Soviet Forces

Stalingrad - Crack shots

V.Zaitsev (left) and Galifan Abzalov (right) This is what Zaitsev remembers about 1st encountering Abzalov "To my left was Seaman Okrihm Vasilchenko,and to my right I noticed a skinny little runt of a soldier,he wore ragged puttees and his helmet was falling down to his eyebrows,He crawled towards a mound of cobblestones as dozens of bullets whistled passed his ears,I was busy clawing at the earth with my fingernails,trying to scrape some sort of foxhole,the men around me had had also been reduced to groveling in the dirt,But the short fellow in the puttees was relentlessy crawling forward. He reached some cobblestones and shifted his rifle to his right arm,The rifle had some sort of strange little pipe on top of 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! The short guys taking out the machine guns had made this an easy conquest,After the battle I caught up with Okrihm Vasilchenko"who was that midget? I asked him,Chief said Okrihm thats no midget,thats the sergeant,the sniper Galifan Abzalov