—— Red Army Sniper ——82which was only twenty metres away. But just try getting there!
‘Any minute now, any minute now they’ll wound me. But where?’
I was still debating with myself. I was afraid of being wounded
and agonising in pain, maybe becoming an invalid. ‘No, my head
is covered by the magazine disc. In the leg? But then I won’t get to
the trench at all! I don’t want a wound in the leg. Better in the arm.
But which arm? If it’s the right arm, how will I support my hand.
Better in the left arm!’ And I carried on persistently dodging from
side to side away from the blasts pursuing me. The mortar bombs
exploded, raising fountains of snow and ice, scattering fragments
of metal and debris. I was running through the middle of these
explosions and managed to notice that Filatov was moving.
‘Filatov’s alive! Crawl over, dear chap! Maybe the lieutenant is still
alive,’ I was thinking and then suddenly I felt a dreadful blow in
the left arm. ‘What bastard has hit me? Who could have done it?’
I was trying to put two and two together. Then I realised that there
was nobody around me and that there could not have been. ‘So it’s
me who’s wounded! In the arm! The left one,’ it dawned upon me.
I glanced at my arm as I ran. The sleeve of my padded jacket was
ripped to shreds around the shoulder, and my palm felt warm and
damp. An explosive bullet, it would appear. Who could be firing
when the Germans themselves are not to be seen? A sniper?’
It was painful. The arm was dangling. But I realised that the
sniper had to be taken out; he would not let Filatov crawl away.
I lay down in the snow and got ready to fire the machine gun.
Where and at whom I could still not see. I thought that they were
again firing from the gunport. There was nowhere else! I aimed,
fired, but did not hear a shot. I pressed again and again, with the
same result. Out of ammunition! Of course. How many cartridges
could there possibly be in one magazine?’
Overcoming the pain in my arm, I crawled towards the
trench. I could not abandon the machine gun, even with an empty
magazine. It was a weapon! So with the machine gun on my arm
I collapsed into the trench. Somebody grabbed it from me and
someone tied a narrow strap around my arm, stopping the blood.