NINETY-NINE GERMANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 February 1943, Page 4

NINETY-NINE GERMANS

KILLED BY RUSSIAN SNIPER. DEEDS OF FORMER PRIEST. (By Vladimir Krozin, in “Soviet War News.”) • My friend Alexander Preobrazhensky is back in his house on the eastern shore of Lake Issik Kul, in Kirghizia. He will go duck shooting in the marshes, if his wound lets him. I can see the lake in my mind. It is autumn. Across the desolate waters, stormy even in summer, is the village of Mikhailovskoye, seen dimly through the mist. Conflicting winds blow from the mountains and trouble the waters. ■ Alexander used to be a priest before the Revolution. He was a missionary in the village across the lake. He wanted to ' convert the Kirghizian people to the Christian faith. Then, during the last war, he volunteered as a regimentar priest. His father had been educated in Germany, at Heidelberg, and from him he had learned much about Prussian militarism. It seemed to him that all who cherished the freedom of the spirit must oppose the German military clique. During the Brusilov offensive he was wounded in the neck by a German bullet. The scar is still there. At the beginning of the Civil War Preobrazhensky renounced his priesthood, though he remained a convinced Christian He detected the stirring of new life in our country, and wished to help it to be born. He considered it his duty to become a soldier in the cause of freedom, and joined the Red Army. He had no secular garment, so he wore a black church vestment into battle. “Our monk,” as the Red Army men called him affectionately, took part in the defence of two cities besieged by Whiteguards. After the war he married a peasant girl and became a farmer in the village where he had once been a missionary. He earned fame as one of the finest hunters in the Issik Kul region. Later he was appointed manager of the ’ “sports station”—the lake and mountains in peace time attract hundreds of champion swimmers and mountain-' eers. But on June 23, 1941, the second day of the Nazi invasion, he resigned his job and made up his mind to get back into the army. His two sons, who lived in Frunze, the captal of Kirghizia, went off as volunteer—the older boy is one of Kirghizia’s best swimmers and light athletes, and the younger is an outstanding mountain climber. His age was against him —at 50, they weren’t too keen to send him straight to the front line, where he wanted to go. At first he was appointed an army sports instructor in Frunze, then became instructor at a school foi’ snipers. It was not until the beginning of 1942 that he got his wish, and was detailed as a sniper on the north-western front. There he fought the Germans and the Finns among the cliffs of Karelia. He shot 99 Germans. To his grief, he never got his hundredth, for he was badly wounded, and was demobilised on recovery. In summer he manages the water sports station on the lake. He likes the life—the lonely shore, the marshes and the mountains where he can shoot the wild goat, which the natives call “Tlek.” He has a cow, several pigs, a few ducks and chickens. j Inside his home it is restful, clean and warm. Dried reeds burn in the fireplace. During the winter he and his wife are quite alone. Three hunting dogs sprawl on the, hearth. The firelight flickers in the glass of the book-cases, where you will find hundreds of volumes from Homer and Plutarch to Rudyard Kiplipg and Walt Whitman. His proudest possession is a little volume bound in red velvet, with giltedged pages. On the cover there is a motto in gold: “Semper ante,” always forward. It is his sniper’s account book,