172

p Not later than December 5, 1943

p Darling Naya, it’s not often I write to you. Not because I don’t want to but because I can’t write often. You know my life is always in danger. I don’t want to give you any vain hopes. I always write to you after a battle. But if you get this letter it means I’m gone, it means I fell in battle with thoughts of you, my faraway yet very near sweetheart.

p I took the trouble to write this letter beforehand so that you might know how I loved you, how infinitely dear you were to me.

p Just one thing, my dear, sweet Naya, I am not writing this letter to make you wear your heart out in despair and sorrow over me, so that you forever go about in gloom and mourning. No! I’m writing so that you know and remember to the end of your days how much I loved you, how much the very thought of you urged me on, gave me strength in battle, made me scared of nothing when things got really hot.

p And there is something else-I want you to know you are a good, decent girl and your love is a haven and oasis for an exhausted soldier.

p I have your photo here now before me. Your eyes are looking at me as if they were alive. I see sadness in them. If your picture had been taken with a deliberately affected sorrow, it wouldn’t have been so deep and complete as it is in your eyes. I know you’ve been pining away.

p Your letters breathe impatience, you ask me to show no mercy to the nazis so that I come home sooner to you. Believe me-your command, your call-I fulfil with honour. Like you, I live with the dream of returning to you, of being 173 together with you once more. And I know that the farther I go westwards, the quicker my homecoming will be. And for the sake of this dream I rush into battle so ferociously, and manage to do so much that it would amaze even myself if I could read it in a newspaper.

p I could get a reprimand if they read this letter, a reprimand for fighting for you. Yet I don’t know, I cannot make out, where you end and my country begins. You and she seem to have merged into one for me. And I see your eyes as the eyes of my country. I have the feeling your gaze follows me everywhere, that you, invisible to me, judge my every step.

p Your eyes.... When I gaze into them, I get an inexplicable thrill and a quiet contentment. I remember your quick, sly glances. It’s only now I appreciate that in those fleeting glances your love came out best and most of all.

p You are my future. Why do I talk of the future, though? After all, when you get this letter I shall be no more. I wouldn’t like you to receive it, and I won’t even write the address on the envelope. But if you do get it, don’t take it too much to heart. It just couldn’t have been otherwise.

p Bye-bye. Be happy without me. You should be able to find yourself a friend and he will be no less happy with you than I was. Cheer up. When V-day comes rejoice and make merry with all the others. Only, when that happy and lucky day comes, I’d like you not to lose that secret, tender grief for me, I’d like your eyes to be suddenly, just for a minute, as they are gazing at me from the picture now.

p Please excuse this wish.

p All my love and lots of kisses,

Love,
Pyotr

Fighting swirled around an enemy stronghold. In the path of the Soviet soldiers was an enemy bunker from which a hail of machinegun bullets poured that made it suicide for anyone to even raise their heads. Lieutenant Pyotr Glukhov was hit by a bullet as he was crawling to the gun slit of the bunker a grenade in hand. Some time after, during a lull in the fighting, his battle comrades buried their officer with military honours. Among his personal belongings were found this unsent letter to his girl-friend and her photo. On the back of the photo were the words: "My dear. You are far away but always with me. I am sending you this photo so that you remember • me more often. Love to you, my darling. Your Naya. May 1943, Ufa.”