—— Day-to-Day Life on the Front Line ——57‘Well, your head’s going to be all right,’ said Vera, as she
finished bandaging a veritable turban on Dudin’s head. ‘Now take
your trousers down. Where did that shrapnel get to?’
‘Vera, well, Comrade Yarutova! Maybe we can do without that?
Why are you making me take my trousers down – in front of a
lady’
‘Take them down, you dandy! Where am I going to give you a
tetanus injection? And who’s going to take out the shrapnel?’
‘Comrade medical assistant, dear lieutenant, you might at least
turn away, do it by touch.’
We were unable to drop off to sleep for a long time after that,
teasing each other and laughing at every piece of trivia. We were
enjoying it because we were young, we were together, side by side,
relaxing in spite of our injuries. Even now they make us laugh
because it is all long behind us. We were only a kilometre from the
front line, but we were ‘in the rear’, lying with our legs stretched out
and our boots off, on sweetsmelling hay piled on real bunks, and
covered by blankets, which we had not seen since the war began.
However, we all had pistols and grenades under our pillows.
Letter from the front to a mother in Tambov:
Dear Mum!
I am not hiding anything. Honestly, I am alive and
well, safe and unharmed.
First I must tell you that Vlad Dudin and I are now
on rest and recreation in the rear – it’s a kind of gratuity
for us. For example, I recently wiped out eleven Nazis
in a day – and now I’ve been rewarded. Yesterday a
scout I know dropped by in passing and said that three
days ago our troops had captured an important Nazi.
At interrogation this man told us: ‘One of your snipers
killed eleven gallant soldiers of our Reich in two hours.
One was a general and the others included two colonels
and several officers, who had come from Berlin on the
instructions of the High Command.’