Words to Live By - A Countryhumans SovAme Story

Act II, Chapter IV - Selfish Woman

October 1941

Sevastopol, USSR

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What can I call war good for? Nothing, of course. What point is there to go through the motions of the description of the battle and the skirmishes around Sevastopol, if only to tell the truth about what war really is? See, war is all about waiting. You wait, you wait, you wait some more and then for a moment there's excitement.

If you survive, there's nothing left to do but wait.

That was Sevastopol. That's being a sniper. That's war.

In Sevastopol I applied myself to waiting, and the fruits of my efforts began to show as the count of Germans dead at my hand steadily rose at the same rate I let my eyes dart across the pages of Tolstoy's Sevastopol. For each dead man I carved a talley on the inside of the book's cover.

They began to call me Hero. Hero of Sevastopol. They published my exploits in Pravda. They took a propaganda photo of me with my rifle propped on a log, my gaze fixed on the scope and my finger steady on the trigger. They put it on a front page with the words Sniper Girl Kills 80!

I destroyed entire squads, ten men each. I was sent to kill important officers fresh from the Fatherland. I became comfortable in the skin of Lyudmila Korzh.

All the while I slept in the same barracks as Soviet, my little Yelena. I began to refer to her as Yelena in my head. Had I not called her that for nearly twenty years before the war? Now suddenly it was Anna. In my head it didn't matter.

Even through all this, I was still reminded of the truth about the role of Lyudmila Korzh, Hero of Sevastopol, a venatrix. It was not a role that belonged to me. I had lied my way there, telling my government back home that I was doing a small submarine service and to not try and contact me.

However, in December I had to kiss it goodbye to go back to them and tell them I was alive. I took the opportunity to drop by Hawaii and have a look at my battleships, with a promise to darling Yelena that I would be back.

Seven days into the month that proved to be untrue. Now I was at war and fighting all the Axis. Now I was training to dive bomb carriers and to heft a BAR through the jungle upon my own olive-clad back. Now I was fighting with those manic men, both the former boyfriend and the demonlike German.

I had to leave the eastern front without really saying goodbye, without being able to tell her I wasn't coming back. But I know she escaped on a train to Moscow in time to defend it from the Schwerpunkt. I went to the Coral Sea, then to Midway, then to Guadalcanal. Through the rain and mud and blood and fear, I found I longed for that Mosin, that nom de guerre, that woman. It had only been a couple months that I was there, I reminded myself. Lyudmila was as good as blown to shreds by mines, with no body to be recovered.

But I missed Yelenushka.

It didn't matter. I was at war with my own enemy.

At least, that was until I received a letter. 

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Come back. Come to my side once again. Be Lusya again.

I was back from about three months at Guadalcanal when it came. Addressed to an Atsula Washington, it showed up in my mailbox at a rather opportune time. I was in the prime position to shout to the White House, "I'm doing service on a carrier!" and leave for several months again. But should I, I thought, leave to go to another front when I was needed here?

I paced. I went back and forth.

I miss Soviet. I'm needed here. I should rise to the call of duty. I can serve both our war efforts if I stay here. I can increase lend lease. I miss being a sniper. I miss Soviet.