VASSILI ZAITSEV
The Sailor of Stalingrad
As had been the case for the generation that preceded his, Zaitsev and his contemporaries seemed to have been born with war as their ultimate destiny. Following the October Revolution of 1917, the fledgling Soviet state dedicated itself to a radical overhaul of the armed forces, determined to place Russia on a par militarily with its European neighbours. There is no question that such a reform was long overdue, for the old Russian Army had been woefully under-equipped, poorly trained and indifferently led by an officer elite who regarded the average Russian peasant soldiers as no more than ignorant beasts of burden. During the First World War, the German and Austrian armies had fielded very large numbers of snipers along the Eastern Front and they exacted a terrible toll on the hapless Russians who, despite fielding a huge army, had no snipers or telescopic-sighted rifles and were impotent to respond. Many of the soldiers who survived the terrible fighting on that front were to become the senior NCOs and officers of the new Soviet Army, and they did not forget the hard lessons they had learned in the trenches.
Russia thus set about transforming what was effectively a feudal nineteenth-century army into the largest, most modern and best equipped armed force in Europe. Because of its size (in 1925 the army numbered 560,000 but by 1935 it comprised 1.3 million men) re-arming posed a considerable problem, both logistically and financially. On the thorny question of what to do about re-arming, General Alexei Brusilov (1853–1926), then in overall command of the Red Army, decided that it would retain its old Mosin-Nagant Model 1891/30 rifles (which were adequate if not outstanding] but that a new dedicated sniper rifle would be manufactured.
This was a relatively straightforward process, as from 1926 the Red Army had begun producing good copies of German scopes based on the Zeiss/Kahles and Emil Busch patterns and, with a little modification, the Mosin could be adapted to enable the scope mounts to be fitted to the left side of the receiver. By 1932 the first of these rifles were becoming available to army units.
The new telescope, the 4-power PE, was uniquely fitted with both windage and elevation drums making it easy to use even with gloved hands and between 1932 and 1938 over 54,000 were produced. It proved to be a competent set-up, the rifles being capable of grouping 10 shots into 3.6 cm at 100 metres and 34 cm at 550 metres using ordinary 7.62 x 54mm military ball ammunition and a 13.6-gram spitzer boat-tailed bullet. Later use of a heavier armour-piercing bullet tightened the groups and gave a slightly improved range, with 700 metres being about the maximum for accurate shooting. In 1936 the scope design was simplified and a smaller, lighter scope, the PU, was introduced and this was to become the mainstay of the Soviet sniper through the Second World War and well into the Cold War era.
While it was all very well fabricating the weapons, there was little point unless sufficient men were available to be able to use the rifles so a training scheme was devised by General Voroshilov to produce trained sharpshooters, and by 1939 some 60,000 were believed to have been awarded the Voroshilov Sharp shooters badge. It should be stressed that these were not trained snipers, but marksmen who would later provide much of the raw material for Russia’s sniper training schools. To provide practical experience, many hundreds of Soviet snipers were employed during the Spanish Civil War (July 1936–April 1939).
Confident in its new military might, the Red Army launched an attack on Finland late in 1939, little expecting that they would be brought to an unexpected halt by the hundreds of Finnish snipers, who proved murderously effective. They were mostly armed with a near-identical Mosin rifle to that of the Soviet soldiers but few used scopes, finding that they froze and fogged in the bitterly cold conditions. Many were hunters, used to the hostile conditions and terrible cold (-45 °C was not uncommon) and they proved superior to the better-equipped Soviet snipers. As a result, the Red Army was forced to retire, having received a terrible battering at the hands of the Finns. This led to a rapid re-evaluation of sniper training and tactics so that when the Germans took the fateful decision to invade Russia in June 1941, they were to be faced by large numbers of Soviet snipers who were arguably the most experienced and best-equipped such force in the world.
Zaitsev’s early life
It was into this maelstrom that a young marine named Vassili Zaitsev was thrown.1 Born on 23 March 1915 into a family of farmers and hunters in Yeleninskoye in the Ural Mountains, he was taught how to handle a firearm from his earliest years, being presented at the age of 12 with a 20-bore shotgun and a belt of cartridges filled with solid slugs. He also received some prophetic advice:
I became a grown-up . . . an independent hunter. My father, remembering his days fighting under Brusilov, said to me, ‘Use every bullet wisely, Vassili. Learn to shoot and never miss. This will help you, and not just when you are hunting four-legged beasts.’
Small in stature (he was about 1.58 metres [5 ft 2 in] tall and one family nickname was ‘half-pint’) he was nevertheless physically strong and very self-contained, one officer later recalling that he was very modest, with a ‘slow grace of movement and an exceptionally calm character’.2 He was also utterly determined, once spending a night in the open in bitter sub-zero conditions with his cousin Maxim while tracking a wolf, which he caught and killed. He was fascinated by the art of tracking and spent as much time as he possibly could in the forests, stalking and hunting, covering his scent with pungent badger oil, so much so that his sister complained that he ‘reeked like an animal’.
I learned to interpret the trails of wild animals like I was reading a book; I tracked down the den of wolves and bears, and built hides that were so well concealed, not even Grandpa could find me until I called out to him.
Using the short-range shotgun meant that he was forced to get very close to his quarry, and the countless hours spent tracking, crawling and patiently waiting were to pay dividends in a way that Zaitsev could never have foreseen.
Military life
In 1937 he was drafted as a sailor into the Soviet Pacific Fleet and for the rest of his career he was proud to have worn the telnyashka, the distinctive blue and white striped seaman’s shirt. His small stature meant that he was judged unsuitable for frontline service so he was put to work as a clerk in the naval depot at Vladivostok. His duties were undemanding until war began. Then, increasingly angered by reports of German atrocities and moved by the plight of the defenders of Leningrad, he volunteered several times for front-line combat. Eventually, in September 1942, he put on the khaki-green uniform of a private of the 1047th Rifle Regiment, but like all seamen retained his treasured telnyashka, which he wore underneath!
His introduction to Stalingrad and fame as a sniper was by means of a training ground on the edge of the shattered city, where, far from honing his shooting ability, he was grounded in the grim skills of close-quarter fighting: the use of submachine guns, bayonets, knives, shovels and hand grenades. ‘We sailors were now accustomed to catching grenades in mid-flight, and hurling them back into the trenches.’
Training finished, he and his comrades were taken along the crowded roads to the River Volga, an experience they found profoundly shocking. Scores of old men, women and children dressed in filthy rags passed the army trucks, and streams of wounded soldiers, barely able to walk, staggered past wrapped in bloody bandages.
We wanted to ask them about the battle, but their appearance spoke for itself. They walked like zombies. The city looked like a smouldering and sulphurous hell, with burned-out buildings glowing like red coals, and fires consuming men and machines.
On the night of 22 September, they crossed the Volga in boats, and were directed to the Dolgiy Ravine area, which had been the pre-war metalworking district, where the regiment was at once launched into the attack. Zaitsev’s military career almost ended before it had begun:
Suddenly a big German was on top of me. He hit me with the butt of his gun. Fortunately the blow glanced off the top of my helmet instead of my face. I slipped behind him and got my arm locked around his neck, then managed to choke him while he thrashed around.
For a week the regiment withstood full-scale attacks in the metal factory, and at one point Zaitsev was buried alive in a bunker full of corpses. It was typical of the fighting in the city, but was not what he was best suited for.
It was to be a chance meeting that would change the course of Zaitsev’s war. As he and some others from his unit were crawling forward through the ruins of the blazing fuel depot on the edge of the industrial district, heavy German machine-gun fire forced the men to try and find cover and Zaitsev found himself next to a man even smaller than himself, a ‘skinny little runt of a soldier’ as he later described him. He watched in fascination as the tiny man worked his way forward until he could see the German machine-gun positions over a pile of old cobblestones:
He shifted his rifle to his right shoulder. The rifle had some sort of strange little pipe on top if it. The next second the short guy was aiming and – WHAM! He shifted his weight and a few seconds later he fired again, WHAM – and suddenly both machine guns were silent.
After the capture of the position, Zaitsev enquired about the identity of the soldier and was told he was sniper Sergeant Galifan Abzalov, who had already been credited with over 100 kills. Zaitsev was fascinated and wanted desperately to talk to the sniper, but had little chance as a slight bullet wound to his leg caused him to be withdrawn from the line for a few days.
Zaitsev the sniper
Once he was back in the line, things were relatively quiet and a few men were sitting with Zaitsev in a deep shell crater smoking, when a German machine gun opened up on them. A comrade spotted the position, about 600 metres distant, and handed Zaitsev the periscope:
I took a quick look, then raised my rifle and practically without aiming, fired a shot. The gunner collapsed. Within seconds, two more gunners appeared and in rapid succession, I plugged each of them with a single bullet.
Bearing in mind this was snap-shooting using a service rifle with no optical sights, it was excellent shooting indeed and under normal circumstances it would have passed unnoticed. However, unbeknown to the young soldier, his work had been witnessed by Brigade Commander Batyuk, who at once ordered Zaitsev be given a scoped rifle. It was a Mosin-Nagant with PE scope, and was the model he favoured through his entire tour of duty. Despite having no official instruction on the care and use of a scoped rifle, Zaitsev at once set to work in his new-found position and he relished killing the hated Nazi invaders:
I liked being a sniper and having the discretion to pick my prey. With each shot, it seemed as if I could hear the bullet smashing through my enemy’s skull, even if my target was six hundred metres away. Sometimes a Nazi would look in my direction, seeming to stare right at me, without having the slightest idea that he was living out his final seconds.
He was forced to learn how to adjust the telescope by trial and error, although fortunately it was not a difficult process, for he was both intelligent and, despite his rural upbringing, mechanically very able. Shooting at longer ranges was, of course, made more difficult by side winds and initially he was unused to having to allow for bullet drift, commenting that he used the smoke from the many fires to determine how strong the wind was:
I adjusted my sights for 550 metres and looked to see if the wind would throw off my shot. Most of the smoke . . . was wafting straight up, a sign that there was very little wind that day, so I didn’t have to compensate for it.
He did his best among the smouldering ruins of the city, but he was more or less working on his own, as no official arrangement had been made to set up a sniper section in the regiment. However, this was all to change on 21 October 1942 when Zaitsev was called to a bunker to meet Commander Yablochkin who was the regimental zampolit, or senior political commissar. ‘You have new orders,’ he was told curtly. ‘From now on make eliminating these roving [German] machine gunners your top priority.’ Zaitsev protested that it was a task he was unable to accomplish on his own. ‘I understand,’ the commissar said, ‘and that’s why I’m giving you this order . . . I want you to look around this room and pick out a couple of sharpshooters, and then I want you to train them.’
It slowly dawned on Zaitsev that he had been told to start the first sniping school by selecting men from a room full of wounded and shell-shocked soldiers. ‘How’, he wondered, ‘did they expect him to pull together a unit of snipers from dregs like this?’ Despite his misgivings, he selected a concussed young engineer named Mikhail Ubozhenko, who had refused to be evacuated and handed him his scoped rifle along with five minutes of instruction. Ubozhenko shot two Germans one after another and the furious enemy turned a machine gun on the pair. They slid down quickly from their hide and Zaitsev reflected on his first ever attempt at teaching.
Thus began our sniper’s training school. I, the professor, had in reality been the school’s first student. Up to now I had only learned from my own mistakes.
His selection process was based on the immediate impression individuals made on him, and his instinct was seldom ever wrong. He later commented that, ‘In general, fate smiled on me regarding all my snipers.’ He soon recruited Nikolai Kulikov (‘an intellectual . . . who chose his words carefully’), Alex Gryazev (‘a giant of a man . . . who would calmly pick up a big lathe, weighing a couple of hundred pounds and not even break into a sweat’) and another giant of a man, Sasha Reutov, who specialized in using an PTRD anti-tank rifle for sniping and could carry the twenty-kilo weapon all day without tiring. He further selected Rifle men Morozov, Abzalov, Shaikin, Medvedev, Dvoyashkin and Kostrikov and the little team became known as Zaitsev’s zaichata or leverets.
Finding time for instruction during the continual fighting was almost impossible. Unlike snipers in most other armies, who were excused normal duties because of the long hours they worked, Red Army snipers were expected to undertake fighting patrols and guard duties, to the extent that exhaustion caused many to fall asleep while under fire. Even the normally indefatigable Vassili reached the limits of his physical strength. Called in to report to his company commander, Lieutenant Kotov the sniper recalled that:
My legs were giving out and I was swaying from side to side. When the adjutant informed Kotov that I had arrived, the incensed battalion commander looked me up and down, saw how far I was gone and snapped . . . ‘Take him out of here and get him some sleep.’
Sniping in Stalingrad
The fighting in the burning ruins took on an almost surreal quality, with incessant aerial bombardment from flights of Heinkels and Stukas and continual pounding from the artillery of both sides. A pall of smoke hung permanently over the ruins, blotting out the sun and making soldiers wheeze and cough from the acrid fumes. Much of the fighting was by means of underground tunnels and sewers and day and night became as one in the continual half-light. It also became increasingly brutal, with the Germans killing wounded Soviet soldiers by using flame-throwers and the Russians retaliating by cutting the throats of helpless Germans, or lobbing grenades into the packed Red Cross bunkers and finishing off the survivors with sub machine guns. The snipers on both sides were particularly loathed and feared and capture by the enemy was an inevitable death sentence, often by methods that harked back to the cruellest medieval forms of torture.
Many snipers carried pistols with them, to use on themselves as a last resort if surrounded. During the defence of Moscow two female snipers, Natalia Koshova and Mariia Polivanova, held out to their last bullet, then reportedly clasped each other in a final embrace and detonated grenades between themselves, each earning posthumous Hero of the Soviet Union awards.
In this chaos of rubble and tunnels, working as a sniper was particularly difficult for the scoped rifle was after all, a long-range weapon and much of the fighting was very close combat indeed. Zaitsev wrote that moving stealthily in the rubble with a sniper’s rifle was hard, ‘Crawling is difficult when you’re a sniper. The long rifle on your back is constantly shifting from side to side, forcing you to stop and adjust its position.’ The bolt-action weapons were also slow to use in a fire-fight and awkward in a confined space, so most snipers also carried the PPSh 41 submachine gun, a useful compact weapon with a high 900 rounds per minute rate of fire, and the ubiquitous RGD-33 stick grenades, usually as many as could be crammed into pockets. German MP 40 submachine guns were also popular, but with extra ammunition, grenades and food, it weighed them down and clearly it was not the most efficient method of using their skills.
Both sides had also begun routinely to use explosive bullets – it was against the rules of war of course, but in Stalingrad rules of civilized conduct meant nothing. The Soviet snipers preferred to work close to the German lines and would move into cover between the lines during the night, picking cellars, ruined buildings – anywhere that gave them a clear view and a good field of fire. The constant artillery barrages, far from destroying the city, had effectively turned it into a defender’s paradise, for everywhere stood shattered buildings with holes punched through the brickwork by shells or cannon fire, and sitting deep in the shadows of the rooms provided a sniper with excellent cover. He was virtually impossible to spot and only a determined assault by infantry would be able to flush him out:
We advanced across the rubble, our machine gunners firing at the windows while the grenade-men went in through the big gaps in the wall. They threw their bombs and we ran forward, firing upwards into the stairs and room above. More grenades, flashes and bangs that deafened one, and we burst into the upper room. A dead Ivan lay in a pool of blood, his sniper rifle still in his hand. There was food and water there, and the stink of excrement. He had been living there for days, picking us off one after another. Yet he had made no attempt to escape.3
However, the work being done by the leverets in the area they occupied around Mamayev Hill was coming to the notice of the Germans, for it had become a death-trap, as the slightest exposure by a careless soldier resulted in a bullet from one of the Soviet snipers. By November Zaitsev had made about 100 confirmed kills, and in total his men had far exceeded that. The Germans method of sniping was normally to shoot from within their own lines but in an effort to eliminate the small band they began to become more cunning and soon began to pay special attention to the sniper squad. While occupying trenches on the shell-scarred slopes of the hotly contested hill the Russians had spent days repelling counter-attacks with not only their sniping rifles but grenades and submachine guns. The enemy were often so close that Zaitsev commented that at times it wasn’t even necessary to aim. But after ten days they were all under-fed, desperately short of water and totally exhausted, and carelessness began to creep in.
I barely managed to shoulder my rifle before the Fritzes moved up a machine gun . . . and opened fire. But the new gunner of theirs had no cover whatsoever. I took aim and shot and the machine gun fell silent. Then I realized that the enemy were watching me. I knew I had to change my location, I left behind my helmet, using it for a decoy then . . . scurried through the trench in search of another position. Then I started thinking about how the Fritzes had . . . so carelessly allowed us to spot them, and it hit me all in a rush. ‘Guys – it’s a trap . . .’
But it was too late, Sasha Gryazev, was hit by a single explosive bullet, that tore a huge hole in his chest. Zaitsev and his men buried their comrade and vowed to take more care – and exact their revenge on the German sniper. They settled down to watch and scanned the German line for hours, their eyes sore and red, trying to remain motionless while endlessly looking for a tell-tale sign that would betray a hidden sniper. Through his periscope, Zaitsev idly counted a pile of old German shell-cases, then did a double-take:
One was missing a bottom! Through a shell case . . . someone could see a long way into the distance. I raised myself up a little. Suddenly there in the casing – it was like a flint striking a spark! An explosive bullet ripped into the embankment behind me.
Shaken but determined, Zaitsev and his fellow sniper Kulikov got some much needed sleep then crept into their position before dawn and eventually spotted the hollow shell-case, now in a new position and well camouflaged.
Nikolai backed up and used a stick to raise a helmet a few inches above the embankment. The German fired a shot that ripped through the helmet. I was surprised that he went for this bait.
Zaitsev watched patiently as the German reached to pick up the spent cartridge, standard practice for snipers who would leave no tell-tale signs behind. As he did so he moved slightly, raising his head. It was exactly what the Russian needed, a couple of seconds with a clear view:
It gave me the few inches of scalp I needed to zero on, and at that second my own shot rang out. The bullet struck him in the hairline; his helmet fell forward over his brow and his rifle lay motionless, the barrel still inside the shell-case.
Counter-sniping
The snipers were starting to realize that they no longer had the upper hand, for the Germans were beginning to field some very experienced snipers of their own. As Zaitsev wrote: ‘Day by day, they were growing more cautious and more cunning.’ But the Russians’ dogged defence of the hill continued as they targeted the machine gunners and artillery observers. Not every shot counted though. When a German machine gunner opened fire, both Zaitsev and Kulikov set their sights to 300 metres and fired. To their astonishment, the gun continued to chatter.
Nikolai and I sat in silence. We were both ashamed because we had missed. Maybe the strain was affecting our vision, or our scopes had gone bad, or perhaps our breathing was unsteady. Then I remembered I had been shooting down[hill] at the target. Under those conditions it is always awkward to measure distance – you always have to add on at least ten per cent of the measured distance. Down in the ravine the Nazi’s machine gun opened fire again. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’ve got him set at three hundred and fifty; you shoot for four hundred.’ We aimed again and fired simultaneously. Nikolai had killed the gunner, while my bullet had fallen short.
At the end of autumn, after almost a month in the line, Zaitsev and his men were finally withdrawn from the terrible hill and given a roving commission to try and track down the increasing number of Nazi snipers who were inflicting more and more casualties on the Soviet soldiers. Counter-sniping work was becoming increasingly important and dangerous but occasionally it turned into farce. Near one command post, three men were hit in one day, including Zaitsev’s Lieutenant, Arkhip Sukharev. Frustrated by his inability to find the hide of the persistent sniper, Zaitsev began shouting German obscenities through a loud-hailer. First one bullet, then another sang past his ears. The German was under the wheels of a railway carriage, but Zaitsev was unable to get a shot at him, so he ordered a neophyte sniper, Gorozhaev to blind the enemy with the mirror from their periscope. Praying that the ruse would work, Zaitsev crawled to another vantage point, having left a crude dummy behind. Convinced he had made a killing shot, the German committed the cardinal sin of standing upright, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. Gorozhaev took careful aim:
At that moment I saw that the Nazi must have noticed the reflection from Gorozhaev’s scope. His expression changed from gloating to one of alarm and suddenly he was raising his rifle and aiming at us. Gorozhaev’s shot rang out. The bullet flattened the Nazi.
By now, the experienced Zaitsev had adopted several methods of dealing with enemy snipers. His modus operandi was to use a lifelike dummy and set up a very well camouflaged post next to it. When a sniper fired at the dummy, apparently to little effect, he often tried a second shot, giving Zaitsev a few seconds in which to snap-shoot. Sometimes he pretended to be a novice. ‘I would dull my opponent’s vigilance, or simply play around with him a bit.’ Then he would substitute himself for the dummy, which by then the German had learned to ignore: ‘I’d kick aside the decoy and catch the sniper’s head in my crosshairs.’
A legend is born
There was little chance for newly appointed snipers like Gorozhaev to be given any formal sniper training as the need for manpower was all consuming, so most leverets were taught in the front line, one or two being assigned to an experienced sniper. It was often a very brief tour of duty – the average survival time for an infantryman in the line was twenty-four hours, for snipers under a week – but those who lasted beyond that usually became accomplished. Very occasionally men would fail, one sniper, Sidorov, being transferred out of the unit for considering his personal score to be more important than protecting the lives of fellow soldiers. But generally the resolve of those attached to the sniper units was unshakable.
By early winter 1942, Zaitsev had become something of a legend along the front and wherever there was a pressing problem, he and his men would be called on to find a solution, which they always did. Despite being sometimes portrayed as an unschooled peasant, Zaitsev was intelligent and thoughtful, as many snipers were, often preferring silence to speech, but when he had something to say, it was usually worth listening to.
One casual comment made to his officer was picked up on by the Soviet press, desperate to find soldiers to whom they could attach heroic status. Zaitsev had commented that, ‘For us, there was no land beyond the Volga,’ and this was to become a rallying cry for the desperate defence of Stalingrad.
The work done by the snipers in holding Mamayev Hill had not gone unnoticed by the high command and one afternoon, Zaitsev was called in to an interview with a politruk, a political captain, who began questioning the sniper about his work. Zaitsev bridled at what he believed was a question-mark over his dedication and began a tirade which was cut short. ‘Vassili, you haven’t understood me correctly . . . I’m not knocking your achievements. In fact I’ve been writing about your exploits in my reports for a month now.’
Suddenly it hit me, this Captain Grigoriev was a journalist. I told him about the sniper’s honour, about my comrades, and about the things I had discovered as I looked into the tactics of the sniper group. Later all this became the object of a discussion in one department of the Stavka [General Staff]; Grigoriev managed to record my ramblings and somehow passed them on to high command in the form of an article.
Unbeknown to Zaitsev, he was about to become a legend.
Tactical change
Dismissing the interview from his mind, Zaitsev hurried back to his men, who had been tasked with finding and eliminating the increasing numbers of German snipers who were picking off Soviet artillery observers. One in particular was a real problem, so, working out the trajectory of the incoming bullets from hits made on the observer’s periscope, the snipers calculated that the Nazi marksman was hidden in a huge chimney, so they settled down to wait. After four months of fighting, there had been a gradual shift in emphasis in the tactics of the sniper squad. No longer did they risk exposure by shooting at any German whom they observed. In part this was due to the landscape in which they fought. They now waited specifically for targets of opportunity that were of sufficient importance to warrant being shot. There were too many enemy snipers on the front now to risk giving away their positions without good cause. ‘We restricted our shots to enemy snipers and to the most dangerous of their machine-gun posts.’
On one occasion he insisted that neither he nor his fellow snipers fired on an officer, a very tempting target. They waited and also ignored another German who appeared. The snipers grew restive but Zaitsev was adamant. So they waited. Suddenly:
A heavyset, polished Nazi officer turned the corner . . . he had a colonel’s insignia on his jacket. A sniper followed him, carrying a beautiful hunting rifle with a huge scope. Two additional officers emerged . . . one of them was a major wearing a Knight’s Cross with oak leaf clusters. Following behind was another colonel. Nikolai and I exchanged a glance. This was what we had been dreaming about . . . we had been willing to wait to catch the sharks. Missing out on the little fish was the price a sniper had to pay for a moment like this. I nodded a ‘yes’ to Nikolai and he signalled the others. Our shots rang out . . . we made textbook head shots and all four Nazis dropped to the earth.
So enraged were the Germans that they unleashed not only a terrible artillery bombardment, but also an airstrike on the hapless group, who were lucky to escape with superficial cuts and temporary deafness. No sooner had they crawled back to their lines than an attack erupted across the sector and the snipers were fighting for their lives in the front lines, often working at point-blank ranges. Three were badly wounded, but the attack was eventually repulsed.
Exhausted, the remaining snipers reporting back to their command bunker, where Zaitsev was startled when his colonel burst out laughing. All of the snipers resembled scarecrows, wearing a mix of torn and ragged uniforms, odd headgear, Russian or German greatcoats and sporting assorted bandages and several day’s beard growth. Zaitsev was ordered to take his men to the commissar’s bunker to obtain new uniforms, As he entered an officer regarded him thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been waiting for you scarecrow. Come in.’ To his astonishment he was given a beautiful uniform that had belonged to Brigade Commissar Zubkov.
As soon as he and the rest of his men were re-equipped, they were ushered into the command bunker, resplendent in their new uniforms, but with sticking plasters all over their cut and bruised faces. To their astonishment Lieutenant General Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, walked in. He con firmed that the days of using highly skilled snipers as infantry were over:
You fellows are fighting brilliantly. I’m aware that three of your comrades lie wounded . . . but that happened for a simple reason. You forgot your assignment. You turned into submachine gunners, into normal infantrymen. I’m not going to waste any more of your time . . . remember; you have to pick your targets carefully. We pay for every mistake in blood. Try to see this struggle from a broader perspective. Then it will be clear to you how you must act. I wish you success.
He left and the silent snipers filed out, save for Zaitsev, who sat and pondered. ‘The fighting at Stalingrad had taught me a great deal. I had matured and become stronger. I knew I was a different soldier than the one I had been just a month before.’
The game was still being played, but the rules were changing fast.
The duel
The meeting with Chuikov had incurred the displeasure of Zaitsev’s jealous captain, who relieved him of command of the sniper group and ordered him back to Mamayev Hill, effectively a death sentence by now. Working with one other sniper, Pytor Tyurin, Zaitsev was determined to dominate the area once again but found himself over-run by a sudden German assault. Using captured enemy weapons, he and Tyurin ignored their new orders and launched a furious counter-attack from behind the German lines, forcing the enemy into a confused retreat.
By now, he had been fighting constantly for four months and Zaitsev was suffering from battle fatigue:
I was worn down and tired to the bone, and fatigue is the sniper’s worst enemy. Also I was calculating my odds, and the probability of my continued survival. Every day on average I was killing four of five Germans – this had continued since my arrival in Stalingrad. As day after day passed without my being hit, I kept thinking it was like having a run of luck at cards; I knew it couldn’t last forever.
He was also aware that the press coverage about him and his snipers would be closely monitored by the Germans, and this was borne out when a prisoner was interrogated who said that the head of the Berlin sniper school, Major König,4 was being brought to the front to eliminate Zaitsev, who in typical fashion was proud that his group’s achievements had resulted in such an event. But he also admitted, for the first time, to having some doubts. Although outwardly confident he was well aware that if the story was true he was going to face the most experienced sniper he had ever come up against. One factor in his favour was that he was used to determining the operating characteristics of enemy snipers: ‘I was able to pick out the more experienced . . . from the beginners; and the cowards from the patient and determined.’
Zaitsev usually set about locating a new sniper’s position by working in two stages. He would interview soldiers about where and how men had been sniped and work out the likely position of the sniper’s post from bullet trajectory. He would then begin to search the lines with a periscope, which he believed was better than a rifle scope or binoculars and far less noticeable. He was also acutely aware of changes in the level of activity along the front. ‘Experience told me that locations that had once been bristling with activity, but which later became dead silent, probably hid a cunning sniper.’ However, he conceded that ‘the characteristics of this new-super sniper remained difficult for me to identify’.
There was no doubt that there was an excellent sniper facing the Russians, for in one day he shattered the scope on Morozov’s rifle and wounded Sahikin, both very experienced snipers. Zaitsev and Kulikov took over the wounded pair’s position and began patiently scanning the enemy lines. They ignored a helmet raised opposite them, clearly a ruse, but it was a clue that someone wanted them to betray their positions. So they sat, and watched and waited. One morning they were joined by their political officer, Danilov, who was sure he had spotted the sniper, rising up in his excitement and getting a bullet across his scalp in response. It was the proof Zaitsev needed. ‘Only a top sniper could have made that shot, could have fired with such quickness and precision. I peered into my scope for hour upon hour, but couldn’t locate him.’
Somehow the sniper needed to be lured out, so Zaitsev put a glove on a piece of wood and slowly raised it. The shot that hit it was fired from directly in front, where a sheet of steel and a pile of bricks lay. They had always been there, and Zaitsev had ignored them . . . until now. Kicking himself, he and Kulikov conferred. Kulikov began raising his helmet very slowly, as only an experienced observer would do. A shot rang out and Kulikov threw himself up with a loud cry and fall. Convinced that he had finally found his target, the German raised his head from behind the sheet of iron. It was a brief glimpse but all Zaitsev needed. ‘I pulled the trigger and the Nazi’s head sunk. The scope of his rifle lay unmoving, still flashing in the light of the sun.’ After dark, the two snipers dragged the dead German from his lair, took his rifle and documents and sent them to their divisional commander.
The final battle
There was to be no rest for the sniper group, now comprising thirteen men, seven having been killed or wounded, for in early January 1943 they were ordered to a new front. Although he did not know it, it was to prove Zaitsev’s final battle, ironically resulting in injuries that doubtless saved his life, for no one could survive in Stalingrad for ever. A new German assault was forthcoming and they were to target all of the officers they could. In Zaitsev’s words they were to ‘behead’ the German infantry by removing their leaders. This they did, with huge success, using concentrated sniper fire. It was an unusual tactic, but in this instance undeniably effective for three of the snipers made over fifty hits between them.
Forgetting his own rules, Zaitsev ran towards a group of Germans who were surrendering – right into the path of a rocket barrage. ‘I could see how it [the rocket] turned end over end through the air. The round landed about thirty metres from me, bounced once and – boom!’ The blast scorched his head and drove tiny steel splinters into his face and eyes. He awoke in hospital, swathed in bandages. For a month he lived in darkness, learning to identify various sounds from around the ward and suffering from post-traumatic stress, his moods swinging between wild laughter and tears. In a way, the enforced rest was the therapy he needed and, in typically stubborn style, he refused to accept his blindness as anything other than temporary.
After five weeks, the bandages were carefully unwound, and he could see the pale outlines of the staff around him. He still needed intensive treatment and was to be sent to the eye hospital in Moscow, but en route he was ordered to meet Chuikov, who promoted him to lieutenant. Stalingrad had finally been retaken by the Red Army, and the frozen, starving Germans had surrendered in colossal numbers.5 Zaitsev continued to receive treatment for his blurred vision from the pioneering surgeon Professor Filatov, eventually recovering full sight.
He was interviewed on several occasions by members of the Politburo and Red Army leaders about his experiences and thoughts on the value of sniping, details that were later fundamentally to influence Soviet Russia’s sniper training. After one such interview with Mikhail Kalinin6 to Zaitsev’s amazement, he was handed the gold badge of the Order of Lenin, the state’s highest award:
For the next few minutes I was afraid even to breathe. My ears were buzzing from all the excitement. The sound was like an echo of the battle of Stalingrad . . . where for a time we had to forget that beyond the Volga there was still land.
After the war Zaitsev left the army with the rank of captain, having assisted with sniper training and toured widely, lecturing on his experiences. Although probably the most famous of Russia’s snipers, his official score of 242 enemy was nowhere near the highest.7 He went to university and studied engineering, receiving a degree in 1952. He continued with his career, becoming a professor of engineering. He died in 1991 at the age of 76, just ten days before the fall of the old Soviet Union.
It was Zaitsev’s dying wish to be buried at the monument to the defenders of Stalingrad in the Mamayev Hill war cemetery where so many of his comrades gave their lives in Russia’s defence. In accordance with his request, on 31 January 2006, he was reburied with full military honours. His coffin was interred near the monument that carries his famous quote: ‘For us there was no land beyond the Volga.’
Notes
All quotes included in this chapter come from Zaitsev’s autobiography: Vassili Zaitsev, Notes of a Russian Sniper, Frontline Books, 2010.
1. The root of the surname came from the Russian word for rabbit, zayit.
2. General V. Chuikov, later Marshal of the Soviet Union.
3. Otto Bildmann, Memoirs of the Eastern Front. Private publication, 1996.
4. There has been much discussion about the actual events of this counter-sniping duel. There is no doubt that Zaitsev did fight an experienced German sniper, but so did most long-term snipers at some time. König (meaning ‘king’) may simply have been a nickname for a sniper who was known to be the king of his particular front. The name Thorvald has also been used in connection with this fight, but no such person exists in German records, nor was the head of the Berlin Sniper School so named.
5. In all 91,000 were captured. When finally released in 1955 only 6,000 survived to return to Germany.
6. Mikhail Kalinin 1875–1946, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and titular head of the U.S.S.R. 1919–46.
7. His actual score was over 400, but only observed kills were officially recorded. The highest scoring Soviet sniper is believed to have been Ivan Sidorenko of the 1112th Rifle Regiment, with over 500 kills officially recorded.