—— Red Army Sniper ——148But they took upon themselves the most responsible and
difficult task during the blockade – that of keeping me fed and
plied with sweet tea.
Usually I was in the charge of my inseparable friends, nursing
sisters Tamara Smolova and Vera Tatarinkova and deputy political
instructor Dashunya Kopelevich, secretary of the medical section’s
Young Communist League organisation. They supplied me with
cigarettes put aside ‘for special cases’ – a rationed amount which
they received along with all troops and officers. I had learned
to smoke during the hungry days of the siege; they were careful
above providing us with tobacco. To this day I can remember with
pleasure the excellent, prewar Belomorkanal cigarettes from the
Uritsk factory in Leningrad.
After I was transferred from my division to operational work
with Smersh, I lost touch with my friends and visited them less
often. But not to the extent of completely forgetting them. Our 96th
Artillery Brigade, in which I served as Smersh counterespionage
operative, used to support units at the front with its 152 mm guns
and turn up in various sectors. The instruments of the vehicles
towing our big guns would record more than a dozen kilometres a
day along frontline roads in pursuit of the Nazis.
But even back then, first on the Karelian Isthmus and later
while liberating the Baltic area, my friends and I often met on
frontline roads. I would find time between engagements and
forced marches, locate the medical section, and drop in for an
hour or two.