—— Red Army Sniper ——120his rifle so that his arms would not get so tired. He would study
the enemy defences thoroughly down to the smallest details; not a
single metre must remain unexamined. ‘To see everything while
remaining unseen’ – such was his motto.
As an experienced searchanddestroy soldier, he knew that
the enemy was cunning, clever and insidious. Pchelintsev had seen
all this at close quarters. And to preserve his own life he had to be
cleverer, more cunning and nimble – stronger than the enemy. In
winter Vladimir would pour water on the snow in front of his gun
port, so that it would not puff up when he fired and give his position
away. He hung the gunport with cheesecloth, so that it blended
with the snow. He could see everything, but his opponents could
not. Vladimir knew from the newspapers that other snipers were
operating beside him and they had their own tally of vengeance,
their own experience. He began to correspond with them and the
snipers established a real military liaison and began to compete
with one another.
The past day had been a joyful and memorable one for Vladimir.
He had also received an inscribed sniper’s rifle and on the butt
of it sparkled a metal plate reading: ‘To Nazi exterminator, sniper
V. Pchelintsev from the Political Department of the Leningrad
Front’. We sat till late, deep in conversation. And none of us knew
back then that no more than six months later, Vladimir Pchelintsev
would travel with Hero of the Soviet Union, the Sevastopol sniper
Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and Nikolai Krasavchenko as part of the
Soviet youth delegation to an international student congress in the
United States of America. Along with them he would visit Iraq,
Egypt, Central Africa and Britain. He would feast his eyes on
jungles and deserts, on the blue of the unknown southern seas,
and experience London’s famous fogs...