Josef 'Sepp' Allerberger was a German sniper in the II Battalion of the 144th Gebirgsjäger Regiment of the 3rd Mountain Division on the Eastern Front, and was credited with 257 kills. He was born in the vicinity of Steiermark, Austria, on 24 December 1924 (although in his memoirs he states he was born in September), the son of a local carpenter. Sent to the Eastern Front in June 1943 as a machine gunner, Allerberger was lightly wounded at Stavropol and experimented with a captured Soviet Mosin Nagant 91/30 rifle with a 3.5x PU telescopic sight whilst recuperating. Eventually he made 27 kills before being sent for sniper training at Seetaleralpe, and being assigned a Karabiner 98k sniper variant with 4x telescopic sight. At the end of the War he would often use a Gewehr 43 with ZF4 4x teles