—— An ‘Invitation’ ——139was cut with a knife! Now have a go at the speaker, with armour
piercing bullets! To make sure!’
I fired a few AP tracer bullets at the speaker.
‘Well? What can you see?’ I asked.
‘I saw the bullets hit the middle of the speaker. Now I can’t see
anything. The speaker’s still hanging there.’
‘But what use is it? A bullet won’t bring it down. But now it’ll be
silent for a long time – I know that for a fact. And that’s the main
thing. And now let’s skedaddle out of here; the Germans will have
spotted me from the tracer bullets.’ We returned happily to the
regiment. The German radio was silent.
But the following day, first thing in the morning the Nazis
began broadcasting again, having apparently installed a new
speaker overnight. With no musical introduction they announced
in dreadful Russian:
Sniper Nikolaev! Zer Fuhrer admires zer brave Russian
zoldier. Our command invites you to come over to our
site! It guarantees you a ferry comfortable life. You vill
rezeive a big filla, haff ferry much money, Tsuker und
Brot, get wedding to a Cherman Frau. Zer Fuhrer vill
revard you vit a high officer’s order – Iron Cross, erste
class. Come ofer to our site!What were they thinking of? What were they hoping for?
The Germans repeated their message word for word several times
at intervals of ten to fifteen minutes. A few minutes later I asked
permission to enter the dugout of the battalion commander, Major
Morozov. Sitting in the dugout apart from him were Lieutenant
Colonel Agazhin, my company commander, and Captain Zhukov.
‘Well, Nikolaev,’ said the battalion commander, ‘did you get
the invitation? Maybe you’d like to respond?’
‘What have you come about, Yevgeni?’ asked Lieutenant
Colonel Agashin. ‘I can see you’ve got something in mind.’
‘Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, I think Major Morozov is right;
we should go and visit the Germans if they are inviting us!’