As a soldier he was a mortar spotter, then assistant to commander of Katyusha battery at North-Caucasian and 4th Ukrainian Fronts.

On the night of May 3–4, 1944 defending Sevastopol he was badly wounded by a shell fragment hitting his face.

After continuous treatment in many hospitals surgeons had not managed to save his eyes; to the end of his life he wore a black mask.

Delirious when unconscious, at short times of conscience I dictated postcard messages to mom trying hard to avoid words of dismay.

From Mamashai I was moved to Saki, then Simferopol, then Kislovodsk Hospital named after 10th Anniversary of October (sanatorium by now) and finally Moscow.

Trips, surgeons, scalpels, bandages and the hardest point - doctors' verdict: "You have everything ahead.

I will never forget that first of May 1948, and the extent of my happiness as I held in my hand an issue of Ogonyok magazine which I bought by the House of Scientists and which had my poems typed on its pages.

[1] In 1946 Eduard entered the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, from which he graduated with honour in 1951.