The village of Mekenzia proved a tough nut to crack. Soviet units undertook a final attack on it on the morning of 22 December. The Razins advanced, along with the 2nd Perekop Regiment of naval infantry. The enemy mounted desperate resistance. The naval infantry managed to seize the road from Mekenzia to the village of Cherkez-Kermen, but got no further. By the middle of the day military action had ceased on both sides. The village remained in the hands of the Fritzes. The Chapayevs secured positions on Heights 319.6, 278.4, and 175.8, located 1 kilometre to the west of this ill-fated village.
Thus ended the first assault on Sevastopol, which had lasted twenty-five days. The invaders enjoyed practically no success. They had managed to push the defenders back 3–4km in the first defence sector to the east of the fishing settlement of Balaklava and 1–2km in the third sector of the Sevastopol defence district by the villages of Duvankoi, Cherkez-Kermen and Mekenzia.
A relatively peaceful period of life ensued on the defence lines. The lines stretched out over 46km of forested Crimean hills and valleys, from the seashore at Balaklava to the shallow and turbulent river Belbek. No man’s land was of a similar length and on both sides there were deep trenches, winding communication passages, machine-gun nests and stretches of anti-tank ditches, minefields and fortifications with barbed wire (the barbed wire was often strung straight across the trunks of the trees in the forest). This neutral strip was between 100 and 200 metres wide. There were some crossing points. We snipers and our regimental and divisional scouts were able to cross it completely inconspicuously, especially at night on the Mekenzi hills, along the high ridge of the Kamyshly gully (it stretched for several kilometres, beginning not far from the large village of Duvankoi1 and inclining to the north-west, towards the village of Mekenzia) and across the slopes of Tyomnaya Balka, which was adjacent to the gully, the floor of which really was covered with reeds [TN: kamysh in Russian].
The crossing points were also used by German reconnaissance teams. On occasion a couple of dozen submachine-gunners would break through the forest towards us, armed with MP. 40 submachine guns, better known to us by the popular (if misleading) name ‘Schmeisser’, although the well-known German engineer Hugo Schmeisser had nothing to do with this weapon and it was originally manufactured by the Erfurter Maschinenfabrik (‘Erma’). After stumbling upon our patrols, they would hurriedly pull back. We received no orders to pursue them, but for the sake of training we were able to practise target shooting until the Nazis hid behind trees.
On one occasion smoke from powder was still wreathing the hills, and the echoes of the last shots were resounding around the gullies and general terrain, when a white-haired man in a grey civilian jacket with a knapsack on his shoulders emerged from a thicket by the 2nd Company’s trenches.2 He was very much like a wood sprite with his thin, stooped figure and a shaggy beard, which almost reached his eyes. The soldiers of the sniper platoon almost shot him in surprise. He threw both hands up and frantically shouted: ‘Friend!’ In his hands he was holding an open Soviet passport and a certificate in the form of brown documents with a purple stamp.
Lowering my rifle, I asked him who he was, what he was doing on the military lines of the 54th Regiment, and how he had managed to get past the enemy lookouts. The old man replied in a way that suggested that this was not difficult at all; the Germans did not venture far into the woods and were afraid to do so, while he, being a local ranger, had skirted round them, using obscure tracks known to him alone. At this point he started weeping. The tears rolled down his white beard and began to fall onto his jacket, which was cinched by a hunter’s cartridge belt, albeit an empty one. I have to admit that for the first few minutes I was embarrassed. The incident seemed to me to be very peculiar. But Fyodor Sedykh instantly believed the old man for some reason. He persuaded me to let the ranger through onto our side and listen to his story.
Soon after, over a hot breakfast delivered to the watch trenches by a sergeant major, we discussed the story of the ranger Anastas Vartanov. It was a very tragic one, like many other events in this hellish war. A group of Nazi scouts had turned up at No. 2 Forest Cordon, ahead of their conventional units. For some reason they took a dislike to Vartanov’s son, grandson and the ranger’s whole family. Without pondering for too long, the Nazis shot them next to the house. Anastas himself had, fortunately or unfortunately, left that morning for the municipal authority offices to register some supplementary expenses and procure oats and hay for winter forage.
According to the ranger, there was now a sort of German staff headquarters in the village of Mekenzia. Under the trees next to his house stood some caterpillar armoured transports with aerials and machine guns on the roofs of the cabs, as well as some tractor-borne cannons, cars and motorbikes with sidecars. Arriving there were not only troops dressed in grey-green uniforms, but also some in short black jackets and berets (in other words, tank crew). The main occupant was a big man of about forty with blue eyes. The ranger had seen him in a parade tunic with braided silver epaulettes and a black and white cross under his uniform collar. He lived in the room of Vartanov junior, who had been shot, and every morning he would dowse himself with cold water at the pump, rub himself with a red towel and vigorously go through some exercises.
‘They have everything at their pleasure,’ said Anastas, using a spoon to scoop up the dregs of the barley porridge from the bottom of the mess tin. ‘But they must be afraid.’
‘Of whom?’ I asked.
‘The Russians,’ Vartanov replied. ‘I was told you had some sort of rifles with special sights.’
‘True.’
‘You need to use them. I’ll show you the place. The village will be very easy to spot. In fact, it’s not far from here. Through the forest, about 5km using a short cut. We can easily get there overnight.’
‘Do you want to go with us?’
‘Very much. If I’m not there to see it, I’ve got no reason in the whole wide world for living.’
The old hunter’s ambition to punish the enemy for the extermination of his family was one I understood. I found it natural and legitimate. There can be no forgiveness of invaders for their savage deeds, for senseless murder of peaceful residents. The earth should burn under their feet. They needed to be hunted down everywhere and annihilated by every means. Anastas had turned for help to us snipers, and we would fulfil his request, if the information now passed on to us was confirmed at the staff headquarters of the Sevastopol defence district.
The reply came back two days later. Vartanov had told the truth.
The request had not been sent by me, but by the regimental staff deputy head of reconnaissance, Captain Mikhail Bezrodny. He had served in the 54th Regiment, it would appear, from June 1941 and commanded two reconnaissance platoons: one cavalry, the other infantry. Of the cavalry reconnaissance, nothing remained, as the horses had been abandoned in Odessa. The infantry group, now reduced from forty-six troops to twenty-five, was still in existence. Earlier, during the defence of Odessa, I had had occasion to interact with scouts: for example, covering them as they were crossing the front line in search of a prisoner for interrogation. But at that time the battalions of our regiment frequently operated separately, in different sectors of the front, and I had practically no contact with the officers of the regimental general staff. Now that the Razins were all gathered together and in quite cramped positions, meetings with them – at least with Captain Bezrodny – had become more frequent and very useful.
The captain approved my plan for a raid on the village of Mekenzia on condition that the ranger Anastas Vartanov would act as guide to the group. First, though, it was necessary to find out where the route went, what the situation now was around No. 2 Forest Cordon, and what the group of snipers might run into, if it did go out on the raid. I went with the forester through the forest on the Mekenzi hills to reconnoitre.
I had another goal in doing this. While the Germans were engaged in their first assault, we had to think about repelling their attacks on our fortifications, to operate together with everyone else, as an integrated force. With the stabilization of the front, the time for individual sniper ‘hunts’ was approaching, but how could I make a start, if I did not know the locality and was not used to shooting in hills covered with dense forest? What was it like, anyway, this forest, which stood like a green wall and rustled in the unruly wind from the sea?
First light was just creeping in. There was a sudden gust of wind. The tops of the trees began to sway and the bare branches knocked together. In the dissolving gloom one could imagine they were reanimated forest beings and that the brief bursts of knocking were their secret language. I listened and raised my head. Leaning over the track was the curiously bent grey-brown trunk of a sycamore. Several large orange leaves, similar to a human palm, were still hanging above on long stalks. Suddenly one of them broke off and, circling in the air, fell onto the path at my feet. Vartanov pointed at it: ‘Pick it up. It’s a lucky sign.’
The beautiful sycamore leaf did not match a sniper’s autumn attire – a dirty-yellow camouflage jacket with brown markings. I put it in my pocket, which already contained an individual toilet pack and a piece of refined lump sugar carefully wrapped in foil, along with a pinch of dry tea. If you chewed the sugar with the tea, it fortified you during the many hours spent in a hideout.
What kind of ambush was awaiting me now, I did not know. I simply followed the forester along a barely detectable hunter’s track and kept a close watch on the forest. After the deserted immeasurable Odessa steppes, this seemed to me to be an ideal place for camouflage, but far from ideal for sharpshooting. Where would the bullet fly? A bullet was no hare, able to loop between the tree trunks. How could one correctly calculate the distance to the target when there were gullies rendered invisible by the bushes growing all over them?
‘From the bent sycamore to the well is 85 metres,’ said the old warden softly. ‘Remember that. It’ll come in handy, my child.’
Vartanov had almost read my thoughts. Perhaps, in the delicate forest silence of first light, thoughts were shared with extraordinary ease among conversationalists who were close to each other in spirit. A week ago, I would have been unaware of the very existence of Vartanov, born in the Crimea in the previous century into a family of Russified Armenians who had for 100 years faithfully and truly served the Romanov imperial family, which owned vast hunting areas on the peninsula. Vartanov and his close family had spent their whole life at No. 2 Forest Cordon, the village of Mekenzia. There they had a whole property: a house with four rooms, a summer kitchen, a bath house, a woodshed, a barn, a stable, and greenhouses adjacent to a kitchen garden. The ranger toiled from dawn to dusk, because the forest demanded constant care, but he regarded himself as a happy, and lucky, man. His house was an overflowing cup, his eldest son was already helping him, his wife was good-natured and hard-working, and the youngest children were always looked after, clad and shod. It was not to the liking of the Germans, cursed be their name, on that November day.
After the sycamore with the bent trunk the track forked. Had it not been for Vartanov, I would not even have noticed the turning to the right. The thickets of bushes up to 2 metres high spread out wide at this point and concealed the undergrowth like a thick veil. The old hunter pointed to this plant, which he termed ‘garland thorn’ or ‘Christ thorn’. According to legend, Jesus Christ’s crown of thorns was woven from it. It grew principally in the Mediterranean and North Africa, but it had also taken root in the Crimea.
By November the leaves of the garland thorn are dropping and its main weapon – the thorns – emerges in its full beauty. A great multitude of zigzagging shoots, both long and short, spread out in different directions from a greyish trunk, and the thorns protrude from them. Some are straight like needles, while others are bent and sharp like fishhooks.
I turned awkwardly, and just such a malevolent barb instantly seized the sleeve of my camouflage jacket! The point went quite deep into the fabric. You had to break the whole twig, whereupon the dry snap in the morning silence resounded like a signal of alarm. A flock of tomtits took off from a nearby acacia. Vartanov turned to me: ‘Careful, Comrade Commander!’
Soon we spotted the old water system – a rusty pipe about 20cm in diameter. It led to the abandoned well. A crane with its beak raised to the sky pointed to its presence. The wood was becoming thicker, the trees crowding one another by the source of the life-giving liquid. Suddenly a hoarse sigh was heard from that direction. The forester froze like a statue and, being close behind, I bumped into him.
In the well – a black hole in the earth, roughly walled off by large stones and half covered with planks – was a wild boar, a young one with light brown hair and tusks not yet grown. He could not get out of the trap on his own, though he was doing his best. On seeing us, the beast made a desperate dash, but he was unable to climb out. Turning his head, he looked at the ranger with sad, dark brown eyes and grunted pitifully.
‘Do you want to finish him off?’ asked Vartanov. ‘Fresh pork rissoles. What soldier would turn it down?’
‘No,’ I replied, looking at the youngster with curiosity. ‘I like him. He’s still little. Let him live.’
The hunter seemed cheered. He selected a long beam close to the well, thrust it under the boar’s belly, lifted it up, transferred it onto level ground and set it down. It took a while for the rescued animal to come his senses. Rolling from side to side, the piglet let out a squeal, as if he could not believe his liberation. Then he jumped to his feet, shook himself and, with a snap of fallen twigs, charged at full tilt away from the cursed spot. All that could be seen was his jauntily twisted tail flashing in the bushes. I could not help laughing.
I did not approve of hunting animals and still don’t. Forest creatures seem to me to be defenceless and unfortunate in the face of humans armed with rapid-fire rifles. It was different long ago, when a prince went out alone with a spear against a bear. That kind of duel, in my view, was more honourable and fair.
Judging by the map with which Captain Bezrodny had supplied me, no man’s land ended beyond the well and thence began the territory seized by the Germans. We sat down to rest. Drinking water from a well where a piglet had just been bathing was not a good idea, but I had a flask full of boiled water. The dry rations issued at the company kitchen consisted of a crust of rye bread and two strips of rosy fatback sprinkled with salt and ground black pepper. We made do with that. Vartanov, who had received the same rations, began to tell me about the Crimean forest.
He adored it and knew it superbly well; this knowledge was inherited, passed down to him from his father. Vartanov said that I had acted correctly in letting the boar go and the forest would reward me for it, for in a forest, as in a temple, one had to observe the age-old customs and never kill gratuitously, for the sake of amusement. I asked the ranger if it was easy to find your way in a wood and not get lost among the trees.
‘It’s easy,’ he answered. ‘They’re like people. Each one has its character. Trees differ in species, age, flowering season and fruit-bearing. I can see their faces and shapes. They are very different. You can see it too, if you want to . . .’
It was difficult to take these reflections seriously. They were like a fairy tale, a legend, but I did not interrupt Vartanov. I let him talk, let him teach me about the life of the forest. As it was, I understood nothing and viewed the thick trunks of the elms and sycamores around the well with some confusion. The cold overcast morning invested them with a gloomy colour. I did not really believe that I would be able to adjust to life here and read the enigmatic symbols of the forest.
We came upon Mekenzia from the north-west when the sun was rising. To get a better view of the place, you had to climb a tree. I spent quite a long time with binoculars, observing the regular pattern of life in the rear of the 11th Army. German transport and people in mouse-coloured jackets and overcoats were regularly moving along the road between Mekenzia and the village of Zalinkoi. Crimean Tartars with the white bands of the Politsai (the pro-Nazi collaborationist police force) around their arms were in great heart. They were guarding the barrier at the cordon and standing to attention as they greeted the Fritzes.
Around midday, a field kitchen appeared, and the seductive aroma of meat and potato soup reached our nostrils. About fifty soldiers with mess tins gathered at the kitchen. After receiving their portions, they did not immediately disperse, but chatted among themselves, smoked and waited for the coffee. The lower ranks of the German army were only entitled to ersatz rather than real coffee, and its aroma was not especially pleasant.
After dinner the blue-eyed officer with the braided silver epaulettes emerged from the house. I was already conversant with enemy uniforms. This was an artillery major and recipient of the Knight’s Cross as well as of the silver Sturmabzeichen. The door of the house from which he had appeared was about 100 metres away from my tree and exactly opposite it – that is, on the same side as the German rear lines. I noted this on a piece of paper attached to a flat field bag, a so-called ‘firing map’. The major lit up a cigar and, together with an orderly holding a folder in his hands, got into an Opel-Kapitan car. Bouncing over the bumps, the vehicle set off along the road, but to the settlement of Cherkez-Kermen rather than the village of Zalinkoi. There, according to our reconnaissance reports, the staff headquarters of the 11th Army was located, and its commander, Colonel General Erich von Manstein resided there. The major was probably hurrying off for a meeting with his superior.
I did a rough sketch on paper of the ranger’s whole homestead: the house represented by a square, the animal yard and barns by a triangle, the road by a thick wavy line, and the barrier on it by two small lines. I estimated the rough distances between them by eye. In the centre of the composition was a very noticeable landmark – a whitish layered rock, covered with pits and cracks. This is how limestone rocks show up on the surface. The phenomenon is frequently found on the slopes and summits of the Crimean hills and mountains, which have what are known as cuesta geological formations.
Wind is an almost constant presence in the hills. I noted that on the trees around the village the slender branches were swaying, the leaves were fluttering strongly, and white dust was swirling in the air above the road. This meant that the wind speed was moderate, 4–6 metres per second. Not for nothing does the sniper’s proverb proclaim: ‘The rifle fires the bullet, but the wind carries it.’ If we were to choose this position, we would have a wind from the side blowing at a 90-degree angle. In such conditions and at a distance of 100 metres from the target, the sniper had a simple calculation: the horizontal lateral correction would be several milliradians. True, there was one further consideration: in locations high above sea level the atmospheric pressure changes (the air becomes thinner). In this case the distance of the bullet’s trajectory and flight would increase. However, Potapov had written in his booklet Instructions for Sharpshooters that in hills under 500 metres in height – and here the altitude did not exceed 310 metres – one could ignore a longitudinal wind but a lateral wind must be taken into consideration, for it could cause the bullet to drift laterally to a significant extent.
On getting down from the tree I showed my handiwork to Vartanov. He was very surprised. There was no point in explaining everything to the ranger, but he helped to calculate the distances more precisely, marking the distance from the homestead gates to the limestone rock as 43 metres. I asked him about the wind and was told that in November and December strong winds blew here from the north and north-east, bringing rain and cloud.
We decided not to delay preparations for the operation, since the information could become outdated. Following my report, Captain Bezrodny warned me that in a raid on Mekenzia I would not be in a position to control the fire of the entire group, because there were many new recruits in the platoon. They had not yet learned the ballistic tables by heart, had not set eyes on Potapov’s remarkable book and did not know all the finer points of firing accurately in the hills. Besides, it would be a sudden and swift attack and every bullet must hit its target; that would guarantee the success of the entire operation.
The composition of the group was immediately determined. It naturally included Fyodor Sedykh, who had recently, at my recommendation, been promoted to junior sergeant. Fyodor was a brave man, tested in many battles, and he even more or less knew his way around the ballistics tables. His physical strength and endurance were beyond reproach. After consulting, we took with us Leonid Burov from among the new recruits. The former naval infantryman had shown great zeal both as a serviceman and as a student. Seemingly, he wanted somehow to erase the impression left by our first meeting. I should point out that he was succeeding in doing this; he had ability as a sharpshooter. The third sniper was Fyodor’s fellow Siberian, Ivan Peregudov. He had joined the regiment from the draft back in Odessa.
Captain Bezrodny provided two soldiers from the infantry reconnaissance platoon. They could shoot all kinds of manual weapons, had skills in hand-to-hand combat and had ventured into the enemy rear a number of times. I was not acquainted with them, but the captain assured me that these were his best troops. In regimental reconnaissance the best people are usually too independent, and I asked the captain to explain to them that I would not stand for any nonsense on the raid and they must obey me without question. He did this in his characteristic ironic manner: ‘I’m warning you, lads, that Sergeant Lyudmila Pavlichenko is a serious woman and doesn’t like tomfoolery. Anything amiss, and you’ll end up with a knife in your foot.’
On Bezrodny’s orders, the scouts were issued with two newish PPSh-41 submachine guns and a DP light machine gun with three spare drums. I took my honorary ‘Sveta’ with me and the snipers their Mosin rifles with PE sights. We thought for a long time about how to arm Vartanov. He only knew how to fire the antiquated Berdan II single-shot bolt-action rifle. Naturally we did not have any of these ancient Berdans in our armoury, and so we provided him with an ordinary Three Line. Apart from the weapons, we took with us sapper’s spades, Finnish (or combat) knives, flasks of water, dry rations, a supply of 200 cartridges and five grenades each. Hanging on my belt as always was the TT pistol with two magazines – sixteen shots. However, if the pistol needed to be used on such a raid, that would mean that things had taken a bad turn.
But the pistol was not needed. At first light we approached the village and, in accordance with the plan we had worked out, took up positions in the Nazi rear. I was with the old ranger opposite the house, keeping its entrance in our sights. The three snipers were fifteen paces to the left, and the two scouts fifteen paces to the right, their target being the middle of the clearing and the limestone rock where the field kitchen stopped. The wind rose a little later and blew in gusts, strengthening to 8–9 metres a second. We worked out its direction: it was at right angles to our position. I calculated the necessary correction for the dial of the lateral drum on the tube of the telescope sight and showed my troops, so that they could regulate the sights on their rifles too.
The Germans – very disciplined soldiers – had gathered at the right place, at the right time and in the right numbers. The kitchen rolled up at 11.37 in the morning and began dishing out at 11.50.
Observing them through binoculars, I waited until they had crowded more closely around the kitchen. I kept my sight on a lanky junior officer with two crossed stripes on his epaulettes – a candidate for officer rank. He stood out among the others, telling them something in a loud voice, and the ordinary soldiers were listening to him. Finally, the junior officer went up to the cook, who was ladling out the soup. His head with its uniform cloth cap ended up exactly between the three lines in the eyepiece of my sight. The moment had, as it were, arrived.
The commander always shoots first and this serves as a signal for the remainder of the group, who await it impatiently and then quickly proceed to carry out the order given in this unusual way. We unleashed a hail of fire from three points. The bullets flew into the grey-green crowd, began to make mincemeat of them and knocked the enemy to the ground. The Germans did not have their weapons with them and could not immediately respond. In any case, many were already dead within the first few minutes of the attack. Among this number were the junior officer and the cook, who had received a hot gift in the head from my ‘Sveta’.
The artillery major leapt out of the house on hearing the shots and shouts. A bullet got him between the eyes. Not for nothing had I devoted so much time to studying this position. The old ranger was also firing, and quite accurately. He felled an orderly. We charged towards the house across the clearing, which was covered with Nazi bodies. I pulled the major’s documents out from his tunic pocket, used my Finnish-style knife to cut off one epaulette and the metallic Knight’s Cross, and took the Walther officer’s pistol from the black leather holster at his waist. Meanwhile the scouts burst into the building, firing their submachine guns. They wanted to grab staff papers.
‘Partisanen!’ came a shout from inside.
The corporal radio operator did not manage to impart any more to his superiors, as he had taken a bullet in the chest. Everything lying in front of him on the desk – maps, orders, reports, codebooks – ended up in the hands of the brave soldiers of the 54th Stepan Razin Rifle Regiment. As they ran back, they also grabbed a tightly packed knapsack hanging on the wall and took an MP. 40 submachine gun from the chest of a sentry lying by the doorway.
The group left the scene of combat as swiftly as it had attacked. We ran through the forest for almost 1.5km. We were heading away to the south-east along a hunter’s trail known to Vartanov. He was leading us towards no man’s land, but we could not cross it in daytime. The ranger had a distant place in mind: a wooden shack half dug into the earth not far from a spring, surrounded by tall trees, with thick undergrowth of wild rose and prickly juniper. There we collapsed onto the ground from overwhelming fatigue. Vartanov, who had not been into his house but observed our action from the clearing, nobly offered to be sentry. The rest of us lay down on the soft reddish-brown conifer needles under the wild rose and dropped off into the deep sleep of the soldier.
Three hours later it was as if an alarm clock had gone off: I opened my eyes – there was something different about the forest. The wind had died down and it had become much colder. The air temperature had dropped below 5 degrees and a thick milky-coloured cloud was slowly descending down the slopes of the hill. Waiting to be immersed in it, the trees seemed to freeze and stretch upwards. The old ranger had told me the truth: they feared the mist of autumn.
Vartanov together with Fyodor Sedykh were organizing things down by the spring. They had dug a hole and built a small fire. Its smoke mingled with the mist and was therefore not dangerous to the group. Over the fire hung a fair-sized pot, not ours, but found in the area. The water came to the boil. The soldiers laid out their mugs, flasks, thickly cut hunks of bread and cubes of pea puree concentrate, which would be dissolved in the boiling water.
With a smile, Fyodor showed me the German knapsack that the scouts had deftly taken from the wall of the room in the confusion. The booty proved very opportune, as it contained foodstuffs completely unobtainable by the rank-and-file defenders of Sevastopol. I gave permission to use them immediately. They were probably the major’s rations: tins of sardines in oil, several bars of chocolate, packets of dry biscuits, a stick of smoked salami wrapped in foil, and a 1.5-litre flask of brandy. The scouts were gleefully rubbing their hands in anticipation of a feast. They realized that the raid on the enemy headquarters had been very successful. In their view I was directly connected with this success, and the soldiers addressed me with respect.
While dinner was being prepared, I occupied myself with my own trophies. First of all I examined the Walther pistol closely. This was the first time that a weapon of this kind had fallen into my hands. From Romanian officers I tended to encounter more often the fairly clumsy Austrian 1912-type Steyr, the light 1934-model Italian Beretta, the powerful 1908-model German Luger Parabellum and the 1895-pattern ‘gas seal’ Nagant revolvers – Belgian designed, but usually Russian-made – which I did not like because of the time that was wasted reloading their cylinders cartridge by cartridge. The Walther P. 38 was undoubtedly one of the best examples of German military industry dating from the Second World War. It was compact, simple to use and look after, and suitable for the most varied tasks. The pistol stood out for its reliable safety catch. Apart from that, it operated with a soft touch on the trigger. Its trigger mechanism also allowed for single- and double-action cocking. As became clear later, Captain Bezrodny also had a good opinion of the Walther.
I managed to work out a few things in the Nazi officer’s documents: for instance, his name, date of birth and the sites of the battles where the major had been involved. His decorated military path had led through Czechoslovakia, France and Poland. One photo showed a beautiful fair-haired woman with her arms around two adolescent boys, looking directly at the camera and smiling. Inscribed neatly in black ink on the back were the words: ‘Mein Hertz! Mit Liebe, Anna . . .’. A fairly lengthy letter from her was there too. I could not read it, though I noticed that the major had written a reply to his wife but not had time to send it. ‘Yes indeed, my dear Baron Klement-Karl-Ludwig von Steingel, this is no France. The Russians do not surrender their main cities without a fight. So, there was no point in you turning up here with tanks and cannon,’ I thought, and put the enemy papers away in my field bag.3
Vartanov and Sedykh set up a proper table on the flat rock, opened the tins of sardines, cut up the salami, poured the soup into some aluminium bowls found in the area, and the brandy into soldiers’ mugs, having divided it, in fraternal fashion, into seven portions. Leonid Burov cautiously handed me a mug and the soldiers kept quiet in anticipation of a word from me. ‘We’ve done very well, lads! May we always have such luck!’ I said.
Brandy burns the throat and warms the insides, other people’s food sharpens the taste, and soup from concentrate boiled on the march over an open fire seems most appetizing of all in a circle of people who have just faced mortal danger together. There is in such company an amazing feeling of togetherness, which I value very highly. Not without good reason did our ancestors feast on the battlefield when they had routed the enemy. A large cup of wine or home-brewed beer would be passed around the brotherhood and everyone could moisten his lips with the sweet beverage of victory.
During our quiet conversation about who fired how, who ran where, and what they saw of interest in the brief minutes of the clash, Vartanov remained silent for a whole hour, but then suddenly he raised his voice. The old ranger solemnly requested to be accepted into the ranks of the sniper platoon and to be taught the art of sharpshooting, so he could wipe out the enemy like we had in this area next to his house, next to the graves of those close to him. He said that from now on his heart would be at rest and that, in gratitude, he would teach us bold, successful young soldiers how to live and hunt in the Crimean forest.
I heard roughly the same verdict from Captain Bezrodny when I presented him with a report and our trophies: German staff papers, documents found on the dead officer, and his decorations and major’s epaulette. He did not conceal his pleasure at the information we had obtained. Taking advantage of his good mood, I asked about the ranger and recommended that he be accepted for permanent service despite being beyond call-up age. I reinforced my request with a gift – Baron von Steingel’s pistol – and this had the desired effect. Putting the weapon away in his desk drawer, the captain promised to discuss this matter with the regimental commander, Major Matusyevich.
In the end, Red Army volunteer Anastas Artashesovich Vartanov was recognized as a soldier of our platoon. Later, in a 54th Regiment order, gratitude to us was voiced for the bravery and ingenuity shown in the raid into the enemy rear. All the snipers, including me, were credited with a personal score of seven dead Nazis – although who could now count those soldiers and junior officers in grey-green uniforms who remained lying next to the field kitchen we had shot up? In my estimate, there were at least sixty men killed or left with wounds either serious (in the stomach) or light.
At the beginning of December 1941, the weather in the Sevastopol defence district was gloomy and foul, with light frosts at night. This did not prevent the defenders of the city from toiling to improve the field fortifications, which had suffered during the first assault. The gun emplacements were repaired and equipped with telephone communication, and the trenches and communication passages were deepened. Even the senior command kept a watch on the works on the front lines of our 25th Chapayev Division. We were often visited by Major-General Petrov, Vice-Admiral Oktyabrsky and members of the military council of the coastal army and the Black Sea Fleet.
‘Amidst the thick greenery of the bushes we descend to a communication passage and I led my superiors to the trench of the first line of defence,’ Divisional Commander Trofim Kolomiyets recalled later.
The winding route is almost undetectable from above. It is laid under spreading bushes. Only here and there was it necessary to cover it with logs and mask it with stones. Not far away from the trench is a fork. A telephone is placed in a niche. A plaque indicates the way to the nearest medical station . . . Such is the trench. There is no need to stoop – it is excavated to the depth of a man’s height. A soldier from the current watch reports that in his observation sector the enemy is quiet. From the trench a passage leading off in the direction of no man’s land is carefully camouflaged by branches of evergreen juniper bushes tied to stakes.
‘Over there is a double trench,’ I explain. ‘They extend another 5 or 6 metres out front. Trenches like this reduce losses in artillery attacks. The enemy strikes at the trench line, but our troops are in front of it. And it’s more convenient to conduct observations from there.’
. . . In the trench are two soldiers. There is a small awning over them. Grenades and spare machine-gun drums are spread out on a bedding of wood. On a peg driven into the wall hangs a flask of water . . .4
Some quite roomy company dugouts had now been excavated 400–500 metres from the front line. There, two or three pot-bellied stoves had been installed as well as some long benches along the walls, which had been reinforced by planks. A kind of club atmosphere developed here. When they were off duty, the soldiers would gather there in the evening. Young Communist League and Party gatherings, political information sessions for personnel, and officers’ meetings were held there.
Life on the front was much improved by the commissioning of a bathhouse and laundry service on the north side. The quartermasters found the building and repaired it with the help of the local population. Now, soldiers’ visits to the bathhouse from the front line became regular. At the same time, they had their linen changed and the curse of trench life – lice – did not lead to wholesale infestation during the defence of Sevastopol.
The lull in fighting and the transition to a positional war demanded a change of tactics from the snipers. They became more important participants in resisting the Fritzes. Constant observation of no man’s land, reconnaissance, hunting for enemy soldiers and officers on their front line – that was what we now faced. For a start, we had to study thoroughly the firing line assigned to our battalion, the 1st, the space in front of it, including no man’s land, and those positions which the Nazis from the 132nd Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht had set up for themselves.
We were on the northern slopes of the Kamyshly gully, about 1.5km to the west of Height 278.4. The long gentle slope had a peculiar surface: small dips, rises and limestone rocks. The forest cover was uneven and there were both wide glades and almost impenetrable thickets, as well as piles of fallen trees that had been smashed by shellfire. Growing here were the main Crimean species: sessile oak, smooth elm, maple, forest apple, white acacia, black sambucus (quite a big tree, incidentally, up to 6 metres in height) and wild juniper (both trees and bushes). All this knowledge I gained from Vartanov, who accompanied Fyodor Sedykh, my sniper lookout, and me in journeys along no man’s land and some adjacent sectors which had been occupied by the Germans. We were seeking out suitable spots for sniper hideouts of various kinds: open, closed and base hideouts, reserve hideouts, decoy hideouts, hideouts conducive to a swift attack and others set up for a speedy withdrawal.
The deep, reticulated communication passages excavated in the peninsula’s stony soil by Soviet sappers and by ordinary infantrymen looked out directly onto no man’s land. They helped us to get out onto it without being noticed, even in daytime, although the best time for a sharpshooter is an hour and a half after midnight. We took small sappers’ spades with us and sometimes a pick, axe and big knives. To set up a closed position we used folding metal frames, armoured shields and fake tree stumps made from whatever material was at hand, especially sliced-up car tyres stuck to bark. In the fake positions there was space for a ‘dummy’ – a mannequin in a helmet and overcoat and a mirror thrust into a split wooden peg.
However, there were spots I was particularly fond of. For instance, a deep trench amidst juniper thickets, where the ground, sprinkled with several layers of blue-green conifer needles, was not only soft and warm, but gave off a pleasant scent, which was also intolerable to various kinds of forest parasites. Consequently, there were no mosquitoes, ants, bark-eating beetles, wasps, flies or other sniper’s foes that would prevent him or her from concentrating and remaining stationary for hours on end.
Behind a greyish-white limestone slab concealing the position well from the left lay a large sessile oak felled by the wind and half-rotten with age. Ivy had wound itself in a weird fashion around its massive boughs, which were spread out in different directions. The jet-black barrel of a rifle thrust between uneven shoots looked of course to the inexperienced eye like a twig. Between the branches one could set up a rifle very conveniently and it was also possible to lie resting on a tree when the forest ground was damp.
I came to like the garland rose with its repulsive thorns; it was an amazing and wonderful plant. Its thickets – and these fine low trees always grow in groups – created the effect of a lace curtain spread across the bases of the elms, maples and acacias. All easily distinguishable outlines disappeared. Smoke from a shot also quickly dispersed in their midst.
My inscribed SVT-40 was not suitable for hunting in the forest. After thoroughly cleaning it (including sluicing out the barrel with washing soda) and greasing it with rifle oil, I wrapped Major-General Petrov’s gift in sacking, then put it in a cover and hung it on the wall in my dugout. The ‘Sveta’ could have a rest and just be a parade weapon for a while. My working weapon would be an unfailingly reliable Three Line. It fired more quietly, was more accurate, and the PE sight offered four-fold magnification.
With a Mosin rifle over my shoulder, a cartridge pouch hanging from my belt, a TT pistol, a Finnish knife in a metal sheath, a flask, small sapper’s spade in a cover and two grenades, Fyodor Sedykh and I would set out after midnight for no man’s land and one of our fox holes (as we termed our set-up sniper’s positions or hideouts). We found the way by means of gashes on tree trunks or special markings left earlier. Even so, the locality had to be learned by heart like Pushkin’s verses at school.
We usually spent several hours in our position, observing the Fritzes’ front line through binoculars. Whatever changes occurred there – individual soldiers and officers appearing, earthworks on fortifications or the construction of new machine-gun nests, movements of machinery, sentry changes, the timing of field kitchens, the arrival of orderlies at the staff headquarters dugout, the laying of telephone cables between different sectors, sappers working on new minefields and other similar things – all this we wrote down, marked on maps and reported to our battalion commander, Lieutenant Dromin.
It should be mentioned that at the beginning of December 1941 the Germans conducted themselves in a rather carefree way on the front line. They walked between their positions at full height. They probably thought that the Russians did not have snipers and therefore a no man’s land 150–200 metres in width was an impenetrable barrier to accurate bullets. We put an end to this almost immediately, wiping out about twelve men in the course of two days: ten soldiers and two officers. The response was an insane mortar attack. For an hour or two the Nazis fired 5cm le. GrW. 36, the light mortars that they kept in every infantry platoon. From one fox hole we would instantly switch to another one that had been equipped in the depths of the forest, and from there we would observe mortar bombs weighing 910g exploding by our former refuge among the trees, lighting up with little orange puffs and scattering dozens of small splinters all around. I used to refer to such enemy action as a ‘concert of German classical music’.
There were times when I would set off on my own into the enemy rear. This could only be done on one, very small, sector of no man’s land, where the forest turned into an impenetrable thicket. The old ranger showed me a barely traceable trail there, which was concealed by tall bushes of wild rose and hornbeam. You had to make your way through the undergrowth, alternately crawling, doubled up, or using a knife to slash the hanging branches. The trail brought you out onto a dirt road, which ran within roughly 0.5km of the German front line. It turned out that soldiers of the Wehrmacht’s 132nd Infantry Division were very fond of this road. It connected (judging from the documents later found on their dead) the command points of two of its regiments, the 436th and the 438th.
I chose a firing position beyond the bend in the road, the sides of which were covered with wild rose. Under the bushes I made a shallow trench with a parapet of stones and concealed it with turf. The soil here tended to crumble and therefore the work went well and did not take long. As well as that, I used a ploy I had known since my days of study at the Osoaviakhim sniper school: I buried a flask half-full of water, placed one end of a rubber tube in its neck, and held the other end to my ear. In this way the sounds of steps, movement of machinery and earthworks were easily detected. In order to recognize such sounds, or rather traces of sounds, a sharpshooter must ‘become all ears’ – that is, forget about everything around and concentrate attention to the maximum, which demands a great expenditure of energy. The protective forest required an similar renunciation of one’s own existence. You had to dissolve within it, become silent, immobile, as if you were an arboreal being yourself. Vartanov could sense this on his skin, breathe in rhythm with it, understand superbly all its signs and manifestations. For me, a natural-born townie, it was not easy to achieve this state. It took a huge effort of will.
I heard the noise of a motorbike engine through the tube long before the rider himself appeared on the road. I took a cartridge with a yellow-tipped ‘D’-type heavy bullet from the inside pocket of my padded jacket and pushed it into the chamber. A soldier in a black leather jacket stopped by a wild rose bush to enjoy its dark red berries. Rosehips are generally better collected in late autumn, dried and consumed as tea. Possibly the Fritz did not know that. He got carried away, gathering the semi-frozen berries in the palms of his hands and trying to sample them.
The shot rang out loud in the silence of the cold, early winter morning, but the road was otherwise empty at that time and there was nothing to threaten me. I quickly pulled his documents out of his pocket and took the field bag bulging with papers, which hung by a long strap from the shoulder of the dead man. I also acquired his MP. 40 submachine gun and two spare ammunition clips for it. Nothing else was found on the motorbike rider other than a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. His vehicle, a light single-cylinder DKW RT125 was standing at the roadside. Enemy machinery had to be put out of commission at all costs. I had to shoot out its motor. I did not dare to shoot at its petrol tank, as a fire would attract enemy attention to the road and I still had to get out of there.
For a lone sniper, hitting the target is only half the job. The second half, no less important, is getting back to your unit safe and sound. In August 1941, I wrote to my sister that I intended to raise my tally to 1,000 Nazis. But before you can wipe out the thousandth cut-throat, you have to survive 999 times after taking an accurate shot at an enemy who wishes to kill you whatever the cost.
Of course, I would like to have followed the rule I laid down for myself: no day without a dead enemy. But, alas, it did not always work out like that. In the first place, the Fritzes became much more careful. They began, like us, to dig themselves deep into the ground. Secondly, the enemy strengthened its observation of no man’s land. At night the Nazis often let off flares, and in the daytime they engaged in unsettling machine-gun and mortar fire. German reconnaissance groups started operating on this same territory and, if they discovered our hideouts, they would destroy them or lay mines. One of our sniper pairs was blown up on 11 December by an anti-personnel mine hidden near a fallen oak tree. Thus perished Leonid Burov and another soldier of my platoon who had also joined the 54th Regiment from the naval infantry.
However, for the first half of December 1941, life on the front lines of the Sevastopol defence lines passed in relative calm. In good weather both German aircraft and our own launched raids. Ships of the Black Sea Fleet – the cruisers Krasnya Krim and Krasniy Kavkaz, the destroyer-leader Kharkov, the destroyers Zhelyeznyakov, Sposobny and Nezamozhnik regularly fired into the enemy rear with long-distance ordnance. We rejoiced when their 180 and 102mm shells hissed over our heads. There were occasions when Soviet units up to one or two companies strong conducted reconnaissance by combat on some sectors of the front. The Fritzes did exactly the same. For instance, on 8 December, a strong salvo was heard much further to the west of our battalion’s positions, beyond the Kamyshly railway bridge, which had been blown up not so long before. It was the 8th Marine Infantry Brigade with powerful artillery support which first drove the enemy out of the positions they had occupied, but the following day, when the Fritzes brought in their own assault aircraft and tanks, they retreated.