—— Red Army Sniper ——10I sat away from the group, writhing from the pain in my left hand.
‘As long as they don’t notice I’m wounded. They’ll pack me off to
hospital and what hope then of getting back to the unit!’ Blood
from the wound was already gradually seeping into the palm of
my hand, and, with my other hand, I surreptitiously wiped it away
with a clump of grass.
A regimental medic happened to be walking past. I decided to
call him.
‘Would you mind taking a look at my arm, mate. Only don’t
poke around too much. It’s a bit sore.’
‘Wow, you’re wounded, brother! There’s a hole in your sleeve!
Where did they get you like that? And how long ago?’ asked the
medic, in a concerned tone.
‘Oh, about twenty minutes, since we got back from
reconnaissance.’
‘Why did you keep quiet till now?’ he asked, opening up his bag.
‘We’ll bandage it up, put on a tourniquet, and stop the bleeding.’
He zealously bandaged it up, then applied a tourniquet, straight
onto the quilted sleeve – squeezed the arm by the left shoulder
with a thin, rubber tube.
‘And now get yourself off to the regimental dressing station;
you’ve got to get a tetanus injection,’ he ordered, closing up his bag.
The blood that had been continuously running into my palm
really had stopped flowing, but the arm was still sore.
‘Well, thanks for that anyway, old fellow! A pity you can’t do
anything to help him,’ and I nodded in the direction of the dead
man wrapped up in canvas.
‘Yes... in such cases medicine is, as they say, powerless,’ he
muttered. ‘But you should get a move on unless you want to end up
wrapped up like that.’
It was hard for me to admit that, to some extent, I was responsible
for the death of our mate... I had been leading the group. The
objective of establishing where the enemy were at the moment and
who was situated in line with us on the left side had been achieved
almost without effort. The enemy were right next to us, in front.