—— Red Army Sniper ——126newspaper. A Communist Party member for some years and a sniper
who had wiped out over a hundred Nazis, Zagid Rakhmatullin
was well known to everyone in the platoon. He carried great
authority. During lulls in action the troops would ask Zagid to talk
about himself. Then, fraternally sharing his Morshansk tobacco
from an embroidered pouch, he would tell us about his family, his
collective farm, peacetime life, and his achievements at the front.
And he knew how to tell a story.
Zagid was born in 1913 in the village of Mukhomedyarovo,
in the Suvandyk district of Orenburg Region. His family were
poor peasants. Zagid lost his father in 1921 – he died of hunger,
leaving the boy along with his sick mother. The young lad had
to work as a day labourer for a local moneybags. And when
collectivisation was announced in 1929, as a labourer he was the
first to be accepted into the collective farm. And in the Young
Communist League at the same time. In 1930 the bright and
industrious lad went on a course for tractor drivers. Until 1939
Rakhmatullin worked as a tractor driver on his collective farm
and won distinction as a Stakhanovite for high productivity. In
1937 he had been accepted into the Party. He took part in the
Soviet–Finnish War and fought the Nazis from the very first days
of the Great War for the Fatherland. When the locals saw him off
to the front, the secretary of the Party’s district committee told
Zagid: ‘Make sure you’re a topclass soldier, just as you were a top
class grain farmer.’ And in front of everybody Zagid promised to
justify the faith of his fellowvillagers and swore than he would
heroically defend his homeland.
On arrival at his unit, the 21st NKVD Division near Leningrad,
Zagid began from his very first days keenly studying warfare
and military technology and mastering the sniper’s art. He had
a powerful desire to wipe out as many Nazis as possible. As a
Communist, he realised that his place was there, on the front line,
where the going was tough. And he became a real exterminator of
the Nazi vermin. He gave his word that he would wipe out at least
a hundred of them.