—— Red Army Sniper ——70I don’t know how long I lay there, only that at some point
I woke up and opened my eyes.
‘I have to do something. How much time have I lost?’ I asked
myself. ‘The Germans could grab their sniper any minute, come
looking for him. No, I must do something.’
I looked in the direction where the Nazi was lying. ‘I was wrong
to imagine I could miss. That could not have happened!’ I thought
with relief and began to concentrate on myself. Removing the
woollen glove from my left hand, I began carefully rubbing my right
hand with it. Then I began to rub it with snow and again with the
glove. I rubbed and rubbed, more and more intensely pressing on the
fingers until I felt a pleasant prickling sensation in them. And then
another rub with the snow. As soon as the circulation was restored in
my fingers and my feet, which I kept moving, they began to respond.
I crawled over to the dead man without waiting for darkness to fall.
I was not afraid of being spotted by the enemy; my camouflage and
the deep snow would protect me from the naked eye.
I crawled the forty metres which separated us in the space of
a few minutes, sweating profusely as I did so. Overcoming the
nausea rising in my throat (it’s not every day you have to touch a
Nazi you have killed!), I pulled myself over towards his head and
immediately saw on his temple the entry wound from my bullet.
On his cheek there was congealed blood which had frozen in the
icy weather.
For a minute I paused to think: what to do next? Drag the
German whole into our trenches as material proof of my deed or
sort him out here bit by bit? ‘No, there was no way I could drag that
frozen bastard the whole way. And who needs him? I’ll take what
I need and that will be that!’
With my Finnish knife I slit open his camouflage suit and
immediately saw that he really did have a thermos flask attached to
his back. A flat vessel, of unusual shape, painted white. I removed it
and turned its owner onto his back. Under his new white sheepskin
I discovered a field bag and a clipboard. And a heap of decorations
on his uniform. I cut off these decorations with the knife and