—— Red Army Sniper ——196ammunition was in short supply.. And yet if, in the early months
of war, the Nazis walked around their positions upright and felt
like lords of a conquered land, with the advent of our snipers, the
situation changed sharply – the Nazis were forced not just to run
stooping closer and closer to the ground, but literally to crawl
along it. Our land was becoming too hot for them to stand on.
‘The Russians fire with diabolical accuracy; all their shots are at
the head, between the eyes or in the neck. On quiet days, Russian
snipers were knocking out six to ten men from my company,’ one of
the Nazi prisoners testified at the time. According to the prisoners’
narratives, there were even rumours among enemy soldiers that a
special unit of Siberian hunters had come to Leningrad who could
hit a squirrel in the eye.
The sniper movement energised our defence, saved soldiers
from the dangerous immobility of trench warfare and opened
up the opportunity to inflict significant losses on the enemy
with limited means. Snipers had existed as military formations
in army units since before the war. During the war these super
sharpshooters became instructors of sniper schools in their units,
operated as rank and file snipers and were the first to open the tally
of vengeance.
On 26 January 1942, the Military Council of the Leningrad
Front informed the Central Committee of the Communist Party
that, as of 20 January 1942, the snipers’ ranks included over 4,200
soldiers, officers and political staff. In the first twenty days of 1942
snipers of the TwentyThird, FortySecond and FiftyFifth Armies
and the Maritime Pacific Operational Group had annihilated
more than 7,000 enemy officers and men. By 22 February 1942,
the snipers’ ranks had been increased to 6,000.
We snipers strove to select firing positions where the Germans
least expected them. I, for example, often set myself up in the
ruins of a building, behind a stove chimney, and fired through the
broken door of the stove itself. I fired from tall trees, from the bell
towers of church ruins. I would at times get up quite close to the
German trenches and, camouflaged under a bush, lie motionless