—— Red Army Sniper ——188communication trench finished the job – three Germans emerged
from the depths of the position and walked along the trench with
their hands raised high. The fearsome enemy pillbox had fallen
silent. But not for long. After a while it started up again; however,
the impenetrable steel fortress was now firing in the opposite
direction. It was in reliable hands. Behind the armour plating of
the skilfully camouflaged tank buried in the ground there now sat
Soviet snipers and observers. Now we had to defend the positions
seized from the Germans. Defend them whatever the cost.
Our advance halted for a while – the Germans had still not
recovered from the defeat, while we were occupying new trenches,
in which the firing positions had to be urgently reconstructed after
being turned in the opposite direction, towards the enemy.
Our troops looked in the German dugouts, which till quite
recently had been solid, spacious, and comfortable and were now
churned up by the explosions of our antitank grenades. They did
not venture in; there were lots of lice and the dugouts stank of burnt
sulphur, gunpowder... and something very alien and unpleasant.
I went into one of them. Some rags were scattered about: women’s
underwear, old domestic equipment, children’s toys. Leftover
food, photographs and letters were strewn around. I picked up
an unopened letter from the floor. It was from Dortmund. ‘Kurt
has sent blankets and various things from Russia,’ I read, barely
making out some Frau’s scrawl. Mama was urging her son Hans to
loot and kill. But her Hansie would not be sending anything from
Russia – he was lying in a trench covered with lice...
With a feeling of disgust and loathing I left the dugout, but
was not able to deny myself the pleasure of kicking the dead Nazi.
‘What are you lying there for, ratbag? You can stay lying! Soon
you’ll all be lying like that!’
However, infuriated by their setbacks, the Nazis did not rest.
Our watchmen reported that the Germans were assembling again,
this time for a counterattack.
Now the German submachine gunners were storming their
own former trenches. But our gunners and Yushin’s AA crew