Front-Line Spring

At the Komsomol draft call, Eduard Arkadyevich Asadov left for the front as a volunteer. He fought on the Leningrad, Volkhov, North Caucasus, and 4th Ukrainian Fronts. During the war years, he advanced from a mortar gunner to an officer, a battery commander of the famed Guards mortars “Katyushas” on the North Caucasus and 4th Ukrainian Fronts. Between battles, he wrote poems: “A Letter from the Front,” “In the Trenches,” and others.

On the night of May 3 to May 4, 1944, during the fighting for Sevastopol, Asadov was severely wounded near Belbek and lost his sight. After the explosion of an enemy shell, darkness suddenly fell. Darkness forever. In the hospital, between operations, he wrote poems.