Sixty Seconds to Kill

It's easier to kill a man if you can't see his face. I could have joined an artillery unit and fired at coordinates instead of soldiers. Many men I have served with have said so again and again. 'You'll get yourself and us killed out here,' they say, 'join the artillery, shoot and scoot.'

But they don't understand. When you kill in war you can't hide from it. Some day, God willing, this war will end. My children and grand children will want to know what I did to defend our homeland. I won't shy away from the truth.

I will know how many men I killed, and I will know how they died.

That's the sniper's life. With the scope on my Zbroyar rifle, I see my target's eyes widen in terror when my 7.62-millimeter bullet enters his chest and exits his back.

Sometimes it's a boy and I think about his mother, weeping at his coffin. When he's older, I wonder if he is a father and imagine his children crying when they get the news.

When I kill, its personal. But so is this war.

I have a 18-month-old at home that I have not seen in six months. I often wonder if I will ever see her chubby little face again. But I'm in a hide looking over a valley at the enemy scarcely fifty meters from our forward defenses. If we can't win, I won't have a family or home to return to.

Putin's media tells his citizens that we are nazi's and fascists to rally the people's memories of the great patriotic war. Have they forgotten that Ukrainians and Russians fought the nazi's side by side?

I have not forgotten.

I have Lyudmila Pavlichenko's name tattooed on my right forearm and Lady Death on my left. She killed 309 nazis during the great patriotic war. The greatest woman sniper in history was a Ukranian from Kiev.

I too am from Kiev.

Women make the best snipers. A man will sometimes hesitate when he should shoot. But a woman, never. It's not easy, taking a life, but it's necessary. Many Russian soldiers' rape and torture us. They take life for the pleasure of killing.

I take no pleasure in it, but I do not hesitate.

It's cold, this morning, and I keep rubbing my hands and moving my feet up and down to keep warm. The Russians have attacked first thing in the morning across this little valley for the past two days. The first day, they tried to cross it at a dead run, but our machine gunners made a quick end of that.

They were smarter the following day. They suppressed our defenses with artillery and small arms fire while their soldiers made short, weaving dashes before dropping to the ground to make our machine gun and rifle fire less effective.

But I'm positioned an additional two hundred meters further back on higher ground and managed to pick off the enemy that defenders on the front line missed.

But our ammunition is getting low and last night our commander told us that we needed to make every bullet count.

When the Russians attack this morning, it will take sixty seconds for them to cross the valley with their little starts and stops. A measly minute to repel them with our limited ammunition. The battalion has only eighty mortar rounds remaining, and the commander already said he does not want to use more than twelve in the next attack.

I killed five yesterday. But that will not be nearly enough this morning. The magazine in my Zbroyar holds ten rounds. I have only two additional magazines on hand. I will kill no more than thirty today, if I can even manage that.

How many will attack? How many will reach our lines?

When their artillery began dropping smoke rounds into the valley, my pulse quickened as I set the stopwatch next to my rifle's bipod legs and scanned their lines for signs of the coming assault.

I didn't have to wait for long.

So many of them, I think with horror, as I start the watch and the tickticktickticktick warns that time is short.

In such a target rich environment I kill as many in the first ten seconds as I had during the entire assault the day before. Fifteen seconds later I reload as tickticktickticktick continues to raise my blood pressure and I begin firing again, counting as each man falls, 13, 14 15. And still they keep coming as our precious mortar rounds begin to fall. Tickticktickticktick, I reload my third and final magazine, 21, 22, 23, sweat dripping into my eyes in spite of the cold.

The mortar platoon has already fired sixteen rounds and still they keep coming.

After I kill number 25, I begin to softly weep at the terrible waste of it all. At 28 the order comes to fall back, but I do not leave my position till number 30 when I realize in horror that even if my sixty seconds to kill has ended, a new and more terrifying minute has now begun.

Grabbing the Zbroyar, I start to run.