decided that the weapon best suited to mount Vampir was none other than the prototype Strumgwehr on which Hugo Schmeisser was so furiously laboring, then designated the MP-43. Thus Ingenieur-Doktor Vollmerhausen and Herr Schmeisser (for old Hugo had no degrees) found themselves uneasily collaborating on the project at the dictates of the Army bureaucracy.

From the start, Hugo was undercutting him.

“Too bulky,” the old fool claimed. “Too sensitive. Too complicated.”

“Herr Schmeisser,” Hans began, suffering the immense strain of having to deal politely with a fool, “a few design modifications and we can join your assault rifle and my optics system and achieve the most modern device of the war. No, it’ll never be an assault weapon, or for the parachutists, but in the years ahead will come battles of a primarily defensive nature. The great days of rapid expansion are over. It’s time to concentrate on protecting what we’ve got. In any kind of stable night tactical situation, Vampir will make our enemies totally vulnerable.” And as he spoke, he could watch the old man’s eyes frost over with indifference. It was a most difficult situation, especially since in the background was another undercurrent: Hans the Kike was from the ERMA team that had built the wonderful MP-40; but, strangely, that weapon had picked up the nickname “Schmeisser,” though the old goat had had nothing to do with it. But he’d never disavowed the co

With Schmeisser against him, he was doomed. The STG modifications were never approved, funds began to vanish, technicians were siphoned off to other projects, the Opticotechna people had difficulty with the lenses—Schmeisser’s influence?—and much gossip and vicious humor raged behind Hans the Kike’s back. He had no co

Vollmerhausen, under pressure, felt himself becoming more repellent. Whatever chances he had as an advocate for Vampir disappeared when he ceased shaving and bathing regularly, when he began denouncing the secret cabal that conspired behind his back. Vampir never went beyond prototype, despite some promising initial test results. It failed to meet certain specifications in its field trial, though Vollmerhausen asserted that “the cabal” had stacked the test against him. In May of ’44 the Waffenamt contract was canceled, and Vollmerhausen was ordered sharply back to Kummersdorf to a meaningless job. He was let go shortly afterward.