Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [106]
Soldiers, on the other hand, had a much more robust attitude toward these symbols of bravery. When one of them received an award, his comrades dropped it in a mug of vodka, which he then had to drink, catching the medal in his teeth as he drained the last drops.
The real Stakhanovite stars of the 62nd Army were not in fact the destroyers of tanks, but snipers. A new cult of ‘sniperism’ was launched, and as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution approached, the propaganda surrounding this black art became frenzied, with ‘a new wave of socialistic competition for the largest numbers of Fritzes killed’. A sniper on reaching forty kills would receive the ‘For Bravery’ medal, and the title of ‘noble sniper’.
The most famous sniper of them all, although not the highest scorer, was Zaitsev in Batyuk’s division, who, during the October Revolution celebrations, raised his tally of kills to 149 Germans. (He had promised to achieve 150, but was one short.) The highest scorer, identified only as ‘Zikan’, killed 224 Germans by 20 November. For the 62nd Army, the taciturn Zaitsev, a shepherd from the foothills of the Urals, represented much more than any sporting hero. News of further additions to his score passed from mouth to mouth along the front.
Zaitsev, whose name means hare in Russian, was put in charge of training young snipers, and his pupils became known as zaichata, or ‘leverets’. This was the start of the ‘sniper movement’ in the 62nd Army. Conferences were arranged to spread the doctrine of ‘sniperism’, and exchange ideas on technique. The Don and South-West Fronts took up the ‘sniper movement’, and produced their star shots, such as Sergeant Passar of 21st Army. Especially proud of his head shots, he was credited with 103 kills.
Non-Russian snipers were singled out for praise: Kucherenko, a Ukrainian, who killed nineteen Germans, and an Uzbek from 169th Rifle Division who killed five in three days. In 64th Army, Sniper Kovbasa (the Ukrainian word for sausage) worked from a network of at least three trenches, one for sleeping and two fire trenches, all connected. In addition, he dug fake positions out to the side in front of neighbouring platoons. In these he installed white flags attached to levers, which he could agitate from a distance with cords. Kovbasa proudly claimed that as soon as a German saw one of his little white flags waving, he could not help raising himself in his trench to take a better look, and shout ‘Rus, komm, komm!’ Kovbasa then got him from an angle. Danielov in 161st Rifle Regiment also dug a false trench, and fashioned scarecrow figures with bits of Red Army equipment. He then waited for inexperienced German soldiers to shoot at them. Four of them fell victim. In 13th Guards Rifle Division Senior Sergeant Dolymin, installed in an attic, picked off the crews of an enemy machine-gun, and a field gun. The most prized targets, however, remained German artillery spotters. ‘For two days [Corporal Studentov] tracked an observation officer and killed him with the first shot.’ Studentov vowed to raise his score to 170 Germans from 124 by the anniversary of the Revolution.
All the star snipers had their own techniques and favourite hiding places. ‘Noble sniper’ Ilin, who was credited with ‘185 Fritzes’, sometimes used an old barrel, or pipe, as a hide. Ilin, a commissar from a Guards rifle regiment, operated on the Red October sector. ‘Fascists should know the strength of weapons in the hands of Soviet supermen,’ he proclaimed, promising to train ten other snipers.
Some Soviet sources claim that the Germans brought in the chief of their sniper school to hunt down Zaitsev, but that Zaitsev outwitted him. Zaitsev, after a hunt of several days, apparently spotted his hide under a sheet of corrugated iron, and shot him dead. The telescopic sight off his prey’s rifle, allegedly Zaitsev’s most treasured trophy, is still exhibited in the Moscow armed forces museum, but this dramatic story remains essentially