Jim Conrad,
AGREED 100% - In 1995-6, I dated a young Ukrainian doctor whose (then 15-18YO) aunt during WWII was a teen-aged sniper & even "Svet" said that her aunt was able to kill all those Germans at Stalingrad because there were so many targets available & she was well-hidden inside several old factory buildings that had been bombed to a huge pile of rubble.
She doesn't know how many Germans that her aunt took out but simply said, "Evidently a great many."
Btw, after the War, her aunt returned to the little town near Kiev where she was born, married her childhood sweetheart, had 6 children by him & spent the rest of her life as a housewife. - She passed away in her sleep in OCT 1992.
("Svet" lived with her family when she was a girl for 4-5 years & NEVER knew that her aunt was a heroine of the Battle of Stalingrad. = After she passed away, her children found her decorations/uniforms/diary/photos/etc. under the floor of the house's attic. Her aunt had told NOBODY, except perhaps her husband who had died in 1990, of her wartime experiences.)
Note: The VAST majority of REAL heroes/heroines don't talk about their war, even if you know enough facts to ask them about it.
(During the run-up to the 1st Audie L. Murphy Day that we ARNG folks sponsored in Greenville, TX, I talked to MAJ Murphy several times by phone, shortly before his untimely death in a plane crash on 28MAY71. = I found him to be VERY modest & SELF-effacing. - He said to me, during one phone call that, "I did nothing that thousands of other guys didn't do just as well, too.")
yours, tex
