—— Duel ——63my ‘dead space’ – between where the Nazi had appeared and where
he had disappeared. Dividing this distance in two, I determined the
centre and the line along which I set up three forks on which my
rifle would rest when aimed at the necessary point. And tomorrow
all my attention would be on this.
While I was engaged on this, night fell. ‘Well, till tomorrow!
There’s nothing for me to do today,’ I decided and, burrowing into
the deep snow, I began crawling towards our trenches. Locomotion
warmed me up a bit, but not enough for me to get down into the
trench on my own. That required the assistance of my friends, who
were already waiting for me there.
They literally carried me in their arms to the dugout, as my feet
had refused to move: they were frozen and, it appeared, frostbitten;
contact with a hard surface caused intolerable pain. And once
again my friends came to the rescue; they took my footwear off in
the dugout and began to rub my feet with snow and woollen gloves
until I felt some pinpricks. The battalion medical assistant, our
very own Ivan Mikhailovich Vasilyev, was consulted.
‘Oh dear, no brains,’ he said reproachfully. ‘That’s no way to
carry on. You should have smeared your feet with fat before you
went out, wrapped them in newspaper, and only then wound on
your foot wrappings. But, better still, find some woollen socks.’
‘Well, tomorrow, Mikhailovich, I’ll do everything scientifically.
But today just rub them, make an effort, be a mate!’
It was well and truly night by now. The dugout had warmed up.
The firewood burned brightly and the stove hummed away cosily.
It became quiet in the deserted dugout – my wartime friends
had gone to their posts. Without waiting for the hot soup which
had been heated up in a messtin and having warmed myself up,
I nodded off and slept like a log...
On the front line we eagerly awaited the arrival of our cook
with dinner or our sergeantmajor. They always appeared with two
thermos flasks filled with hot food. They came twice every twenty
four hours, but only in darkness – late in the evening and just
before morning. For the rest of the time access to us was forbidden.