—— Red Army Sniper ——56And only on the following day, when I had come to myself a little,
was I told what had happened that day. The German gunners
firing at the tram had let off exactly eleven heavy shells at this
conspicuous target. The fire came from longrange guns beyond
Uritsk and Strelna. Their objective was to wipe out a Russian sniper
ensconced in the tram, as they thought. The sixth shell exploded
almost beside my observation point, and I was buried alive in my
foxhole. And only after the artillery fire was over did our boys
with medical orderlies, sent to my aid by battalion commander
Morozov and medical assistant Ivan Vasilyev, dig and pull me out
of the grave almost lifeless and drag me to the company command
post.
‘What about my rifle?’ Those were the first words that I had
uttered – or rather stuttered – for the last two days.
‘Enough, my dear fellow! Your rifle is all twisted, bent in three!
No specialist will be able to fix it now! Wait for a new one!’
‘Well, cheerio,’ said battalion commander Morozov. ‘Relax.
You’re going to the regimental firstaid section, and you can lie
down there if you don’t want to end up in hospital. You’re pretty
well shellshocked, so you won’t get by without medical treatment.’
That night I was escorted ‘deep in the rear’ – to the regimental
firstaid section, where our own medical assistant, Vera Yarutova,
was ‘on the warpath’. A courageous woman, she had been involved
in engagements from the opening days of the war and saved the
lives of many of my comrades.
‘Well, sweetie! You’re in my hands now! Come on, lie down
on this bunk – we’ll deal with you right now.’ She was doing
something to me – massaging my joints, giving injections, setting
about restoring my speech.
One pleasant surprise was the appearance of my friend,
Vladimir Dudin, in the firstaid section. Sensing that something
unfortunate had happened to me and knowing where I was,
Vlad had crept in to see me right, and he had himself caught
some shrapnel from the eleventh and final shell. I now heard him
bargaining with Vera; the conversation went like this: