—— Red Army Sniper ——160Hero of the Soviet Union. Also widely known was the renowned
Sevastopol sniper, Hero of the Soviet Union Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
Returning one day from the divisional general staff to my
regiment after yet another snipers’ meeting, I happened to walk
past a detachment of mortar bombers. It was located in a stone
factorystyle building on the righthand side of the highway to
Uritsk. Suddenly I heard somebody call out:
‘Hey, Comrade sniper! Just a minute!’
I stopped and looked around. Approaching me was a girl in
a military uniform with a firstaid bag over her shoulder. She
stretched out her hand with long, delicate fingers and said:
‘Barely caught you up! Well, let’s get to know each other. I am
Medical Orderly Marusya Mitrofanova, lancecorporal. And
I know who you are.’
We got talking. It turned out she had a request of me – to teach
her sniping.
‘My pleasure, Comrade Mitrofanova!’
She did not give me any details about herself on that occasion.
But later I learned from lads I knew that she was a member of the
Young Communist League from Leningrad. She had not been
accepted for military service at the enlistment office on account
of her age, but she had got her own way nevertheless – she left for
the front line with the militia and managed to see some fighting.
Her older brother was fighting the Nazis somewhere nearby, but
in a different division. And she had a mother, three sisters and
four brothers left in Leningrad. Her father had died in 1936 when
Marusya was only thirteen. She was the youngest in the family.
‘You don’t smoke, do you?’ I asked her unexpectedly.
‘I indulge a little. What of it?’
‘Just that you must drop it! If you’re going to smoke, I won’t
take you. What if you start coughing in an ambush? Then we’ve
both had it.’
‘I’ll give it up!’
Marusya turned out to be a bright pupil. Within a few days she
was already accurately hitting homemade targets, grouping the