—— Red Army Sniper ——52side. However, I caught sight of three Nazis leaving the white
hump of the dugout. One of them was naked to the waist, while
the other two were minus overcoats, just in uniforms. Raising
up his arms, the halfnaked one began to walk around. ‘Who is
he surrendering to? Bastard, he’s come out to do his exercises,’
I guessed. The other two began to wash their faces with snow.
Waiting for the moment when the seminaked man finally
stopped and began to do some squats, I took my first shot. The
Nazi squatted and... collapsed onto the snow and lay down, as
if he was going to sunbathe, glad to see the bright sun. The other
two carried on washing their faces with snow. Then one of them
turned, looked at the lying man and apparently said something
to the other. He turned round. They both stood there and looked
at the man spread out on the snow, then went up and began to lift
him up. Then, realising what was up, they started looking round,
perplexed, not realising where the bullet had come from. They
did not even look at our trenches, apparently thinking that the
distance was too far. I did not allow them to ponder too long and
skewered both of them.
‘Not bad for a start,’ I thought and loaded the rifle again.
I carefully took three cartridges from my pocket and placed them
on a little shelf – to keep count of them. And hardly had I got ready
to fire again when I saw a motorbike and sidecar approaching the
headquarters dugout.
The motorcyclist dashingly rode up and stopped dead by the
door itself. A tall German jumped down from the pillion in no time
at all and began to assist a fat Nazi to get out of the sidecar. While
he was obligingly fiddling round with this person of seemingly
important rank, I focussed on the rider who had learned forward
to rest on the handle bars and was not moving. The tall man was
still trying to drag the fat man out of his cradle. Eventually he
clambered out and began stamping his feet. I fired. Meanwhile
the tall man had turned to the motorcyclist, wishing, I thought,
to command him to leave, but, seeing that he was apparently
asleep over the handlebars, gave him a nudge – in vain, however.