Simonov's first play,
The History of One Love, was written in 1940, and performed on stage at the
Memorial Lenin Komsomol Theater in
Leningrad. He wrote his second play,
A Lad from Our Town, in 1941. That same year he was impressed by Soviet resistance in this place, during which 39 German tanks had been destroyed in one day, and described this episode in
The Living and the Dead trilogy. Studying war correspondence at the
Lenin Military-Political Academy, Simonov attained the service rank of quartermaster of the second rank. At the beginning of
World War II Simonov received a job with the official army newspaper
Krasnaya Zvezda. Simonov rose through the army ranks becoming a senior battalion commissar in 1942, lieutenant colonel in 1943, and a colonel after the war. (right) during
Battle of Kursk, 1943 During the war years, he wrote the plays
Russian People,
Wait for Me,
So It Will Be, the short novel
Days and Nights, and two books of poems,
With You and Without You and
War. His poem "
Wait for Me", about a soldier in the war asking his beloved to wait for his return, remains one of the best-known poems in Russian literature. The poem was addressed to his future wife, the actress
Valentina Serova. Many of his poems for Valentina were included in the book
With You and Without You. As a war correspondent, Simonov served in Romania,
Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia, Poland, and Germany, where he was present at the
Battle of Berlin. After the war his collected reports appeared in
Letters from Czechoslovakia,
Slav Friendship,
Yugoslavian Notebook and
From the Black to the Barents Sea: Notes of a War Correspondent. ==Post-war works==