The Diamond Eye

Mila is summoned by her captain, Sergienko, for a test of her sniper skills with her new weapon. He takes her to a distant hut where the Romanian command post is just visible through rifle sights, telling her to fire. Mila reminds herself of her anger and her desire to return home and then lets training take over. Her captain tells her she is the first recruit he has tested to succeed. She reflects that her success was because “perfection had become a habit” (65). She feels brief regret for the men who died but refocuses on the need to end the invasion. She rejects her captain’s offer to count the two men as her first kills, reflecting that the total is not important to her; only her role in the war effort is.

Mila’s retrospective narration stresses that while her official memoir will emphasize the glory of battle and feature “thoughts of the motherland and Comrade Stalin,” her actual battle experiences were more gruesome (68). She recalls a day on the Odessa battlefields: Another soldier catches her attention because he props up his rifle with a copy of War and Peace, Tolstoy’s famed chronicle of Napoleon’s war with Russia (69).