—— From the Soviet Information Bureau... ——177Dashing from one firing position to another, from one platoon
to another, I helped the troops to deal with the Nazis with the
fire from my sniper’s rifle. One after another I put their officers
out of commission and helped to defuse tense situations which
arose right by the trenches. Left without any officers, the German
soldiers lost their heads; with nobody to urge them on, they did
not know what to do – whether to keep going forward straight into
our bullets or to turn back. And of course they chose the latter.
With hesitating soldiers our troops and machine gunners knew
only too well what to do. They calmly picked off the Nazis as they
dashed all over the place.
Moving like this along the trench, I ended up at the company
command post. I wanted the company commander, Lieutenant
Popov, to allow observers to take up a position right on the railway
embankment. This would allow us an excellent view of what
was happening in the Nazi camp and enable us, at least for a few
minutes, to find out about the enemy’s intentions. But there turned
out to be no commanding officer at the command point.
‘He’s with the platoons,’ said Health Instructor Anatoly Knyazev.
‘But we have no contact with the platoons – the line seems to
be broken in several places,’ added telephonist Kiriyanov. ‘Where
to look for him now, I can’t imagine!’ And, dashing through the
door of the dugout, he added on the run: ‘I’m going to look for
the break; maybe I’ll find the commander – the 1st Battalion were
asking for him.. .’
A couple of minutes after his departure we saw about a dozen
enemy bombers approaching our defences. Circling above, they
dropped like a stone and began swooping on the trenches.
‘Air attack!’ cried the lookouts, and in a moment all the firing
sites were empty. Our troops had hidden in their foxholes. Those
of us at the command post remained standing by the dugout door,
also ready any second to dive for cover, and continued to observe
the course of events, apprehensive only of a direct hit.
Detaching themselves from the planes were some black
droplets, which kept increasing in size and threatened in a second