Point Cruz, 1943 — The Rifle They Called a Toy
At 9:17 on the morning of January 22nd, 1943, Second Lieutenant John George crouched inside the ruins of a Japanese bunker west of Point Cruz, staring through a scope his fellow officers had mocked for six straight weeks.
He was twenty-seven years old—an Illinois state champion marksman, once capable of grouping at distances most men never attempted. And yet, on Guadalcanal he had zero confirmed kills. Not because he couldn’t shoot, but because no one had ever given him the chance to use the one tool he believed mattered.
For seventy-two hours, Japanese snipers operating in the Point Cruz groves had killed fourteen men from the 132nd Infantry Regiment. Eleven enemy snipers were out there, hidden in banyan trees that reached ninety feet tall, their trunks thick enough to swallow a man. They knew how to wait. They knew how to disappear. They were killing Americans faster than malaria.
John George’s commanding officer had called his rifle a toy. Other platoon leaders had called it his mail-order sweetheart.
The rifle was a Winchester Model 70, bolt-action, five rounds, fitted with a Lyman Alaskan scope and a Griffin & Howe mount. It weighed nine pounds; the scope added another twelve ounces. The M1 Garand issued to everyone else weighed about nine and a half pounds—semi-automatic, eight rounds, no magnification.
When George first unpacked the Winchester at Camp Forrest in Tennessee, the armorer asked if it was for deer or Germans. George said it was for the Japanese.
They shipped out before the rifle arrived.
He spent the voyage to Guadalcanal watching other men clean their Garands while his weapon sat in a warehouse in Illinois. He requested it be forwarded through military mail. Six weeks later, in late December 1942, a supply sergeant handed him a wooden crate marked FRAGILE.
George had saved two years of National Guard pay for that rifle. He wasn’t giving it up because someone thought it looked unmilitary.
Captain Morris ordered him to leave it in his tent and carry a “real weapon.”
George carried it anyway.
The Ground the Marines Left Behind
The 132nd Infantry relieved the Marines on Guadalcanal in late December 1942. The Marines had fought there since August. They had taken Henderson Field and held it, but Mount Austen still loomed—1,514 feet, fortified, and deadly.
The Japanese called its position the Gifu: five hundred men, forty-seven bunkers.
George’s battalion attacked on December 17th. They fought for sixteen days. They lost thirty-four killed and two hundred seventy-nine wounded before taking the western slope on January 2nd.
By then George had fired his Winchester exactly zero times in combat.
Point Cruz was different. No fixed bunkers. No neat positions. Just scattered Japanese soldiers retreating west from Henderson Field—some of them snipers—dug into the groves and massive trees near the coast.
On January 19th, a sniper killed Corporal Davis while he filled canteens at a creek. On January 20th, another sniper killed two men from L Company during patrol. On January 21st, three more died. One was shot through the neck from a tree the patrol had walked past twice.
That night the battalion commander summoned George.
He needed someone who could shoot, and he needed to know whether that civilian rifle could do anything except attract jokes.
George listed his credentials calmly: Illinois State Championship at 1,000 yards in 1939, the youngest winner in state history. Six-inch groups at 600 with iron sights. With the Lyman Alaskan, five rounds inside four inches at 300.
The commander gave him until morning to prove it.
January 22nd, 1943
Before dawn, George cleaned the rifle again. It had been packed in cosmoline for the ocean voyage. He checked the scope mount and loaded five rounds of .30-06 hunting ammunition he’d brought from Tennessee—same cartridge class as military ball, but chosen because it shot clean and consistent in his rifle.
He moved alone into the ruins of a Japanese bunker captured three days earlier. No spotter. No radio. Just a canteen and sixty rounds in stripper clips.
The bunker overlooked the coconut groves west of Point Cruz.
The Lyman Alaskan was only 2.5x magnification—barely more than a nudge—but enough to catch what the naked eye missed: the wrong movement in the right place.
George glassed the banyans slowly, left to right, top to bottom.
At 9:17, he saw it: a branch shift when there was no wind. Eighty-seven feet up, two hundred forty yards away.
He watched.
The branch moved again.
Then he saw the shape: a man in dark clothing, wedged where three branches met, facing east toward a trail where the battalion had been moving supplies.
George adjusted two clicks right for wind. He controlled his breathing. The Winchester’s trigger—glass smooth, tuned to three and a half pounds—broke cleanly.
He squeezed.
The rifle cracked. The banyan jerked. The Japanese sniper dropped through the branches and fell nearly ninety feet, hitting the ground near the base of the tree.
George worked the bolt, chambered a fresh round, and kept his scope on the area.
Snipers worked in pairs: shooter and spotter. If he’d killed the shooter, the other would be close.
At 9:43, he found the second man sixty yards north, lower in another tree—moving down, retreating. He had heard the shot and knew the position was compromised.
George led the movement and fired.
The second sniper fell backward, his rifle clattering through branches as he hit the ground.
Two shots. Two kills.
At 11:21, a Japanese bullet slammed into a sandbag six inches from George’s head. Dirt burst into his face. The shot came from the southwest—another sniper, different angle.
George waited. Inched back. Glassed slowly.
At 11:38, he found the shooter: third tree from the left in a cluster of five banyans, seventy-three feet up. The man had shifted branches but stayed in the same tree.
A mistake.
George fired. The third sniper fell without sound.
By noon, George had killed five.
Word spread fast through the battalion—faster than orders, faster than discipline. Men who had mocked the rifle now asked if they could watch.
George refused. Spectators drew attention. Attention drew fire.
After the fifth kill, the surviving snipers stopped moving in daylight. The jungle became still. George spent the rest of the afternoon glassing empty branches and false shadows.
At 1600, he returned to battalion headquarters.
Captain Morris was waiting. The mockery was gone.
He wanted George back at dawn.
January 23rd
Rain came hard and heavy, turning the jungle floor to mud and reducing visibility to less than a hundred yards. George waited for the weather to ease.
The rain stopped at 08:15. By 08:45, visibility returned.
At 09:12, George spotted the first sniper of the day. The Japanese soldier had climbed into position during the rainfall—smart, because the sound masked movement. He chose a longer range tree, about two hundred ninety yards out—also smart.
George compensated, fired, and the sniper fell.
Then the response came.
At 09:57, Japanese mortars began falling around George’s bunker. They had triangulated his position by sound or muzzle flash. First rounds landed forty yards short. Second salvo landed twenty yards short.
The third would be direct.
George grabbed his rifle and ran. He sprinted north and dove into a shell crater. The next salvo erased the bunker behind him in a burst of smoke, dirt, and splintered wood.
He relocated beneath a fallen tree a hundred twenty yards north and resumed his watch.
This was no longer shooting. It was a duel.
At 14:23 he killed his seventh sniper.
At 15:41 he killed his eighth—ninety-four feet up, well concealed, until the sun angle shifted and his silhouette betrayed him.
At 1700, Morris ordered him back.
George reported eight confirmed kills over two days: twelve rounds fired, eight hits, four misses.
That night George cleaned his rifle and did the math.
Eleven Japanese snipers had been operating in the groves. Eight were dead. Three remained.
And the three remaining would be the best.
January 24th
Rain returned before dawn. George used the cover to move to a new position—not the bunker, not the fallen tree. He chose a cluster of rocks the Marines had once used as a machine gun nest, giving him elevation and cover.
At 07:43, the rain eased to drizzle. Visibility improved.
At 08:17, George spotted a sniper in an unusual place: a palm tree, low—only forty feet up. The fronds created a natural hide, invisible from ground level.
But George wasn’t shooting from ground level.
From his rocks, he could see down into the fronds: a dark shape—shoulders, head.
George began to squeeze the trigger, then stopped.
Something felt wrong. Too easy. Too obvious.
He scanned again.
If this was bait, the real shooter would be covering it, waiting for muzzle flash.
He checked every tree within three hundred yards. It took eleven minutes.
At 08:28, he found the real threat: a banyan tree eighty yards northwest, ninety-one feet up. A perfect hide, vines and branches concealing him from three sides, line of sight aimed toward George’s previous position at the fallen tree.
George made a decision. He would use the bait against them.
He fired at the decoy in the palm. The man jerked and fell.
George immediately swung to the banyan. The real sniper reacted to the shot—movement, a slight shift as he turned.
George fired before the man could fully reposition.
Two shots. Two kills.
But his position was burned.
George ran east along the rocks and dropped into a drainage ditch forty yards away.
At 08:34, Japanese machine gun fire raked the rocks where he’d been six seconds earlier. Dust and stone fragments jumped from the impacts.
George moved again, to a shell crater partially filled with rainwater. He settled in with water up to his chest, rested the rifle on the rim, and resumed glassing.
Ten confirmed kills.
One remained.
The last sniper would not be in a tree.
At 09:47, George caught movement low in the undergrowth—sixty yards south. The final enemy was crawling along the jungle floor, using ferns and vines and fallen branches, moving toward the rocks where George had last been seen.
George stayed motionless in the crater, but his angle was wrong. The crater rim blocked a clean shot unless he rose—and rising would expose him.
The Japanese sniper stopped at 09:52, studying the rocks. Then he moved again, closer—thirty-five yards, thirty, twenty-five.
At 10:03, the enemy reached the rocks and took position facing east, toward where George should have relocated.
He was thirty-eight yards from George’s actual crater—but his back was exposed.
An easy shot.
George hesitated, because survival like this suggested intelligence. And intelligence suggested a trap.
At 10:06 he found it: a second Japanese soldier seventy yards northwest behind a fallen trunk, rifle aimed at the drainage ditch where George “should” have been hiding.
Two men.
George couldn’t drop both before they reacted. Not with a bolt-action.
So he sank deeper into the water until only his eyes and the top of his head were above the surface. He held the rifle upright to keep water out of the barrel and waited.
At 10:13, the man in the rocks stood and signaled. Both began moving east in a sweep, seventy yards apart.
They passed George’s crater.
Their backs exposed.
George rose from the water—slow, silent—and shouldered the Winchester.
He fired at the closer man. The soldier dropped.
George worked the bolt and fired again before the second man could raise his rifle.
Both fell.
Eleven shots fired over three days. Eleven Japanese snipers dead.
The Price of Winning
George climbed out of the crater to retrieve spent cartridges and froze.
Japanese voices. Several. Moving in from the treeline toward the bodies.
These weren’t snipers. Infantry. A patrol or recovery team.
George dropped back into the crater and submerged until only his eyes remained above the surface, rifle held vertical.
The voices moved from the first body to the second—urgent, quick. Then they shifted direction.
Toward the crater.
They had found his tracks—bootprints in mud leading from the rocks.
George had five rounds. They had at least six men.
At 10:31, a Japanese soldier appeared at the crater rim, looking directly down.
Their eyes met.
George fired from the water. The soldier fell backward.
Two more appeared at the rim.
George rose, fired, worked the bolt, fired again.
Both dropped.
Then shouting. More movement. George climbed out the north side and ran, diving behind a fallen tree as bullets snapped through jungle air.
He steadied, aimed through his scope, and dropped another advancing soldier. The remaining troops dove for cover. George heard voices shifting—flanking from the south and east.
He couldn’t win a firefight with a bolt-action rifle against multiple rifles.
He broke contact.
He ran north for ninety seconds and dove into a dry crater, listening until the voices faded. He checked his rifle: mud, water, still functioning.
Two rounds left. His stripper clips were back near the crater he’d fled.
At 10:47, he began moving carefully toward American lines.
At 11:13, he reached the perimeter and was guided to headquarters.
Captain Morris wanted the debrief.
George gave it: eleven snipers killed, then an infantry engagement with additional kills, ammunition nearly exhausted, rifle still functional but in urgent need of cleaning.
Morris told him to clean the rifle and rest. No operations tomorrow. The battalion was moving east. The groves were no longer the priority. Intelligence suggested the Japanese were evacuating Guadalcanal and would complete withdrawal within two weeks.
George returned to his tent, field stripped the Winchester, and spent two hours cleaning every component until patches came out clean. He checked mounts, adjusted eye relief, loaded five fresh rounds.
At 1400, an order arrived: the battalion commander wanted to see him.
George expected trouble—unauthorized actions, operating alone, excessive risk.
Instead, he found Captain Morris and two other officers, including Colonel Ferry, the regimental commander.
Ferry had one question.
Could George train other men to do what he had done?
George said he could try—but it would require time, rifles with optics, and men who could already shoot.
Ferry had fourteen Springfield rifles with Unertl scopes left behind by the Marines, and forty expert marksmen in the regiment.
He wanted a sniper section.
George accepted on one condition: he kept his Winchester.
Ferry approved.
Training began January 27th. Within days, George had sixteen two-man teams—shooter and spotter—working the fundamentals: breath control, trigger squeeze, reading wind, building stable platforms from logs and rocks and sandbags.
On February 1st, George took four teams west of the Matanikau River. By day’s end, the teams had killed twenty-three Japanese soldiers with zero American casualties.
By February 9th, the section had seventy-four confirmed kills.
On February 7th, a Japanese rifleman shot George in the left shoulder. The wound was serious but not fatal. He was evacuated to a field hospital near Henderson Field. Two weeks later, the Japanese evacuation completed. The campaign ended.
George’s sniper section had operated for twelve days. Seventy-four confirmed kills. Zero friendly casualties in sniper operations.
Colonel Ferry recommended George for the Bronze Star.
But George’s war wasn’t over.
Burma, and the Limits of a Perfect Rifle
While George recovered, orders came down: Pacific Command needed experienced jungle officers for a new mission—classified, in Burma.
George volunteered.
By March he was on a ship heading west. His Winchester Model 70 was packed in a waterproof case, scope wrapped in oilcloth. He didn’t know details, only that it would involve long-range penetration operations behind Japanese lines.
In India, he joined a new unit: Merrill’s Marauders.
Training began in April 1943. Long-range jungle movement, survival without supply lines, operating deep behind enemy positions—modeled after the British Chindits.
George modified his rifle for the weight of Burma: replaced the Lyman Alaskan with a lighter Weaver 330, and swapped to a lighter stock. Every ounce mattered.
The Marauders entered Burma in February 1944 to take Myitkyina airfield. They marched through terrain the Japanese considered impassable—mountains, rivers, dense jungle, no roads. They carried supplies on their backs and pack mules.
Combat in Burma was often close: fifty yards, sometimes less, in vegetation so thick you could barely see thirty feet.
George used the Winchester only three times on the march—three shots, three kills—then learned the hard truth of the jungle: most fights didn’t reward precision at 600 yards. They rewarded speed, endurance, and the ability to survive disease.
By late May, the Marauders had marched over seven hundred miles. Disease ate the unit alive—malaria, dysentery, typhus. The airfield was taken, but the unit was combat-ineffective. They were evacuated and disbanded.
George never fired his Winchester in combat again.
What He Left Behind
George returned to the United States in July 1944. Promoted to captain, assigned to Fort Benning to train officers in marksmanship and small-unit tactics. He taught what he had learned the hard way: movement in jungle terrain, target identification at distance, independent operations.
He kept the Winchester.
In 1947, he wrote down what happened—not as a memoir, but as a record: weapons, tactics, ballistics, what worked and what didn’t. The manuscript grew to over four hundred pages. The National Rifle Association urged publication.
It was published as Shots Fired in Anger.
It became a classic—clinical, precise, unembellished. A book that treated combat as it was: technical, brutal, and shaped by details most history ignores.
George lived long enough to watch the U.S. fight Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War—watched rifles evolve from Garand to M14 to M16, watched sniping become a formal specialty with dedicated training and gear.
John George died on January 3rd, 2009, at ninety years old.
His Winchester Model 70 was donated to the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia. It sits behind glass with a placard, looking like any other hunting rifle.
Most visitors walk past.
But it is not just a rifle.
It is the weapon that proved a state champion with a mail-order scope could outshoot trained military snipers in a jungle where an entire battalion had been bleeding for days.
It is the rifle that cleared the Point Cruz groves in four days when the regiment could not do it in two weeks.
And it is a reminder—quiet, easily missed—that in modern war, sometimes the outcome hinges not on grand strategy, but on one man, one position, and one steady trigger squeeze.
