Moscow---Lev Netto felt nothing but delight when a crackly radio loudspeaker in a town outside Moscow announced on June 22, 1941 that the Nazis had invaded and the Soviet Union was now at war.
"I was ecstatic at the thought that finally we would have a real war."
The 90-year-old with bright blue eyes and high cheekbones was just 16 then, too young to be called up.
Speaking in his Moscow flat full of paintings and books, he recalled how he saw the then-Soviet capital hastily turn into a wartime city.
He saw women drag the ropes of barrage balloons, or "sausages", while thousands turned out to dig deep trenches in roads to stop tanks.
Initially there was a feeling that Stalin must be right, he said.
"We thought our supreme command knew what it was doing," he told AFP.
But when he saw Soviet forces firing rockets at Nazis who had advanced to just 50 kilometres (31 miles) from Moscow, he realised "we did not hear such reports on the radio".
He witnessed the notorious panic of October 16, 1941, when a sense caught hold that the Soviet authorities had lost control.
People looted shops and warehouses, taking food, clothes and furniture, he recalled.
His father, who was in the military, burned paperwork.
"There were no policemen in sight."
- 'Risky mission' -
Finally called up in 1943, Netto joined an ethnic Estonian unit, since his parents came from there.
He was recruited for a risky mission -- to parachute into Nazi-occupied Estonia to support a budding partisan movement.
"I don't remember it scaring me", Netto said.
Flying over the frontline at night, he and his companions sang songs, fuelled by alcohol. But he sobered up immediately as he parachuted out.
"I remember well the fresh air on my face and the jolly mood passing and the effect of the alcohol disappearing immediately," he said.
The mission turned out to be a fiasco. Planes never dropped promised supplies of food and ammunition.
Worst of all, there was no sign of any partisan movement.
After several weeks, the men spotted troops and heard them speak in Russian.
"It was just wall-to-wall swearing," Netto said.
AFP
