The first was written in 1941 by a young Soviet officer, Konstantin Simonov. Wait For Me was intended for his girlfriend Valentina Serova but ended up being published in Pravda. Soldiers cut it out of the paper, copied it out as they sat in the trenches, learned it by heart and sent it back in letters to wives and girlfriends. It was found in the breast pockets of the killed and wounded.
Wait for me, and I'll return
Only wait very hard
Wait when you are filled with sorrow...
As you watch the yellow rain
Wait when wind swipes the fallen snow
Wait in the sweltering heat
Wait when the others have stopped waiting,
Forgetting their yesterdays.
Wait even when from afar no letters come to you
Wait even when others are tired of waiting...
Wait even when my son and mother cry
And believe I am dead.
And when friends sit around the fire,
Drinking to my memory,
Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.
Wait. For I'll return, defying every death.
And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.
They will never understand that in the midst of death,
You with you waiting saved me.
Only you and I know how I survived.
It's because you waited, as no one else did.
