—— An ‘Invitation’ ——137‘Would you believe it! Just you wait, bloody Fritzes .. .’
I did not just walk into the command post, but stormed in.
Sitting there were all the platoon commanders and the company
sergeantmajor. When they saw me, they glanced at one another
in surprise.’
‘Wow! A living corpse!,’ said the sergeantmajor. ‘And I’d
already taken you off the rations list.. .’
‘We were told that they’d got you on the way to the medical
centre!’ said Kuzmin, the company registrar. So it was a false
rumour? But there was no time to check; we’ve been battling with
Nazis these last few days. And now the Germans have confused
us .. .’
‘They won’t confuse us any longer!’ I promised. ‘Just you wait,
you Nazi fibbers, I’ll shove your lies down your throats! Comrade
Captain, shall we show them a real funeral?’ I turned to the
company political adviser, Captain Zhukov.
‘Why not? Let’s go, Nikolaev! We’ll go correct our mistake.
Cover us, just in case,’ the captain asked the company commander.
Armed with snipers’ rifles, the political adviser and I went out
onto the front line. I grabbed my cartridge pouch, which always
contained a selection of different cartridges. Medical Assistant Ivan
Vasilyev also asked to go with us. He equipped himself with some
binoculars, which he requested from the company commander,
and grabbed a submachine gun from the telephone operator.
It turned out to be a beautiful day. And even without this
event I would have enjoyed the blue sky. The sun was shining high
overhead, brightly illuminating everything around. The birds
were twittering. Not a leaf on a tree was stirring. Peace and quiet
reigned.
Choosing convenient firing positions in a gully about ten
metres from our front line, we lay down and began to observe
the Nazis. They were freely walking about their trenches almost
without camouflage – on our sector they had not been particularly
troubled over the last few days. Now the Nazis were as visible as if
there were right in front of us – you could just pick one!