—— Red Army Sniper ——174Officers clarified losses and gave orders. Observers who had sat
in their foxholes during the bombardment instantly moved into
firing positions, feeling for the petrol bombs and fused grenades,
which had been placed conveniently to hand. The machine gunners
and antitank crews cleaned the earth and sand off their weapons,
placed them on the parapets for convenience, and hurriedly
cleared and improved the firing sector in front of them. Nobody
remained with nothing to do, but there was no unnecessary fuss
either. Everyone knew what he would do if a burst of machine
gun fire from attacking Nazis descended on our trenches. We were
ready to meet them.
And they came... The artillery had barely fallen silent before
dense lines of Nazis began to appear from behind the railway
embankment and crawl along the gully. Launched against us was
a band of strapping, wellfed, frenzied Germans, urged on by their
officers. The soldier next to me in the trench placed his helmet
more firmly on his head and, to nobody in particular, announced:
‘It’s started... Well, brothers, we won’t break this time either!’
And he critically inspected the grenades and petrol bombs laid out
in front of him.
Someone heard him and immediately called back: ‘It’s not the
first time we’ve beaten the bastards, and we’ll do it again now –
just let them stick their heads up!’
Pressing their machine guns into their stomachs, the Germans
kept coming, spraying the trenches with unaimed fire. We were
being charged by a horde up to two battalions in strength. Our
trenches remained silent. We had seen such frenzied attacks
before, so we were not frightened by this one. Neither were we
intimidated by the fact that a couple of dozen troops were facing
an avalanche of Germans in their froggreen uniforms. Nor did we
fear the rattle of their machine guns – we knew that such unaimed
fire only affects the psyche and is intended for those with weak
nerves, and there were none like that among us. We decided to let
this drunken mob closer to us in order to be certain of hitting it,
so we could fire selectively. As soon as the Nazis had completely