An Interesting Evening With Veterans Talking About Sniping

[Ovidio]

Monday evening, at our range’s clubhouse, we hosted two veterans from the Iraqi peace enforcement units of the Italian Army.
Gen. (Ret.) Luigi Scollo and Maresciallo (Ret.) Giuseppe Palmisano were the hosts.
They have published some of the very few books in Italian about sniping, extreme range sniping and long range shooting.
Gen. Scollo, in 2004 was Commander of the 11th Bersaglieri Regiment, and was involved in the heavy fighting which took place when the Qadr rebels attacked and seized the three bridges on the Euphrates in Nasiriyah.
The Italian forces counterattacked and retook two bridges, and had a foothold on the third one, when a ceasefire was agreed upon.
Our guys could not use heavy weapons like cannons and 120mm mortars due to the presence of lots of human shields (Iraqi civilians), so they had to slug it out with machine guns, Panzerfausts and Milans. And snipers.
M.llo Palmisano was one of them, and he must have done a damn good job, since he was awarded the Silver Medal.
I was very glad to meet these two great guys, because here, soldiers and veterans are somehow kept in the shadow, as if Italy had to be ashamed of them.
They only talked about what allows to extend one shooter’s range, so: training, gun, optics and ammo. They were very kind, open and matter of factly, and only very faintly hinted at the real battle experience, which confirmed what we all probably know: those who were there and did the deeds, don’t brag or talk.
I got out of the meeting feeling very well.
Also, the evening was a great success. We had more than 70 guests, which is really a lot for our area and for the number of shooters we have around here.
Great!