Snipes

"A lead sleeping pill"

Corporal Christopher Reynolds shot a top-level Taliban commander - called Musa - who co-ordinated dozens of attacks against British and US soldiers.  From a mile away.  Cpl Reynolds, of 3 Scots, The Black Watch, has already killed 32 other Taliban fighters during some of the hardest fighting of the Afghan campaign.

“ A Brit sniper is credited with the longest range kill in Afghanistan ... 1500 meters (.932 Miles). His partner then nailed a Taliban sniper - who spoke with a Birmingham accent - who was shooting from a tiny hole in a wall more than half a mile away.  We were taking fire all the time. We were observing down the valley and I saw a group of five Taliban. I identified one straightaway as the commander because I watched him through the scope and when he spoke on the radio, the other one would do what he said."I saw that he had a weapon, an AK47. We did all the calculations for range, windspeed and all that. I have to admit the first round landed next to him. We were so far away that he didn't even realise he was being shot at."We changed our aim and when I took into account different factors like the trajectory of the bullet, my gun scope was actually aiming at the top of a doorway. I fired and the bullet went off, coming down and hitting him in the chest."He dropped straight away into the arms of a fighter behind him."The guy just panicked and dropped the leader and ran away."He had been given a lead sleeping tablet. I was quite proud of that shot - it is the longest recorded kill in Afghanistan. I am going to use that fact as a chat-up line in the pub when I get back home.  Wikipedia says this. "The longest range recorded for a sniper kill currently stands at 2,430 meters (2,657 yd, or 1.51 miles), accomplished by Master Corporal Rob Furlong, a sniper from Newfoundland, Canada, in March 2002 during the war in Afghanistan. No matter to me, 1500 meters is an impossible shot, but not so much. ”