Ritterkreuzträger: Gefreiter der Reserve Matthäus Hetzenauer

This is the story of Private in the Reserve Mathäus Hetzenauer. Born on 23 December 1924 to a Tyrolean farming family in Brixen im Thale, he first worked on his parents' Sonnleit farm after finishing primary school.
In September 1942, he was drafted into the Mountain Replacement Battalion 140 in Kufstein and was discharged after basic training. But as early as January 1943, he received another call-up order to the Styrian military training area Seetaler Alpe, where the best snipers of the German mountain troops from all theatres of war met for training and advanced training.
Transferred to the 7th Company of the Mountain Infantry Regiment 144 of the 3. Transferred to the 7th Company of the Mountain Infantry Regiment 144 of the 3rd Mountain Division, which was involved in the heaviest fighting after the abandonment of the hard-fought bridgehead of Nikopol west of the Dnieper, Mathäus Hetzenauer experienced the loss-laden retreat battles between Ingulez and the Bug as well as in Romania, Eastern Hungary and Slovakia as the most successful sniper of the Wehrmacht. For his more than three hundred recognised kills, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 17 April 1945 at the suggestion of Lieutenant General and Division Commander Paul Klatt.
After almost five years as a Soviet prisoner of war, Mathäus Hetzenauer returned to the Tyrolean Brixental on 10 January 1950, where he lived as a Sonnleitbauer until his death on 3 October 2004.