They Mocked His ‘Mail-Order’ Rifle — Until He Killed 11 Japanese Snipers in 4 Days

At 9:17 a.m. on January 22nd, 1943, a U.S. Army officer lay in the shattered remains of a Japanese bunker west of Point Cruz, Guadalcanal. He was alone—no spotter, no radio, no safety net—staring at a banyan tree roughly 240 yards away through a riflescope his own officers had been mocking for weeks.

Second Lieutenant John George was 27 years old. An Illinois state shooting champion. And, in combat terms, a nobody: zero confirmed kills.

Meanwhile, the Japanese had eleven snipers operating in the coastal groves. In the past 72 hours, those men had killed fourteen Americans from the 132nd Infantry Regiment. They were striking like malaria—silent, fast, demoralizing—turning routine tasks like filling canteens or walking a trail into sudden funerals.

George’s commanding officer had called his rifle a toy. Other leaders called it his mail‑order sweetheart. When George first unboxed it back at Camp Forrest, Tennessee—a Winchester Model 70 fitted with a Lyman Alaskan scope—the armorer looked at it like it was a joke and asked if it was meant for deer or Germans.

“It’s for the Japanese,” George said.

The irony was cruel: the unit shipped out before the rifle arrived. George crossed the ocean watching other soldiers clean their government‑issued M1 Garands while his own weapon sat in a warehouse in Illinois. He pushed paperwork, begged logistics, and six weeks later a supply sergeant finally handed him a wooden crate marked FRAGILE.

Inside was the rifle he’d purchased with two years of National Guard pay.

It was heavier than the standard issue. Slower, too. A bolt action with five rounds, versus the Garand’s semi‑automatic eight. It looked—on paper—like a bad trade in a jungle war. Captain Morris ordered George to leave the sporting rifle behind and carry a “real weapon.”

George carried it anyway.

Because George wasn’t collecting a tool.

He was collecting an answer.

A Battlefield Where “See First” Was Everything

The 132nd Infantry had relieved the Marines in late December 1942. The Marines had fought on Guadalcanal since August—taking Henderson Field, holding it through nights of bombardment and ground assaults. But west of the Matanikau River, the war didn’t feel like triumphant advance. It felt like unfinished business.

Mount Austin had been a nightmare of bunkers and blood. But Point Cruz was different: no obvious fortifications, no clean front line—just dense groves, massive trees, and Japanese soldiers who had learned to become part of the jungle.

Japanese snipers on Guadalcanal weren’t “Hollywood” snipers. They were patient, disciplined, and brutally practical. They climbed trees before dawn, disappeared into forks of branches and vines, and watched American movement patterns the way predators watch watering holes.

They knew exactly what Americans did when they thought they were safe.

And then they punished it.

On January 19th, a sniper shot a corporal while he filled canteens at a creek. On the 20th, another sniper killed two men on patrol. On the 21st, three more died—one of them hit through the neck from a tree the patrol had passed twice.

That night, the battalion commander summoned John George.

He didn’t ask for heroics. He asked for relief.

The Japanese snipers were killing faster than malaria, and morale was starting to crack. He wanted to know if George’s expensive civilian rifle could actually do anything besides start arguments.

George listed his credentials the way a man recites facts in a room full of skeptics: state championship, long‑range groupings, repeatable accuracy. Not bravado—numbers.

The commander gave him until morning.

Prove it.

One Scope. One Rifle. No Backup.

At dawn on January 22nd, George moved into the ruins of a captured Japanese bunker that overlooked the coconut groves. Intelligence said snipers operated from the huge trees—banyans with trunks like pillars and canopies like roofs.

George brought no spotter. No radioman. Just a canteen and sixty rounds. He lay low in the bunker’s shadow and began to glass the trees through the Lyman Alaskan—only 2.5x magnification, modest by modern standards, but enough to separate “branch” from “branch that moved wrong.”

The jungle never goes silent. Birds. Insects. Distant artillery. George learned to ignore the noise and hunt the only thing that mattered:

movement.

At 9:17, he saw it. A small shift in the branches—no wind, no reason.

Eighty‑seven feet up, in a fork where branches met, a dark shape resolved into a man.

The Japanese sniper faced east, watching a trail where supplies moved. If George missed, the sniper would vanish deeper into concealment—and if George hesitated, Americans would die again.

George adjusted for wind. Two clicks. Controlled his breathing. The Winchester’s trigger broke clean, smooth, familiar.

He squeezed.

The shot cracked through humid air.

Through the scope, the sniper jerked—then dropped, tumbling down through branches and hitting the ground hard at the base of the banyan.

George worked the bolt, ejected the casing, chambered another round.

He didn’t celebrate.

Because Japanese snipers rarely worked alone.

The Second Shot That Changed Everything

George kept his scope on the first tree, waiting. No movement.

Then he widened his search—slowly, carefully—because 2.5x forces discipline. You don’t “scan.” You study.

At 9:43, he found the second sniper in another tree, lower—moving down the trunk.

Retreating.

The man had heard the shot and understood the message: someone on the American side could finally reach into the trees and pull them out.

George led the movement and fired.

The second sniper fell backward. His rifle clattered down through the branches.

Two shots.

Two kills.

And somewhere in the grove, other snipers stopped being hunters and became hunted men.

By noon, George had killed five.

Word spread through the battalion like electricity. The same men who’d mocked the mail‑order scope now wanted to watch. George refused—spectators drew attention, and attention drew fire.

The Japanese adapted after the fifth kill. They stopped moving during daylight. George spent hours staring at trees that looked dead and still, waiting for the slightest betrayal.

Then at 11:21, a bullet punched into the sandbags inches from his head, spraying dirt into his face.

A sniper had found him.

George rolled, pressed against the bunker wall, and waited—minutes, not seconds—before easing back into position. He searched the southwest, found a shape high in a cluster of banyans, and realized the enemy had made a mistake:

The shooter had shifted branches but stayed in the same tree.

George fired.

The third sniper fell.

Now it wasn’t just an execution.

It was a duel.

Mortars: The Moment the Jungle Decided to Kill the Rifleman

The next morning, January 23rd, rain hammered the canopy—so heavy it erased the world beyond a hundred yards. Rain is concealment. Rain is cover. Rain is time.

At 9:12, visibility returned enough for George to work. He spotted a sniper who had climbed into position during the storm—smart, quiet, almost invisible.

George compensated for distance and fired.

The sniper fell—kill number six.

And then something happened George hadn’t expected: mortars.

At 9:57, Japanese mortar rounds began landing near his bunker. The first salvo fell short. The second got closer. The third would walk directly into the position.

They had triangulated him—by sound, by muzzle flash, by pattern.

George grabbed the Winchester and ran.

Seconds later, the bunker vanished in explosions and flying debris.

It wasn’t bravery that saved him. It was the simplest survival rule of sniping:

shoot, then move.

He relocated to a fallen tree and continued.

By the end of that day, he had eight confirmed kills—and the Japanese knew something terrifying:

This American with the “toy” rifle wasn’t just lucky.

He was systematic.

The Trap That Should Have Ended Him

By January 24th, George knew the math: eleven snipers reported operating in the groves. Eight dead. Three remaining.

Those three weren’t average.

They were survivors.

And now they knew what George carried, how he hunted, and where he liked to sit.

George changed positions—away from the bunker, away from the fallen tree—choosing rocks once used as a machine‑gun nest. Elevated angle. Overlapping sightlines. A place the enemy wouldn’t expect him to return to.

At 8:17, he spotted a sniper in a palm tree, low and unusually exposed—almost too easy.

George hesitated.

Because the last snipers wouldn’t make beginner mistakes.

He suspected bait.

So he did the one thing that separates a champion marksman from a man who simply shoots well:

He waited.

He scanned the surrounding trees with ruthless patience. Eleven minutes passed.

At 8:28, he found the real threat: a concealed sniper high in a banyan with a clean line of sight to George’s old position.

The enemy was watching the wrong spot—expecting George to behave predictably.

So George used their trap against them.

He shot the decoy first.

Then, as the hidden sniper shifted—just a fraction, just enough movement to betray a human presence—George swung and fired again.

Two shots.

Two more bodies in the grove.

Ten confirmed kills.

And now he had revealed himself to anyone watching.

Machine‑gun fire raked the rocks seconds later—too late to hit him, close enough to prove the margin had shrunk to nothing.

George relocated again, this time into a shell crater half‑filled with rainwater, submerging himself chest‑deep, resting the rifle on the crater rim.

One sniper remained.

Or so he believed.

The Final Hunt: When the Last Sniper Came on the Ground

At 9:47, George realized his mistake.

The last sniper wasn’t in the trees.

He was on the ground—moving low through vegetation, crawling like a shadow toward George’s last known positions. The jungle floor became a chessboard: angles, concealment, patience, deception.

The sniper reached the rocks and took up a position facing east—watching the route George should have taken.

He was close—dangerously close—within a few dozen yards of George’s actual crater.

And he was facing the wrong way.

George had a clear shot.

But he hesitated again, because nothing about this felt simple anymore.

Then George spotted movement: a second Japanese soldier behind a fallen log, watching the same area.

The last “sniper” wasn’t alone.

They were sweeping—flushing, trapping, finishing.

George sank deeper into the water until only his eyes remained above the surface. He kept the rifle vertical to protect the barrel. He waited until both men moved past, exposing their backs.

Then he rose, silent, water dripping from his sleeves and barrel.

One shot—first man dropped.

Bolt—chamber.

Second shot—second man fell as he turned.

In that moment, the grove went from “snipers” to infantry.

Voices. Several. A recovery team or patrol moving toward the bodies, then following tracks—bootprints in mud—toward George’s crater.

They found him.

At 10:31, a Japanese soldier appeared at the crater rim and looked down directly into George’s eyes.

George fired from the water.

The soldier fell.

George cycled the bolt under fire and engaged two more at the rim—fast, precise, terrifyingly controlled.

Then he ran.

Not because he’d lost nerve, but because a bolt‑action rifle cannot win a stand‑up firefight against multiple rifles in the jungle.

He broke contact, dove into another crater, listened until the voices faded, then moved back toward American lines with only two rounds left.

When he finally reached the perimeter and reported in, the tally sounded unreal even spoken aloud:

Eleven snipers eliminated in days.

A threat that had killed fourteen Americans in seventy‑two hours—stopped by one officer with a privately purchased rifle everyone had ridiculed.

The Aftershock

By that afternoon, the laughter was gone. Officers wanted results, not opinions.

A regimental commander asked George the question that always follows a miracle:

Can you teach others to do this?

George answered honestly: only with time, rifles with optics, and men who could already shoot.

And so, in the mud and heat of Guadalcanal, the U.S. Army began improvising something it hadn’t fully formalized yet: a sniper capability built from necessity—teams, training, discipline, and the hard lessons written in blood under banyan trees.

Years later, John George would write a book that became legendary among firearms and military history readers: Shots Fired in Anger—clinical, detailed, and almost shockingly unromantic. Because the most frightening part of what happened at Point Cruz wasn’t drama.

It was the opposite.

A calm man, a steady trigger, and the moment the jungle learned it could be hunted back.