Page 14 - Excerpts from the diary

09.27.1943

Observation Post (OP) of a regiment. Big outstanding barrow. Germans well know that here NP. More than once
they sent investigation behind «tongue» here at night. Snipers observers do not take eyes from here. In the
fieldglass and with the naked eye they look here.
Barrow circles the mass of funnels from mines and shells. Germans furiously fired at a barrow, but shells laid
down around it, at a foot. They did not get to a barrow. And they have not enough ammunition. So they left a
barrow alone so far.
Watched in a stereo pipe the opponent. Fritzes freely and openly go on a front line to all growth. Many without
shirts sunbathe, some look for louses each other in the head. Others on a body with such rage catch them (and on
shirts) that it seems, there they are innumerable.
Red there is a lot of, but there are also black. Stand, smile, then fall to a trench or lie on a surface. In groves they
without having dug round at all, take place. Are careless as though at home. Observations, however, do not stop.
Some in the fieldglass observed all the time, then went to recover and transferred the fieldglass to another. So
they change all the time.
In the village blow up lodge and still something. Every day columns of dense white, gray, reddish smoke are
visible.

10.17.1943

It seems, the 17th.
Yesterday there was one of cases of my life from where there were live I by some miracle.
Red ink came to an end and I need to part an indelible pencil of green color for now it is simple to write with this
pencil and in spite of the fact that there is a heavy rain now clear water there is no place to get. Residue of ink I
dropped from a small bottle on a notebook and soaked up in the handle.
I sit in the trench dug for me by fighters because I could not dig the hand hurt awfully later yesterday's about
which I will tell especially. The trench covered with a groundsheet, but it is full of holes and in addition on it
there was an earth from above and large drops of water fall from above. Therefore, I threw an overcoat over the
head and, having bended double, undertook the handle. Fritzes too because of a rain, obviously, do not shoot from
tools now and at heart it is somehow easier.
Our gunners after all bang towards the opponent, and the rain goes and goes inevitably.

10.20.1943

20, it seems.
Day passed quietly. Only today the opponent shot at us with sixbarreled mortars a little, but the treated.
Today the new approach supported by amicable work of mortars, artilleries, tanks, 'Katyushas' and aircraft began.
Joy was to us when aircraft, a cloud blowing over our heads, and bombed a den of the enemy.
But suddenly at the positions several bombs whistled. Any pilot fool (by plane there were red asterisks, and he
flew to bomb the enemy together with other our bombers) without having looked round properly, threw on the
one for another several bombs. Everything shuddered, from the earth the column of dust, the earth and smoke
rose. The wall of my dugout began to tremble and was showered. The bomb fell just to the swamp that in 15 steps
from our positions. The good at us damaged nobody, but among other our neighbors, obviously, there are victims
because people went everywhere, without disappearing from aircraft and rejoicing it, red star pack of falcons
Soviet.
Just the company commander the lieutenant Sokolov came and turned trunks of mortars absolutely in other side.
There, where we fired earlier, the opponent was not anymore.