—— Red Army Sniper ——62However, it all turned out differently.
The snow had long ceased falling and the frost became more
palpable. Lying in the snow in kirza boots, even with double foot
wrappings, wearing a cap with earflaps, but ears exposed to
catch sounds, and gloved on only one hand, became unbearable.
I had such an urge to stand up to my full height and warm up
my chilled feet... Then suddenly I noticed, against the pure, eye
stingingly white snow, about forty or fifty metres away from me,
a suspicious little spot of something coloured differently from
snow had appeared. Imperceptibly brushing off the tears which
continually came to my eyes from the frost and the wind, I saw
that this slightly greyish spot had begun to move. ‘What could it
mean?’ I wondered. This spot gave me no rest, distracted me from
my continuous observation of my opponent’s defences. Now and
then my eyes would turn in that direction. I kept wanting to see if
anything had changed there.
And thus, while pondering and trying to explain the reason for
this spot, I lost sight of the most important thing – the thing I had
been freezing so long for. But it all turned out to be very simple:
beside this little spot on the surface a big one suddenly appeared
- in white camouflage. In a trice it crept a couple of metres to the
left and disappeared as if swallowed up by the earth. From the
unexpected nature of it all and being chilled to the bone, I did not
even manage a shot!
To spot a Nazi and let him go! There was nothing I could do
now and, until complete darkness fell, there was nothing to be
done but agonise over the blunder and reflect on it. My thinking
was like this: ‘The German of course would not be back till the
morning. Either he was frozen or he had decided to change his
position. Although, on the other hand, there was no point in
doing that today; night was approaching. He was simply frozen.
Tomorrow he would be here again because he had not fired a single
shot from this position.’
I swung into action. Taking some white twigs, which I had
prepared beforehand and taken with me just in case, I marked out