—— Red Army Sniper ——78There were still five minutes to go before the agreed signal.
‘If you could just give me something to fill the gap,’ I said to my
orderly. ‘I’ve hardly eaten for two days.’
‘Damn it all!’ said the orderly. ‘How did we manage it so badly?
You realise, commander, it’s our fault; we thought you wouldn’t be
coming back! We waited and waited, and then we ate everything
up. Please excuse us, commander! But there some letters for you –
three of them, and all from Tambov.
He reached into his gasmask bag and pulled out three
envelopes bearing that handwriting that was so familiar and dear
to me. ‘From my mother,’ I realised, overjoyed. ‘I’ll read them later,
when I’m on my own!’ And I thrust the envelopes into the pocket
of my padded trousers. I also put my watch there, in a special
little pocket to the right, after I had taken a final glance at it. Five
minutes to go until the signal.
Then it came, that longawaited minute which charges you up
for the whole battle: three rockets hissed up into the frosty sky,
illuminating the snowy plain beyond the parapet, first green and
then red. I jumped over the parapet, leapt to my feet and stood up
straight, looking round at my platoon. Our trenches were empty.
‘Forward! For the motherland! Hurrah!’ I cried, and a loud
‘Hurrah’ of many voices resounded in peals along our front line.
The battalion was moving into the attack
Our company burst into the first Nazi trenches without a
pause and almost without losses. And, without being aware of
anything, without seeing anything but the backs of the fleeing
enemy, without paying attention to the chatter of machine guns
and grenades exploding underfoot, the company took possession
of the second line of trenches and then, hard on the terrified Nazis’
heels, of the third line as well. Wielding bayonet and rifle butt, it
finished the scum off, using hand grenades to smoke the Nazis out
of their strongly built dugouts.
‘Well done, fellows! Hit the Nazis harder! Don’t look back!’
cried Lieutenant Butorin, who had turned up in our platoon. ‘The
only way is forward!’