—— Red Army Sniper ——26Closer to us lay a plain dusted with snow without a single suitable
feature to guide oneself by. Somewhere along it were the enemy
trenches.
A column of smoke from the stoves of the Nazi dugouts was
rising high into the frosty sky and steam was pouring out of the
kitchens. Hungry as we were, it seemed to us that the Germans
were being fed right around the clock. Through the telescopic
sights of our rifles we could see far into the depths of their defences
and German soldiers, large as life, both groups and individuals,
occasionally wandering here and there, unfortunately beyond the
range of our bullets.
We lay like that for a long time without taking a single shot,
nestled up against the snowcovered parapet and closely pressed
against each other. Lying in the frost for several hours on end
without moving was not much fun. And we were not used to it. We
were clad in overcoats on top of padded jackets, padded trousers
tucked into kirza boots (made of a unique Russian form of artificial
leather) and caps with earflaps. And still the frost went right through
us. We so wanted to get up and warm our frozen feet and hands
with some vigorous movement, but we knew this was impossible.
We must not reveal ourselves to the enemy who was also watching
our defences. We were in a lousy mood. It began to get dark.
As if to spite us, the snow began to fall again in large flakes.
Visibility grew noticeably worse.
‘What should we do?’ asked Ivan quietly in a mixture of Russian
and Ukrainian. ‘Shall we leave, or what?’
‘Better the “or what”,’ I told him. ‘Where do you want to be off
to now? To meet a German bullet? It’s still light.’
I wanted to add something, but suddenly I noticed some
moving targets in my firing sector, about sixty metres from our
observation point: three Nazis walking six or eight metres apart.
The first one had a woman’s scarf tied crisscross around him and
moved unimpeded. The other two were lugging sacks containing
some sort of heavy load. For some reason I decided that they must
be potatoes, so slow and heavy was their tread.