The Silence of Stalingrad

Frozen fingers wrapped around cold steel, I waited in the ruins of Stalingrad for three

days straight. The temperature dropped to minus forty. My breath could give away my

position, so I learned to breathe through cloth, slow and shallow.

Every muscle screamed to move. I watched a German officer through my scope for

seventy two hours, waiting for the moment. When I finally took that shot,

it ended a siege that had killed thousands. But here's what haunts me.

In that split second before I pulled the trigger, our eyes met. He knew.

And I saw he had a photograph in his hand. The silence after