“The White Death” AKA, Simo Hayha was a Finnish marksman that has over 500 government confirmed kills. Simo was born in the small village of Rautäjrvi around 1905. Rautjrävi is a fishing and farming village. Simo grew up working on his family's farm and fishing with his father. Later on, Hayha joined the Finnish Civil Guard, a military organization comparable to the National Guard in the United States. During his time with the Civil Guard, he received a great deal of training, which included target shooting. Shooting was always an interest for Hayha, and any spare time he had was spent outdoors shooting at whatever targets he could find. “His first rifle was a Russian-built Mosin-Nagant bolt action M91. He was later introduced to the better-performing…show more content… With his Mosin-Nagant M91 rifle, he would dress in white winter camouflage, and carry with him only a day’s worth of supplies and ammunition. While hiding out in the snow, he would then take out any Russian who entered his killing zone. Hayha preferred to use iron sights on his gun instead of scopes, as scopes had a tendency to glare in the sunlight and reveal his position. While he may sound like an ordinary sniper, this was far from the case, over the course of 100 days during the winter he racked up over 542 kills with just his rifle 150 with his SMG, sending his kill count to 692, earning him the nickname “The White Death”. The Soviets feared him so much that they mounted numerous counter snipers and artillery strikes to get rid of him, all of which failed miserably. However, on March 6th, 1940, he was hit in the jaw by an explosive round from a counter sniper. He fell into an 11-day coma, awakening on the day that the war ended. Hayha was given numerous awards, and was also promoted from corporal to second lieutenant, a jump in the ranks that had never been seen in Finland’s history. other than being slightly disfigured, he recovered from his injury, and went on to live until the age of 97. He allegedly attributed his deadly sniping skills to