War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1933 Siege and Sniping War

At 6:10 a.m., Wei Ran, Dragan, and Klaus led five young men and women, including Luna, to the second floor of the building. Then, stepping on the construction debris piled up outside the window, they crouched down and quickly ran to a five-story building across the street, and climbed all the way to the third floor.

"Aren't we going to keep climbing?" Luna asked the three people at the front, puzzled. "There are still two more floors above."

"Do you think so too?" Dragan asked the other young men and women following behind him, standing at the top of the stairs.

"Mr. O, is there something wrong with this?"

The young man named Emil was the first to ask; he was the oldest besides Luna, and also Luna's younger brother.

"I'm starting to wonder how you each managed to kill a sniper before," Klaus scoffed, but didn't offer any explanation.

"At the cost of their comrades' lives"

The youngest, Zorana, gave an overly calm answer: "My dad is a policeman. He drew my attention to create an opportunity for me to fire a shot. I hit a sniper with my dad's gun."

Sarajevo doesn't have many options for retaliation.

Luna continued, "We, along with the surviving police officers, including retired ones, are our only remaining force for retaliation."

Gentlemen, we truly know nothing, which is why we have gone to great lengths to ask you to teach us how to fight.

"I'm sorry, I apologize for what I just said."

Klaus sighed, apologized sincerely, and explained, "Our terrain isn't advantageous to begin with, and climbing one more level won't provide much of an elevation advantage."

However, the vast majority of snipers—no, not just snipers, but most marksmen—when searching for a target, will prioritize starting their search from the highest point of a building.

“You’re right”

Dragan added, "Never hide on the roof or top floor of a building, especially the roof, as it will be very conspicuous on a battlefield where there is no height advantage."

"If you have a height advantage, don't hide at the highest point."

Wei Ran added, "When you're hidden at the highest point in the opponent's scope, you'll stand out very much against the background."

“The reasons have been explained sufficiently,” Dragan said. “Now we need to choose a location.”

After saying that, he walked into a room.

But after just one glance, he, Klaus, or Wei Ran all turned and left; the room was too complete and too clean.

After looking at several rooms, the three of them finally settled on two adjacent rooms.

The upper floors of these two rooms appear to have been hit by artillery fire, as the entire floorboards have collapsed, forming a slope facing outwards and also crushing the wall between the two rooms.

Perhaps due to the support of the middle wall, the two floor slabs broke at the waist, revealing a crack that was three or four meters long but less than 30 centimeters wide, spanning two rooms, and only held together by steel bars to prevent it from breaking completely.

On the other side of the slope, the outer wall of their floor was almost completely preserved, with only the windows shattered.

In contrast, half of the exterior wall upstairs had been blown away, so much so that they could see the gloomy sky with just a slight change in angle.

There's no better location than here.

Dragan said with great satisfaction, "Go and bring over some chairs and tables, and if you have any blankets, bring them over as well."

Upon hearing this, Luna and the other young people immediately ran to various rooms to collect the necessary items.

Meanwhile, Dragan, Klaus, and Wei Ran also began clearing the remaining space behind the collapsed floorboards above the two adjacent rooms.

"It's not that safe, but it's not that dangerous either."

Klaus said with satisfaction, "It's just that the shooting range has been affected a bit, which is actually quite suitable for those newbies."

"And it's very close to the stairwell."

As Dragan spoke, Luna and the other four had already run back carrying everything they could find.

These people didn't have much to find, but at least they had a table and two bed boards.

With just a glance, Wei Ran, Dragan, and Klaus tacitly drew their bayonets, disassembled the bed into planks, and used the planks to support each other, securing them to the top and bottom of the gap.

This time, before the young men and women who were helping could ask any questions, Dragan took the initiative to explain, "This place looks very safe, but the debris produced when these concrete pieces are hit by bullets is not much less lethal than the bullets themselves."

“These planks won’t block all the debris,” Klaus added, “so you still have to be careful.”

At the same time, Wei Ran had already placed the table that Luna and her men had brought in. "You can only put your guns on the table, you absolutely cannot put the barrels on the gaps, otherwise the muzzle flash and the smoke and dust raised by the shock wave will give you away."

Dragan first tested it with his SVD, then called on Wei Ran and Klaus to help raise the table legs using the loose bricks that were readily available.

Once the height was right, he instructed, "Now set up your guns. You need to project your scopes through the cracks in the floor and the broken windows outside, and then look for any snipers that might be in the distance."

At his command, the three young men placed their respective M76 sniper rifles on the table and instinctively began to chamber rounds.

"Loading is fine, but don't take the safety off."

Dragan glanced at Zorana, who hadn't set up her gun, and Luna, who didn't have a gun at all, and then continued, "First, learn to find your target. It's almost dawn. Our enemies are to our west and at a higher altitude than us, so the sun will shine on them first."

At this point, they need to aim at us against the light, and the sunlight will make them more visible in your scopes. This is the perfect opportunity for you to fire.

But as I said before, learn to locate your target first, don't rush to fire. If anyone disobeys orders, I'll rip their scope off and smash it.

Seeing that Dragan had already begun teaching, Wei Ran and Klaus exchanged a glance and left the soon-to-be-filled position.

"What are you going to do?" Wei Ran asked curiously when he saw Zorana following him out.

"I'm going to make breakfast for everyone and look after our home."

Zorana explained matter-of-factly, “We finally found those sofas. It’s so cold in winter. If we don’t guard them, someone will definitely steal the sofa cushions, and we’ll freeze to death.”

"And there are still your things there."

Luna, who was guarding the sniper position, reminded him without turning her head, "Sarajevo has nothing left. Don't even mention your oil stoves, people will risk their lives to steal and rob even a lighter."

Seeing Wei Ran looking at him, Klaus said while searching the hallway, "I'm going to set up a machine gun emplacement here. You go back with her." "Alright."

Wei Ran nodded and followed Zorana, crouching low as they quickly ran across the intersection, which was barely blocked by the collapsed building rubble, and returned to the building on the other side.

Fortunately, because I hadn't been gone for too long, no scavengers appeared in this building that didn't look safe at all.

Under Wei Ran's watchful eye, the youngest member, Zorana, pulled out a dirty-looking pressure cooker from under the table. She then opened her kettle, poured all the water into the cooker, and threw in a piece of the compressed biscuit Wei Ran had given her yesterday, crushing it bit by bit with a spoon.

Only after the water and compressed biscuits in the pot had turned into a paste did she pick up a kettle (whose water she didn't know) and pour in about half a kettle, then stir it with the ladle in her hand.

"Is this your breakfast?" Wei Ran asked in surprise.

"Thanks to the compressed biscuits you gave us yesterday"

Zorana said with a hint of shyness, "Otherwise, we would only have hot water this morning."

"Where do you usually get your food from?"

While Wei Ran asked curiously, he had already pulled over his backpack and given all the remaining dozen or so compressed biscuits inside to Zorana.

This sudden act of kindness startled Zorana at first, and then a hint of wariness appeared on her oily face. But soon, she gratefully accepted all the compressed biscuits Wei Ran had given her and hid them in various places around the room, categorizing them carefully.

After hiding the last cookie, Zorana took the opportunity to pull out a small bundle of firewood from under the table, lit it in a small stove made from a tin can, put away the plastic lighter, and then immediately placed the pressure cooker full of paste on the stove.

That wasn't all. She then collected the water bottles from the others and hung them on the wire hooks around the tin bucket. Only then did she take her water bottle and the half-empty one next door, fill them up, and hang them around the tin bucket as well.

Throughout the entire process, Wei Ran remained quiet and tried his best not to disturb the other party.

Only after hanging the last two water jugs on the tin bucket did Zorana sit down and explain around the stove, "Our job is to guard that tunnel not far away, so we get some supplies regularly, not much, but enough for us to survive."

More difficult to obtain than food are clean water and enough fuel, especially fuel.

At this point, young Zorana sighed amidst the swirling smoke and flickering flames, "Even the trees in the park have been burned down, and shoes left by the dead are being used as fuel. It was like this last winter, and it's only going to get worse this year."

With a silent sigh, Wei Ran took out his Nikon camera under the cover of his backpack. After some adjustments, he took a picture of the young girl who was sitting by the fireplace, warming herself by the fire and lost in thought.

"Are you a reporter too?" Zorana asked, glancing at the camera in Wei Ran's hand.

"Really?" Wei Ran keenly grasped the key phrase. "A reporter has been here?"

"Um"

Zorana nodded. "He's...he's a very nice person. He said he would find someone to teach us how to fight, and then you came."

"You mean, we were invited by this person you mentioned?" Wei Ran pressed.

"You don't know?" Zorana asked curiously.

"We know nothing about that."

Wei Ran shook his head. He was almost certain that Dragan and Klaus probably didn't know any of this either.

"Oh"

Zorana hugged her knees, staring blankly at the flames trying to escape from the edge of the stove but being pulled back time and time again, and said, "We haven't seen him for at least two weeks, and we don't even know if he's still alive."

"Can I know his name?" Wei Ran asked cautiously.

"You can ask him yourself when you see him later," Zorana replied with a hint of wariness.

"Alright," Wei Ran nodded, and used his backpack as cover to put away his camera.

Then, as if it were perfectly natural, he rummaged through Dragan's and Klaus's backpacks.

To his surprise, while Dragan's backpack contained nothing unusual, he found an American-style walkie-talkie and five or six spare batteries in Klaus's backpack.

Who was this contacted?
Wei Ran subtly became more vigilant and quietly put the walkie-talkie back in its original position.

"boom!"

Just then, a sudden gunshot rang out from outside, coming from the direction of the city.

With the sound of the gunshot, Zorana's face showed a hint of panic, and she instinctively grabbed the sniper rifle beside her.

"boom!"

Immediately following, an even clearer gunshot rang out from the direction of the building next door where Dragan and his men were hiding.

"They've exchanged fire?!"

Zorana's panic became more pronounced, and she even stood up.

“Stay by the stove and have breakfast,” Wei Ran said softly. “I’ll go upstairs to check.”

Upon hearing this, Zorana hesitated for a moment before nodding and adding almost cautiously, "Be careful."

Quickly leaving the smoke-filled room, Wei Ran climbed up one floor and found a room where the window was mostly blocked by rubble. He carefully crouched down at the edge, raised his sniper rifle, and looked in the direction from which the gunshot had just come from.

Just as Dragan had described earlier, the rising sun was the first to illuminate the enemy's position in the distance. Even though he was there, he could see a sniper lying on the mountain six or seven hundred meters away through his scope.

The other party didn't even bother with disguises; he was just sitting at a table with his gun at the table, aiming at them in an almost hunting manner.

After a slight hesitation, he did not fire the gun. Instead, he quietly moved to another room and began searching for the person who had just been shot.

Soon, he saw a crossroads not far away.

Almost in the middle of that intersection, a woman wearing a trench coat was lying down.

With the help of the scope, he could even clearly see the woman's chest where she had been shot, and he could also see a crying child in the shadow of a building on one side of the intersection, and a man trying to hold the child to prevent him from running out of the shadow of the building.

Sarajevo was the site of the longest siege in modern warfare history, and also one of the most brutal sniper battles.

For some reason, Wei Ran recalled the introduction to this war that he had heard in Professor Alexei's class.