Voices of Russian Snipers
An account by an enthusiastic Red Army sniper who developed his skills in the trenches outside Leningrad in 1942, right through to Christmas Day
Just published in English for the first time is a collection of eyewitness accounts by Red Army snipers. Voices of Russian Snipers presents chapter-length memoirs from ten men and three women, together with a couple of introductory chapters. These include some of the Red Army’s most celebrated snipers as well as some with more modest tallies. All of these are very personal recollections of the experience of being in the trenches facing the Nazis - as much as they are technical accounts of their particular specialism.
One of these accounts is from a man who was encouraged by the Soviet system very soon after he began sniping.
Fedor Dyachenko’s family had been deported from Ukraine to Siberia before the war, condemned for being ‘Kulaks’. Malnutrition may account for why he was so short - he describes his difficulty in holding the old Russian ‘Three Line’ rifle - being ‘almost as tall as I was’.
He soon overcame this problem. His regiment joined the front line outside Leningrad in the summer of 1942. After shooting a high-flying bird just to show off to his friends, Dyachenko was summoned by his company commander. Fearing a reprimand he was actually given a sniper rifle. He learnt very quickly in the field in the following days, no doubt lucky to survive a blast of mortar fire sent over in response to one of his early attacks.
Encouraged by his political officer he set about killing as many Germans as possible before the anniversary of the Great October Revolution.
On the 30th September 1942 the Red Army Military Bulletin reported, on the front page:
The initiator of the October competition in his detachment, Red Army soldier Fedor Dyachenko, is increasing his combat tally with every passing day. On 26 September Dyachenko shot nine Fritzes in the course of a single day. Yesterday he tracked a group of Germans proceeding along a trench and through accurate shooting felled six of them without a single miss. 'If I have failed to kill a single Nazi in a day, says Dyachenko, 'that means that I have not fulfilled my duty to the Motherland. In the last ten days Fedor Dyachenko has wiped out thirty-two Nazi bandits.
In the following excerpt Dyachenko recounts his experiences in December 1942:
More often than not I operated as a pair with Slava Golubyev. We had a special liking for the old German trench in front of no-man’s land. It was not easy to reach; the snow covered up footprints. But if you managed to set yourself up there while it was still dark, the entire line of enemy positions lay open to you for 500-700 metres. Firing these distances in winter demanded a good knowledge of the theory behind the sniper’s art; apart from making adjustments for the wind and the moving target, you also had to consider the air temperature and the deviation.
One day I detected the glitter of glass amidst some snow-sprinkled ruins. Was it an observer? A sniper? We tried to provoke the ‘glass’ into firing; we raised a cap on a stick, but no one fired in response. It glinted only in the first half of the day. I informed Nikiforov and laid out my ideas. The company commander agreed with me that it was probably a stereoscopic periscope.
For four days Denisenko and I stalked this mysterious piece of glass. Then one clear frosty morning we took up our positions and began waiting. The ‘glass’ appeared again, glinting. Ivan fired and through my binoculars I could easily see a double periscope which had fallen onto the ground. A soldier started crawling towards the dead man and I knocked him off too.
In the evening we reported to the company commander that we had eliminated the enemy observer.
Perfecting your skills in shooting required constant practice. Not far from our dugout stood an iron girder sticking up vertically from the ground. It was about 300 metres away. We made it a rule that, before venturing out to our positions, we would take a shot at it.
It helped us to adjust our settings for the particular cartridges we were using. Over long distances, the trajectory of a bullet’s flight is strongly influenced by the ballistic properties of the ammunition - the weight of the powder, its dampness, the mass of the bullet, its calibre, and so on. Every batch of cartridges is different and necessitates new calibration, which is why we strove to use cartridges from just one batch at a time.
Of course, it’s a small detail, but over long distances, it is on the calculation of small details that accuracy in shooting depends. Adjustments to their rifles and selection of cartridges helped Soviet marksmen to reduce the spread of bullets in their shot groups to a third of conventional results.
...
December 25, 1942, was drawing near - the anniversary of the foundation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - my land and that of Kochubei. Mykola proposed that we celebrate this date by giving the enemy a ‘sniper’s Christmas’, since their Christmas coincided with our anniversary.
One day he [a new recruit to sniping, Yegor Ushakov, a woodcutter from Archangel] and I set off on a sniper sortie towards the bridge over the Izhora. I had long been fond of a shooting position there beside the Moscow highway.
First, we followed a trench. Then, before crawling out into no-man’s land, we stopped for a smoke and he told me how he had killed his first German with a sniper rifle. It happened in the district where we had enjoyed a brief period of rest and recreation.
Kochubei and Ushakov had set an ambush in the ruins of a house and waited for quite a long time until some enemy soldiers appeared. On this occasion, they were lugging some logs. Yegor took aim and felled one of them. The others dashed up to the fallen man, and Kochubei remained in control of the situation, knocking over another three, one after another, with precise shots, after which he said to his partner: ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Yegor!’
The Germans came to their senses and covered the area with mortar salvoes, but too late; our successful men were already far away.
December 25, 1942, was drawing near - the anniversary of the foundation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - my land and that of Kochubei. Mykola proposed that we celebrate this date by giving the enemy a ‘sniper’s Christmas’, since their Christmas coincided with our anniversary.
We occupied our firing positions while it was still dark. The Spanish troops were only firing now and then, but frequently sending up blinding flares which turned night into day. Our hunt did not work out; we expended five cartridges and all to no purpose.
Then we heard the sounds of an accordion, but being played in a style that was not ours. The enemy had had one over the eight on the occasion of ‘Christ’s birth’ and were now relaxing. We waited till they came up the nearby rise. Their silhouettes were distinctly visible against the snow-covered field behind them and we fired almost simultaneously. While confusion reigned on the enemy side, I had time to reload and lay out one more of them.
This excerpt from Voices of Russian Snipers: Eyewitness Red Army Accounts From World War II appears by kind permission of Pen & Sword Books Ltd. Copyright remains with the author.