—— I Become a Sniper ——29of the bed, I began, by the light of an oil lamp, painstakingly
to inscribe a letter on a piece of paper with a wellsharpened
indelible pencil.
A letter from the front to a mother in Tambov:
Dear Mum,
I’ve successfully concluded my training. Today the
officer in charge congratulated to me in front of the
assembled troops. Now I have a new job; I have become
an observer. Don’t worry about me – it’s easy work and
quite safe: looking through binoculars and reporting
what the Nazis are up to. And you get to sit where it’s
warm, and I’m decently dressed.
There’s almost no fighting where we are. When you
read in the Soviet Information Service reports ‘All quiet
on the Leningrad Front. Minor engagements’, that’s
about us.
How are you getting on there? And how are folk in
general back there in the real world? We only know
one thing: our people will survive! And they will be
victorious.
And I haven’t told you yet: I’ve been given a
promotion! I am now a senior sergeant – and deputy
platoon commander.
Yo u r Ye v g e n i
From then on we went out every day onto the front line in
pairs, or sometimes alone. We would steal up as close as possible
to the German lines, settle into our favourite shell hole or other
convenient hiding place and, before the sun was fully up, manage to
camouflage ourselves, take a good look round and make ourselves
at home. The front line was our second home, one in which we
spent more time than in our own dugout.
Forewarned by our comrades in the trenches, we would observe
snipers and their activities. They had the task of covering a sniper’s
withdrawal if something went wrong and rendering him first aid