I’ll tell without bullshitting,
those times for me are gone.
A firing squad was shooting
at me right after dawn.

Who would have seen this coming?
Why did it go this way?
It’s not that I miss something,
I’m not supposed to say.

My own commander almost saved me then,
But someone higher chose to disagree,
And every soldier in this squad shot well,
But there was one who did not shoot at me.

My fortune, unattractive,
has long gone off the track,
One night I took a captive,
but failed to bring him back.

And commissar Suetin,
our unrelenting man,
already was inventing
my story with his pen.

He brought to light for everyone to view
The clipped and stitched material, decree.
And there was nothing anyone could do,
Except the one who did not shoot at me.

The hand fell down the crevice,
commanding men to shoot,
And sent me to the heavens
on my one-way commute.

But then I hear: "Bring medics!
This bastard’s still alive.
There are no formal edicts
to shoot the convicts twice."

And so the doc was clucking with his tongue,
Removing bullets, looking quite at sea.
And I was talking in my raving mind
With this young lad who did not shoot at me.

I licked my wounds forever,
dog-like, so they could heal.
In hospitals, however,
I was in high esteem.

And every sister-cutie
was thinking I was hot:
"Hey, you, un-executed!
It’s time to take a shot!"

Our regiment was fighting pretty far,
And I would send there glucose for his tea,
So it’ll be sweeter to commence the war,
For whom? For one who did not shoot at me.

I drank tea from a saucer,
with alcohol at times,
I saw what war could offer
and managed to survive.

The regiment commander
assigned me to my squad:
"Keep fighting, and that blunder -
I don’t take any fault."

I would be glad to, but down on the grass,
I howled and cursed my fate in blasphemy;
A German sniper finished me at last,
He killed the one who did not shoot at me.