Little Authors | Free Online Publishing For Kids
The Silent Eye - Story - Sniper - Little Authors - War Stories

The Silent Eye

The forest was quiet, too quiet for a warzone. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the damp air, mingling with the scent of palm fronds and the smoke of distant villages. From his perch on a half-broken iroko tree, Corporal Chukwudi Okafor adjusted his scope, steady hands betraying none of the storm in his heart.

He had once been a schoolteacher in Enugu, a man who lectured children about arithmetic and discipline. But when the war erupted in 1967, when brothers became enemies and blood stained the same soil that had once bound them, he was recruited—first as an infantryman, later as a sniper. They said his eyes were too sharp, his patience too deep to be wasted in a charge.

The war had turned him into the Silent Eye.


Below him, the bush rustled. Enemy soldiers, their khaki uniforms blending into the undergrowth, crept along the narrow footpath. They moved slowly, rifles raised, certain they had the advantage. Chukwudi exhaled softly and steadied his long rifle, a Lee–Enfield, its wood polished not for beauty but for survival.

His first shot rang out like thunder. The lead soldier collapsed, a clean hole where his temple had been. The rest scattered, some diving for cover, others firing blindly into the trees. But Chukwudi was already gone, shifting silently to another vantage point like a ghost in the forest.


At night, when the campfires flickered low and soldiers told stories of home, Chukwudi kept to himself. He would polish his weapon, not for love but ritual, whispering silent prayers for the faces that haunted his scope. He told himself he shot for survival, for the protection of comrades, for the dream that one day the war would end, and classrooms would be filled with the laughter of children again.

But deep inside, he knew he was changing. Each shot drew him further from the man he had been. His eyes, once warm with patience, now saw the world only in ranges and distances.


The war dragged on. Villages burned, rivers carried the cries of widows, and hunger gnawed at the bellies of soldiers and civilians alike. Yet the Silent Eye endured, his legend whispered in both camps: a shadow in the trees, a phantom who never missed.

One evening, after days of skirmishes, Chukwudi found himself staring through his scope at another sniper. Their eyes met, two hunters in the same jungle, both weary, both broken. For a heartbeat, time froze. He saw not an enemy but a mirror—another man conscripted by circumstance, another soul trapped in the merciless machinery of war.

The trigger was light under his finger. But for the first time, he hesitated.

The shot never came.

Chukwudi lowered his rifle, heart pounding, and melted back into the forest’s shadows. He knew he could not undo the lives he had taken. But in that moment of mercy, he reclaimed a fragment of the teacher he once was—the man who believed that even in war, humanity must survive.


Years later, when the war was nothing but memory, the old teacher returned to his chalkboard in a rebuilt schoolhouse. His students never knew of the legend whispered about him, the Silent Eye of the civil war. They only saw a man with sharp eyes and a quiet smile, teaching them numbers, urging them to dream of a world without gunfire.

But sometimes, in the silence of the classroom, Chukwudi’s gaze would drift to the window, to the forest beyond. And in his mind, he would hear again the echo of that last unspent bullet—the one that saved him.

By Victor

The Silent Eye

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *