The most terrible incidents from the history of the Second World War - a little of good

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“Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...” The truth about women in the war, which was not written about in the newspapers...

For Victory Day, blogger radulova published memoirs of women veterans from the book by Svetlana Alexievich.

“We drove for many days... We left with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They sing. They wave at us, some with headscarves, some with caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they were dead in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we, instead of them... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in the locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. I kissed the medallion before the fight...” “One night, a whole company conducted reconnaissance in force in our regiment’s sector. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the soldiers wouldn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” She didn’t listen and crawled. She found a wounded man and dragged him for eight hours, tying his arm with a belt. She dragged him alive. The commander found out and rashly announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. But the deputy regiment commander reacted differently: “Deserves a reward.” At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen she turned gray. At nineteen years old last battle

Both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And they considered me dead... At nineteen... My granddaughter is like this now. I look at her and don’t believe it. Child!”

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“And when he appeared for the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and my hands somehow began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him in optical sight, I see well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It’s not a woman’s business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"

“And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself would not go to war. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What does it mean, for example, to pull a wounded man out of the battlefield? I’ll tell you now... We went on the attack, and let’s mow us down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. Everyone was lying down. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are hitting and they don’t stop firing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were awarded sparingly; at the beginning of the war, awards were not scattered. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war there was not enough of him. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - these also had to be carried. In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal “For Military Merit”, for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From the bullets...”

“What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, my whole body tensed up from this shock, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”

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“I was thrown by a hurricane wave to brick wall. I lost consciousness... When I came to my senses, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely opened her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. I meet ours in the corridor older sister, she didn’t recognize me, asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not there.” They quickly bandaged my head, left hand above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. It was getting dark before my eyes and sweat was pouring out. I started handing out dinner and fell. They brought me back to consciousness, and all I could hear was: “Hurry! Hurry up!” And again - “Hurry! Hurry up!” A few days later they took more blood from me for the seriously wounded.”

“We were young and went to the front. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom tried it on at home... I have grown ten centimeters..."

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“They organized nursing courses, and my father took my sister and me there. I am fifteen years old, and my sister is fourteen. He said: “This is all I can give to win. My girls...” There was no other thought then. A year later I went to the front...”

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“Our mother had no sons... And when Stalingrad was besieged, we voluntarily went to the front. Together. The whole family: mother and five daughters, and by this time the father had already fought…”

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“I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defends the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everyone in the village would see that his daughter was at the front...”

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“I remember they let me go on leave. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, I really loved candy. I say:
- Give me some sweets.
The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what are cards, what is a blockade? All the people in line turned to me, and I had a rifle bigger than me. When they gave them to us, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And everyone suddenly began to ask, the whole line:
- Give her some sweets. Cut out the coupons from us.
And they gave it to me.”

“And for the first time in my life, it happened... Ours... Women's... I saw blood on myself, and I screamed:
- I was hurt...
During reconnaissance, we had a paramedic with us, an elderly man. He comes to me:
- Where did it hurt?
- I don’t know where... But blood...
He, like a father, told me everything... I went to reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: either my machine gun failed, or we were surrounded. You wake up and your teeth are grinding. Do you remember where you are? There or here?”

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“I went to the front as a materialist. An atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was taught well. And there... There I began to pray... I always prayed before the battle, I read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... The meaning is one, that I return to mom and dad. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. No one saw me pray. I am secretly. She secretly prayed. Carefully. Because... We were different then, different people lived then. You understand?"

“It was impossible to attack us with uniforms: they were always in the blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar on it. In total, I carried out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion... They were carrying men two to three times heavier than us. And they are even more seriously wounded. You are dragging him and his weapon, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You put eighty kilograms on yourself and drag it. You lose... You go after the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And you yourself have forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore...”

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“I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment...

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“I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I’m all white. I was seriously wounded, concussed, and I couldn’t hear well in one ear. My mother greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night.” My brother died at the front. She cried: “It’s the same now - give birth to girls or boys.”

“But I’ll say something else... The worst thing for me in war is wearing men’s underpants. That was scary. And this somehow... I can’t express myself... Well, first of all, it’s very ugly... You’re at war, you’re going to die for your Motherland, and you’re wearing men’s underpants. Overall, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's underpants were long then. Wide. Sewed from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them are wearing men's underpants. Oh my God! In winter and summer. Four years... We crossed the Soviet border... We finished off, as our commissar said during political classes, the beast in its own den. Near the first Polish village they changed our clothes, gave us new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's panties and bras for the first time. For the first time throughout the war. Haaaa... Well, I see... We saw normal women's underwear... Why aren't you laughing? Are you crying... Well, why?”

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“At the age of eighteen, on the Kursk Bulge, I was awarded the medal “For Military Merit” and the Order of the Red Star, at the age of nineteen - the Order Patriotic War second degree. When new additions arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They were also eighteen to nineteen years old, and they asked with ridicule: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in battle?” They pester you with jokes: “Do bullets penetrate the armor of a tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Shchegolevatykh. His leg was broken. I splint him, and he asks me for forgiveness: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then...”

“We disguised ourselves. We are sitting. We are waiting for night to finally make an attempt to break through. And Lieutenant Misha T., the battalion commander was wounded, and he was performing the duties of a battalion commander, he was twenty years old, and began to remember how he loved to dance and play the guitar. Then he asks:
-Have you even tried it?
- What? What have you tried? “But I was terribly hungry.”
- Not what, but who... Babu!
And before the war there were cakes like this. With that name.
- No-no...
- I haven’t tried it yet either. You’ll die and won’t know what love is... They’ll kill us at night...
- Fuck you, fool! “It dawned on me what he meant.”
They died for life, not yet knowing what life was. We have only read about everything in books. I loved movies about love...”

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“She shielded her loved one from the mine fragment. The fragments fly - it's just a fraction of a second... How did she make it? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed to live. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave... He carried it and kissed it... There were five of us, Konakovo girls... And I alone returned to my mother...”

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“It was organized Separate squad smoke mask, commanded by the former division commander torpedo boats Captain-Lieutenant Alexander Bogdanov. Girls, mostly with secondary technical education or after the first years of college. Our task is to protect the ships and cover them with smoke. The shelling will begin, the sailors are waiting: “I wish the girls would put up some smoke. It’s calmer with him.” They drove out in cars with a special mixture, and at that time everyone hid in a bomb shelter. We, as they say, invited fire upon ourselves. The Germans were hitting this smoke screen...”

“I’m bandaging the tanker... The battle is on, there’s a roar. He asks: “Girl, what’s your name?” Even some kind of compliment. It was so strange for me to pronounce my name, Olya, in this roar, in this horror.”

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“And here I am the gun commander. And that means me - in one thousand three hundred and fifty-seven anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was bleeding from the nose and ears, complete indigestion set in... My throat was dry to the point of vomiting... At night it was not so scary, but during the day it was very scary. It seems that the plane is flying straight at you, specifically at your gun. It's ramming at you! This is one moment... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is over!”

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“And by the time they found me, my legs were severely frostbitten. Apparently, I was covered in snow, but I was breathing, and a hole appeared in the snow... Such a tube... The ambulance dogs found me. They dug up the snow and brought my earflap hat. There I had a passport of death, everyone had such passports: which relatives, where to report. They dug me out, put me on a raincoat, my coat was full of blood... But no one paid attention to my legs... I was in the hospital for six months. They wanted to amputate the leg, amputate it above the knee, because gangrene was setting in. And here I was a little faint-hearted, I didn’t want to remain living as a cripple. Why should I live? Who needs me? Neither father nor mother. A burden in life. Well, who needs me, stump! I’ll choke..."

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“We received a tank there. We were both senior driver mechanics, and there should only be one driver in a tank. The command decided to appoint me as commander of the IS-122 tank, and my husband as senior mechanic-driver. And so we reached Germany. Both are wounded. We have awards. There were quite a few female tankers on medium tanks, but on heavy tanks I was the only one.”

“We were told to dress in military uniform, and I’m about fifty meters. I got into my trousers, and the girls upstairs tied them around me.”

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“As long as he hears... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, is it really possible to die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He’s already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I’m still whispering something to him... I’m calming him down... The names have been erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain...”

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“We had a nurse captured... A day later, when we recaptured that village, dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers were lying everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her breasts were cut off... She was impaled... It was frosty, and she was white and white, and her hair was all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack we found letters from home and a green rubber bird. A children's toy..."

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“Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. No other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I gnawed it, bandaged it... I bandaged it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I’ll fight again.” In a fever..."

“The whole war I was afraid that my legs would be crippled. I had beautiful legs. What to a man? He’s not so scared if he even loses his legs. Still a hero. Groom! If a woman gets hurt, then her fate will be decided. Women's destiny..."

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“The men will build a fire at the bus stop, shake out the lice, and dry themselves. Where are we? Let's run for some shelter and undress there. I had a knitted sweater, so lice sat on every millimeter, in every loop. Look, you'll feel nauseous. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice... I had them all...”

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“Near Makeyevka, in Donbass, I was wounded, wounded in the thigh. This little fragment came in and sat there like a pebble. I feel it’s blood, I put an individual bag there too. And then I run and bandage it. It’s a shame to tell anyone, the girl was wounded, but where – in the buttock. In the ass... At sixteen years old, this is a shame to say to anyone. It's awkward to admit. Well, so I ran and bandaged until I lost consciousness from loss of blood. The boots are full..."

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“The doctor arrived, did a cardiogram, and they asked me:
- When did you have a heart attack?
- What heart attack?
- Your whole heart is scarred.
And these scars are apparently from the war. You approach the target, you are shaking all over. The whole body is covered with trembling, because there is fire below: fighters are shooting, anti-aircraft guns are shooting... We flew mainly at night. For a while they tried to send us on missions during the day, but they immediately abandoned this idea. Our “Po-2” shot down from a machine gun... We made up to twelve sorties per night. I saw the famous ace pilot Pokryshkin when he arrived from a combat flight. He was a strong man, he was not twenty or twenty-three years old like us: while the plane was being refueled, the technician managed to take off his shirt and unscrew it. It was dripping as if he had been in the rain. Now you can easily imagine what happened to us. You arrive and you can’t even get out of the cabin, they pulled us out. They couldn’t carry the tablet anymore, they dragged it along the ground.”

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“We strived... We didn’t want people to say about us: “Oh, those women!” And we tried harder than men, we still had to prove that we weren’t worse than men. And for a long time there was an arrogant, condescending attitude towards us: “These women will fight…”

“Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream! One day the division commander arrived, saw me and asked: “What kind of teenager is this? Why are you holding him? He should be sent to study.”

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“We were happy when we took out a pot of water to wash our hair. If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was old man and he understood everything, he didn’t take any extra linen out of his duffel bag, and if he was young, he would definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves...”

“Let’s go... There are about two hundred girls, and behind us there are about two hundred men. It's hot. Hot Summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild... And after us there are red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide anything here? The soldiers follow behind and pretend that they don’t notice anything... They don’t look at their feet... Our trousers dried up, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds there, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything... We kept watch: when the soldiers hung their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces... Later they guessed and laughed: “Master, give us some other underwear. The girls took ours.” There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... Not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, appeared only two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts... Well, let's go... Wearing boots! My legs were also fried. Let's go... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The bombing is terrible, men - who knows where to hide. Our name is... But we don’t hear the bombing, we have no time for bombing, we’d rather go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... That's it... There was shame worse than death. And several girls died in the water...”

“Finally got the appointment. They brought me to my platoon... The soldiers looked: some with mockery, some even with anger, and others shrugging their shoulders - everything was immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that, supposedly, you have a new platoon commander, everyone immediately howled: “Oooh…” One even spat: “Ugh!” And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me.”

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“We set out on a mission in a quick march. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of long-range artillerymen began to pass, suddenly one jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and looked for a “frame” in the sky. I don't detect any plane. It's quiet all around, not a sound. Where is that “frame”? Then one of my sappers asked permission to leave the ranks. I see him heading towards that artilleryman and slapping him in the face. Before I had time to think of anything, the artilleryman shouted: “Boys, they’re beating our people!” Other artillerymen jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw down the probes, mine detectors, and duffel bags and rushed to his rescue. A fight ensued. I couldn't understand what happened? Why did the platoon get involved in a fight? Every minute counts, and there’s such a mess here. I give the command: “Platoon, get into formation!” Nobody pays attention to me. Then I pulled out a pistol and shot into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout. By the time everyone was calmed down, a significant amount of time had passed. The captain approached my platoon and asked: “Who is the eldest here?” I reported. His eyes widened, he was even confused. Then he asked: “What happened here?” I couldn't answer because I didn't really know the reason. Then my platoon commander came out and told me how it all happened. This is how I learned what “frame” was, what an offensive word it was for a woman. Something like a whore. Frontline curse..."

“Are you asking about love? I’m not afraid to tell the truth... I was a pepezhe, which stands for “field wife.” Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander... I didn’t love him. He was a good man, but I didn't love him. And I went to his dugout a few months later. Where to go? There are only men around, it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. During the battle it was not as scary as after the battle, especially when we were resting and re-forming. As they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Little sister!”, and after the battle everyone will guard you... You won’t get out of the dugout at night... Did the other girls tell you this or didn’t they admit it? They were ashamed, I think... They kept silent. Proud! And it all happened... But they are silent about it... It is not accepted... No... For example, I was the only woman in the battalion who lived in a common dugout. Together with men. They gave me a place, but what a separate place it is, the whole dugout is six meters. I woke up at night from waving my arms, then I would hit one on the cheeks, on the hands, then on the other. I was wounded, ended up in the hospital and waved my hands there. The nanny will wake you up at night: “What are you doing?” Who will you tell?”

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“We buried him... He was lying on a raincoat, he had just been killed. The Germans are firing at us. We need to bury it quickly... Right now... We found old birch trees and chose the one that stood at a distance from the old oak tree. The biggest. Near her... I tried to remember so that I could come back and find this place later. Here the village ends, here there is a fork... But how to remember? How to remember if one birch tree is already burning before our eyes... How? They began to say goodbye... They told me: “You are the first!” My heart jumped, I realized... What... Everyone, it turns out, knows about my love. Everyone knows... The thought struck: maybe he knew too? Here... He lies... Now they will lower him into the ground... They will bury him. They’ll cover it with sand... But I was terribly happy at the thought that maybe he knew too. What if he liked me too? As if he was alive and would answer me something now... I remembered how on New Year he gave me a German chocolate bar. I didn’t eat it for a month, I carried it in my pocket. Now it doesn’t reach me, I remember all my life... This moment... Bombs are flying... He... Lying on a raincoat... This moment... And I am happy... I stand and smile to myself. Abnormal. I’m glad that maybe he knew about my love... I came up and kissed him. I’ve never kissed a man before... This was the first...”

“How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there!” They lured young p... our men. Front-line b... Military bitches..." They insulted me in every way... The Russian dictionary is rich... A guy is seeing me off from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What happened to you?" - "Never mind. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet in boots were worn out - size forty. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I'm used to being responsible for myself. Kind words I waited, but didn’t understand them. They are like children's to me. At the front among the men there is a strong Russian mate. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin.”

“My legs disappeared... My legs were cut off... They saved me there, in the forest... The operation took place in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there wasn’t even iodine; they sawed my legs, both legs, with a simple saw... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away, we went to another partisan detachment to get iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw... A carpenter's saw... We had a surgeon, he himself also had no legs, he talked about me, other doctors said this: “I bow to her. I have operated on so many men, but I have never seen such men. He won’t scream.” I held on... I'm used to being strong in public..."

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Running up to the car, she opened the door and began to report:
- Comrade General, on your orders...
I heard:
- Leave...
She stood at attention. The general didn’t even turn to me, but looked at the road through the car window. He is nervous and often looks at his watch. I am standing. He turns to his orderly:
- Where is that sapper commander?
I tried to report again:
- Comrade General...
He finally turned to me and with annoyance:
- Why the hell do I need you!
I understood everything and almost burst out laughing. Then his orderly was the first to guess:
- Comrade General, maybe she is the commander of the sappers?
The general stared at me:
- Who are you?
- Comrade General, sapper platoon commander.
-Are you a platoon commander? – he was indignant.

- Are these your sappers working?
- That's right, Comrade General!
- Got it wrong: general, general...
He got out of the car, walked a few steps forward, then came back to me. He stood and looked around. And to his orderly:

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“My husband was a senior driver, and I was a driver. For four years we traveled in a heated vehicle, and our son came with us. During the entire war he didn’t even see a cat. When he caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Dear little kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don't see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you.” A child... Everything about a child should be childish... He fell asleep with the words: “Mommy, we have a cat. We have a real home now.”

“Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass... Our signalman. She dies - a bullet hit her heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. She looked: “What a pity, girls.” Then she paused and smiled at us: “Girls, am I really going to die?” At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she shouts: “Don’t die! Do not die! You have a letter from home...” Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting... Our Klava sat down next to her and opened the envelope. A letter from my mother: “My dear, beloved daughter...” A doctor is standing next to me, he says: “This is a miracle. Miracle!! She lives contrary to all the laws of medicine...” They finished reading the letter... And only then Anya closed her eyes...”

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“I stayed with him one day, then the second, and I decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’ll stay here with you.” He went to the authorities, but I couldn’t breathe: well, how can they say that she wouldn’t be able to walk for twenty-four hours? This is the front, that's clear. And suddenly I see the authorities coming into the dugout: major, colonel. Everyone shakes hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and each said his word that the wife found her husband in the trench, this is real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let me look at such a woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life... What do I still have left? Enlisted as a nurse. I went with him on reconnaissance. The mortar hits, I see - it fell. I think: killed or wounded? I run there, and the mortar hits, and the commander shouts: “Where are you going, damn woman!!” I’ll crawl up - alive... Alive!”

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“Two years ago, our chief of staff Ivan Mikhailovich Grinko visited me. He has been retired for a long time. He sat at the same table. I also baked pies. She and her husband are talking, reminiscing... They started talking about our girls... And I started to roar: “Honor, you say, respect. And the girls are almost all single. Unmarried. They live in communal apartments. Who took pity on them? Defended? Where did you all go after the war? Traitors!!” In a word, I ruined their festive mood... The chief of staff was sitting in your place. “Show me,” he banged his fist on the table, “who offended you.” Just show it to me!” He asked for forgiveness: “Valya, I can’t tell you anything except tears.”

………………………………..

“I reached Berlin with the army... I returned to my village with two Orders of Glory and medals. I lived for three days, and on the fourth my mother lifted me out of bed and said: “Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...” “Don’t touch my soul. Write, like others, about my awards...”

………………………………..

“Near Stalingrad... I’m dragging two wounded. If I drag one through, I leave it, then the other. And so I pull them one by one, because the wounded are very serious, they cannot be left, both, as it is easier to explain, have their legs cut off high, they are bleeding. Minutes are precious here, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled further away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I discovered that I was dragging one of our tankers and one German... I was horrified: our people were dying there, and I was saving a German. I was in a panic... There, in the smoke, I couldn’t figure it out... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming... Ah-ah... They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else’s medallion, someone else’s watch, everything was someone else’s. This form is cursed. So what now? I pull our wounded man and think: “Should I go back for the German or not?” I understood that if I left him, he would soon die. From loss of blood... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag them both... This is Stalingrad... The most terrible battles. The best of the best. My you are diamond... There cannot be one heart for hatred and another for love. A person has only one.”

“The war ended, they found themselves terribly unprotected. Here's my wife. She is a smart woman, and she has a bad attitude towards military girls. He believes that they were going to war to find suitors, that they were all having affairs there. Although in fact, we are having a sincere conversation; most often these were honest girls. Clean. But after the war... After the dirt, after the lice, after the deaths... I wanted something beautiful. Bright. Beautiful women... I had a friend, one beautiful girl, as I now understand, loved him at the front. Nurse. But he didn’t marry her, he was demobilized and found himself another, prettier one. And he is unhappy with his wife. Now he remembers that one, his military love, she would have been his friend. And after the front, he didn’t want to marry her, because for four years he saw her only in worn-out boots and a man’s quilted jacket. We tried to forget the war. And they forgot their girls too...”

…………………………………..

“My friend... I won’t give her last name, in case she gets offended... Military paramedic... Wounded three times. The war ended, I entered medical school. She didn’t find any of her relatives; they all died. She was terribly poor, washing the entrances at night to feed herself. But she didn’t admit to anyone that she was a disabled war veteran and had benefits; she tore up all the documents. I ask: “Why did you break it?” She cries: “Who would marry me?” “Well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” She cries even louder: “I could use these pieces of paper now. I’m seriously ill.” Can you imagine? Crying.”

…………………………………….

“We went to Kineshma, this is the Ivanovo region, to his parents. I was traveling like a heroine, I never thought that you could meet a front-line girl like that. We have gone through so much, saved so many mothers of children, wives of husbands. And suddenly... I recognized the insult, I heard offensive words. Before this, except for: “dear sister”, “dear sister”, I had not heard anything else... We sat down to drink tea in the evening, the mother took her son to the kitchen and cried: “Who did you marry? At the front... You have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now?” And now, when I remember this, I want to cry. Imagine: I brought the record, I loved it very much. There were these words: and you have the right to walk in the most fashionable shoes... This is about a front-line girl. I set it up, the older sister came up and broke it in front of my eyes, saying, “You have no rights.” They destroyed all of mine front-line photos... We, front-line girls, have had enough. And after the war it happened, after the war we had another war. Also scary. Somehow the men left us. They didn't cover it. It was different at the front.”

……………………………………

“It was then that they began to honor us, thirty years later... They invited us to meetings... But at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. Men wore them, but women did not. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Completely different... Let me tell you, they took away our victory... They did not share the victory with us. And it was a shame... It’s unclear...”

…………………………………..

“The first medal “For Courage”... The battle began. The fire is heavy. The soldiers lay down. Command: “Forward! For the Motherland!”, and they lie there. Again the command, again they lie down. I took off my hat so they could see: the girl stood up... And they all stood up, and we went into battle...”

Not so long ago Russian media wrote animatedly that the Krasnodar Higher Military aviation school started accepting applications from girls. Dozens of people immediately poured into the selection committee wanting to sit at the controls of a combat aircraft.

IN Peaceful time girls who master military specialties seem to us to be something exotic. But when the threat of war looms over the country, the fair sex often displays amazing courage and resilience, in no way inferior to men. This was the case during the Great Patriotic War, when women fought at the front equally with men. They mastered a variety of military professions and performed military service as nurses, pilots, sappers, intelligence officers and even snipers.

In difficult war conditions, young girls, many of whom were yesterday's schoolgirls, performed feats and died for the Fatherland. At the same time, even in the trenches they continued to preserve femininity, showing it in everyday life and reverent care for their comrades.

Few of our contemporaries are able to imagine what Soviet women had to go through during the war. There are already few of them themselves - those who survived and managed to convey precious memories to their descendants.

One of the custodians of these memories is our colleague, chief specialist scientific department RVIO, candidate historical sciences Victoria Petrakova. She dedicated her treatise the topic of women in war, the topic of her research is Soviet girls snipers.

She told Istoria.RF about the hardships that befell these heroines (Victoria was lucky enough to communicate with some of them personally).

“Parachutes were deployed to carry bombs on board”

Victoria, I understand that the topic of women at the front is very broad, so let’s take a closer look at the Great Patriotic War.

The massive participation of Soviet women in the Great Patriotic War is an unprecedented phenomenon in world history. Neither Nazi Germany nor the allied countries had such a large number of women participating in the war, and, moreover, women did not master combat specialties abroad. For us, they were pilots, snipers, tank crews, sappers, miners...

- Did Russian women start fighting only in 1941? Why were they taken into the army?

This happened with the emergence of new military specialties, the development of technology, and involvement in fighting large quantity human resources. Women were drafted to free up men for more difficult military activities. Our women were on the battlefields and during Crimean War, both in the First World War and in the Civil War.

- Is it known how many women in the Soviet Union fought during the Great Patriotic War?

- Historians have not yet established the exact figure. IN various works the number is called from 800 thousand to 1 million. During the war years, these women mastered more than 20 military professions.

- Were there many female pilots among them?

- As for female pilots, we had three female aviation regiments. The decree on their creation was issued on October 8, 1941. This happened thanks to the famous pilot Marina Mikhailovna Raskova, who was already a Hero at that time Soviet Union and turned directly to Stalin with such a proposal. Girls actively went into aviation, because at that time there were many different flying clubs. Moreover, in September 1938, Polina Osipenko, Valentina Grizodubova and Marina Raskova made a direct flight to Moscow - Far East lasting more than 26 hours. For completing this flight they were awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union.” They became the first women Heroes of the Soviet Union before the war, and during the war Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became the first. Thus, the history of women in aviation during the war years took on a completely new meaning. As I already said, we had three aviation regiments: the 586th, 587th and 588th. The 588th was subsequently (in February 1943) renamed the 46th Guards Taman Regiment. The pilots of this particular regiment were nicknamed “Night Witches” by the Germans.

- Which of the female military pilots of that time could you especially highlight?

- Among the women who piloted fighter jets, one of the most famous is Lydia (Lily) Litvyak, who was called the “White Lily of Stalingrad.” She went down in history as the most successful female fighter: she had 16 victories - 12 individual and 4 group. Lydia began her combat journey in the skies over Saratov, then defended the skies of Stalingrad in the hardest days of September 1942. She died on August 1, 1943 - she did not return from a combat mission. Moreover, it’s interesting: she had a combat friend who said that Lydia said that the worst thing for her would be to go missing, because then the memory of her would be erased. Actually, that’s what happened. And only in the early 1970s in the Donetsk region, search teams found a mass grave, in which they found a girl. Having studied the remains and compared documents, it was established that this was Lydia Litvyak. In 1990, she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the already mentioned 46th Women's Aviation Regiment there were many who were awarded this title posthumously. Female pilots, when they left for a combat mission at night, sometimes deployed parachutes. And the planes they flew on were practically made of plywood. That is, if shells hit them, the planes instantly ignited, and the pilots could no longer eject.

- Why didn’t they take parachutes with them?

- To take more bombs on board. Despite the fact that the plane could easily catch fire, its advantage was that it was slow-moving. This made it possible to fly up to enemy positions unnoticed, which increased the accuracy of bombing. But if a shell did hit the plane, many were burned alive in the dive bombers.

“The men cried when they saw the girls die”

- Is it known what percentage of Soviet women were able to survive until the end of the war?

This is very difficult to establish, given the leadership’s not entirely orderly mobilization policy towards women during the war. There are no statistics on losses among women at all! In the book by G. F. Krivosheev (Grigory Fedotovich Krivosheev - Soviet and Russian military historian, author of several works on military losses of the USSR Armed Forces - Note ed.), which is the most famous study to date, which contains the most accurate data on losses, it is said that women were included in the total number of losses - there were no distinctions by gender. Therefore, the number of women who died during the Great Patriotic War is still unknown.

How did women cope with everyday difficulties during the war? After all, here they were required not only moral, but also physical endurance.

- Women's health at the front was practically atrophied; the body was constantly in a state of mobilization - both mentally and physiologically. It is clear that after the war people “thawed out” and came to their senses, but during the war it simply could not be any other way. A person had to survive, he had to carry out a combat mission. The conditions were very extreme. In addition, women ended up in mixed units. Imagine: infantry marches for tens of kilometers - it was difficult to solve some everyday issues when there were only men around. In addition, not all women were subject to mobilization. Those who had small children or elderly dependent parents were not taken to war. Because the military leadership understood that all the experiences associated with this could subsequently affect the psychological state at the front.

- What was required to pass this selection?

It was necessary to have a minimum education and have a very good physical condition. Only those with excellent eyesight could become snipers. By the way, many Siberian girls were taken to the front - they were very strong girls. Among other things, they were attentive to psychological state person. We cannot help but remember Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who during the hardest days of the Moscow Battle became a reconnaissance saboteur. Unfortunately, various negative statements are currently appearing that insult the memory of this girl and devalue her feat. For some reason, people do not try to realize that she entered the reconnaissance and sabotage unit, where, naturally, they did not accept people with mental disabilities. To serve there, it was necessary to undergo a medical examination, obtain various certificates, and so on. This unit was commanded by Major, hero of the Spanish War, the legendary Arthur Sprogis. He would clearly see some deviations. Therefore, the very fact that she was enrolled in this unit and she became a reconnaissance saboteur indicates that the person was mentally stable.

- How did men treat women soldiers? Were they perceived as equal comrades in arms?

It all turned out very interesting. For example, when female snipers arrived at the front, men treated them with irony and distrust: “They brought girls!” And when the first control shooting began and these girls knocked out all the targets, respect for them, of course, increased. Naturally, they were taken care of; snipers were even called “little pieces of glass.” They were treated like fathers. The sniper Klavdia Efremovna Kalugina told me a very touching story. She had three sniper pairs, and everyone was called Mashami. All three died. Her first sniper pair, Masha Chigvintseva, died in the summer of 1944. Then Operation Bagration was underway - Belarus was liberated. Masha moved, and, apparently, the optics blurred in the sun. The German sniper fired and hit her just below the right eye, right through. Masha fell dead. Klavdia Efremovna said that at that moment she screamed throughout the entire line of defense. When she cried, soldiers ran out of the dugout and tried to calm her down: “Don’t cry, the German will hear and open mortar fire!” But nothing worked. This is understandable: after all, with a sniper couple you share shelter, food, secrets, this is your very close person. She was buried in the summer in a field where there were many wildflowers: the grave was decorated with daisies and bells. Everyone came to bury Masha, right down to the unit commanders. But it was already 1944, and the men had seen a lot of death and blood. But still, everyone cried at Masha’s funeral. When they lowered her into the ground, the commander said: “Sleep well, dear Marusya.” And all the men cried when they saw the young girls dying.

“When they came back, all sorts of unpleasant things were said.”

- In which troops was it most dangerous for women to serve?

- In 1943, a study was conducted on the Leningrad Front on injuries among women in various military professions. Naturally, he was highest in the military medical service - nurses pulled the wounded from the battlefield under bullets and shrapnel. Injuries to signalmen and miners were very common. If we talk about snipers, then the injury rate of this military profession, for all its danger and complexity, was relatively low.

- Were there many women among the snipers? How were they trained?

- In the Soviet Union, there was the only women's sniper school not only in our country, but throughout the world. In November 1942, women's sniper courses were created at the Central School of Sniper Instructors (male). Then, in May 1943, the Central Women's School appeared sniper training, it existed until May 1945. This school graduated about two thousand female cadets. Of these, losses are 185 people, that is, 10 percent of total number. Firstly, snipers were protected and not allowed to attack: they had to fight only in defense. Snipers mostly died while performing a combat mission. This could happen due to accidental negligence: during sniper duels (when the optical sight glared in the sun, the German sniper fired a shot, and, accordingly, the sniper from the opposite side died) or under mortar fire.

- What happened to these heroines after the end of the war?

Their destinies turned out differently. In general, the topic of post-war rehabilitation of female military personnel is very complex. The memory of women's feats during the war is very for a long time was consigned to oblivion. Even the veteran grandmothers themselves told how they were embarrassed to talk about the fact that they fought. It was formed negative attitude in a society that relied on different stories about “camping field wives.” For some reason this cast a shadow on all the women who fought. When they returned, unfortunately, all sorts of unpleasant things could be said to them. But I talked with them and I know what everyday life at the front and combat work cost them. After all, many returned with health problems and were then unable to have children. Take the same snipers: they lay in the snow for two days, received maxillofacial wounds... These women endured a lot.

- Were there really no war novels with a happy ending?

There were happy cases when love was born during the war, and then people got married. There were sad stories when one of the lovers died. But all the same, as a rule, the stories of the same “field wives” are, first of all, crippled women's destinies. And we have no moral right to judge, much less condemn. Although even today someone, apparently having no respect for memory, pulls out only individual stories from the multifaceted history of the war, turning them into “fried” facts. And this is very sad. When a woman returned from war, the process of getting used to peaceful life took a long time. It was necessary to master peaceful professions. Worked in perfect different areas: in museums, in factories, some were accountants, there were also those who went to teach theory at higher military schools. People returned psychologically broken; it was very difficult to build a personal life.

“Not everyone could take the first shot”

After all, women are gentle and sensitive creatures, it is quite difficult to associate them with war, murder... Those girls who went to the front, what were they like?

One of my articles describes the story of Lydia Yakovlevna Anderman. She was a sniper, holder of the Order of Glory; unfortunately, she is no longer alive. She said that after the war she dreamed about the first killed German for a very long time. At school, future snipers were taught to shoot exclusively at targets, and at the front they had to face living people. Due to the fact that the distance could be small and the optical sight brought the target 3.5 times closer, it was often possible to see the enemy’s uniform and the outline of his face. Lidia Yakovlevna later recalled: “I saw through the scope that he had a red beard and some kind of red hair.” She dreamed of him for a long time even after the war. But not everyone was able to fire a shot right away: natural pity and qualities inherent in female nature made themselves felt when performing a combat mission. Of course, the women understood that there was an enemy in front of them, but it was still a living person.

- How did they overcome themselves?

The death of comrades, the realization of what the enemy is doing on native land, tragic news from home - all this inevitably had an impact on the female psyche. And in such a situation, the question of whether it was necessary to go and carry out my combat mission did not arise: “...I must take up arms and take revenge myself. I already knew that I had no relatives left. My mother is gone...” recalled one of the snipers. Women snipers began to appear everywhere on the fronts in 1943. At that time, the siege of Leningrad had been going on for several years, villages and hamlets of Belarus were burned, and many had their loved ones and comrades killed. It was clear to everyone what the enemy had brought to us. Sometimes they ask: “What did you need to have to be a sniper? Maybe it was some kind of character predisposition, innate cruelty? Of course not. When you ask such questions, you need to try to “immerse yourself” in the psychology of a person who lived during wartime. Because they were the same ordinary girls! Like everyone else, they dreamed of marriage, created a modest military life, and took care of themselves. It’s just that the war was a very mobilizing factor for the psyche.

- You said that the memory of a woman’s feat was forgotten for many years. What has changed over time?

The first ones research papers about the participation of women in the Great Patriotic War began to appear only in the 1960s. Now, thank God, dissertations and monographs are written about this. The feat of women is now, of course, already established in public consciousness. But, unfortunately, it’s a little late, because many of them no longer see this. And many, perhaps, died forgotten, never knowing that anyone had written about them. In general, for studying human psychology in war, personal sources are simply invaluable: memories, memoirs, interviews with veterans. After all, they talk about things that cannot be found in any archival document. It is clear that the war cannot be idealized; these were not only exploits - it was both dirty and scary. But when we write or talk about this, we must always be as correct as possible and careful about the memory of those people. In no case should we attach labels, because we do not know even a thousandth part of what actually happened there. Many destinies were broken and distorted. And many veterans, despite everything they had to endure, retained a clear outlook, a sense of humor, and optimism until the end of their days. We ourselves can learn a lot from them. And the main thing is to always remember them with great respect and gratitude.

“Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...”

The truth about women in the war, which was not written about in the newspapers...

Memoirs of female veterans from the book by Svetlana Alexievich “War has no woman's face" - one of the most famous books about the Great Patriotic War, where the war was first shown through the eyes of a woman. The book has been translated into 20 languages ​​and included in the school and university curriculum:

• “Once at night a whole company conducted reconnaissance in force in our regiment’s sector. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the soldiers wouldn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” She didn’t listen and crawled. She found a wounded man and dragged him for eight hours, tying his arm with a belt. She dragged him alive. The commander found out and rashly announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. But the deputy regiment commander reacted differently: “Deserves a reward.” At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen she turned gray. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And they considered me dead... At nineteen... My granddaughter is like this now. I look at her and don’t believe it. Child!
• “And when he appeared the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and my hands somehow began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It's not a woman's business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"



• “And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself would not go to war. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What does it mean, for example, to pull a wounded man out of the battlefield? We went on the attack, and let us be mowed down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. Everyone was lying down. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are hitting and they don’t stop firing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were awarded sparingly; at the beginning of the war, awards were not scattered. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war there was not enough of him. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - these also had to be carried. In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal “For Military Merit”, for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From under bullets..."
• “What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, because of this shock my whole body tensed up, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”
• “I was thrown against a brick wall by a hurricane wave. I lost consciousness... When I came to my senses, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely opened her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I meet our older sister, she didn’t recognize me and asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not there.” They quickly bandaged my head and my left arm above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. It was getting dark before my eyes and sweat was pouring out. I started handing out dinner and fell. They brought me back to consciousness, and all I could hear was: “Hurry! Hurry up!” And again - “Hurry! Hurry up!” A few days later they took more blood from me for the seriously wounded.”



• “We were young and went to the front. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom tried it on at home... I have grown ten centimeters..."
• “Our mother had no sons... And when Stalingrad was besieged, we voluntarily went to the front. Together. The whole family: mother and five daughters, and by this time the father had already fought ... "
• “I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defends the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everyone in the village would see that his daughter was at the front...”
• “I remember they let me go on leave. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, I really loved candy. I say:
  - Give me some sweets.
  The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what are cards, what is a blockade? All the people in line turned to me, and I had a rifle bigger than me. When they were given to us, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And everyone suddenly began to ask, the whole line:
  - Give her some sweets. Cut out the coupons from us.
  And they gave it to me."



• “And for the first time in my life, it happened... Ours... Feminine... I saw blood on myself, and I screamed:
  - I was hurt...
  During reconnaissance, we had a paramedic with us, an elderly man. He comes to me:
  - Where did it hurt?
  - I don’t know where... But blood...
  He, like a father, told me everything... I went to reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: either my machine gun failed, or we were surrounded. You wake up and your teeth are grinding. Do you remember where you are? There or here?
• “I went to the front as a materialist. An atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was taught well. And there... There I began to pray... I always prayed before the battle, I read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... The meaning is one, that I return to mom and dad. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. No one saw me pray. I am secretly. She secretly prayed. Carefully. Because... We were different then, different people lived then. You understand?"
• “It was impossible to attack us with uniforms: they were always in the blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar on it. In total, I carried out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion... They were carrying men two to three times heavier than us. And they are even more seriously wounded. You are dragging him and his weapon, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You put eighty kilograms on yourself and drag it. You lose... You go after the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And you yourself have forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore..."



• “I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment...
• “I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I’m all white. I was seriously wounded, concussed, and I couldn’t hear well in one ear. My mother greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night.” My brother died at the front. She cried: “It’s the same now - give birth to girls or boys.”
• “But I’ll say something else... The worst thing for me in war is wearing men’s underpants. That was scary. And this somehow... I can’t express myself... Well, first of all, it’s very ugly... You’re at war, you’re going to die for your Motherland, and you’re wearing men’s underpants. Overall, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's underpants were long then. Wide. Sewed from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them are wearing men's underpants. Oh my God! In winter and summer. Four years... We crossed the Soviet border... We finished off, as our commissar said during political classes, the beast in its own den. Near the first Polish village they changed our clothes, gave us new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's panties and bras for the first time. For the first time throughout the war. Haaaa... Well, I see... We saw normal women's underwear... Why aren't you laughing? Are you crying... Well, why?



• “At the age of eighteen, on the Kursk Bulge, I was awarded the medal “For Military Merit” and the Order of the Red Star, at the age of nineteen - the Order of the Patriotic War, second degree. When new additions arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They were also eighteen to nineteen years old, and they asked mockingly: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in battle?” They pester you with jokes: “Do bullets penetrate the armor of a tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Shchegolevatykh. His leg was broken. I splint him, and he asks me for forgiveness: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then...”
• “We drove for many days... We left with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They sing. They wave at us, some with headscarves, some with caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they were dead in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we, instead of them... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in the locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. Before the fight I kissed the medallion..."
• “She shielded her loved one from the mine fragment. The fragments fly - it's just a fraction of a second... How did she make it? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed to live. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave... He carried it and kissed it... There were five of us, Konakovo girls... And I alone returned to my mother..."



• “And here I am the gun commander. And that means I am in the one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was bleeding from the nose and ears, complete indigestion set in... My throat was dry to the point of vomiting... At night it was not so scary, but during the day it was very scary. It seems that the plane is flying straight at you, specifically at your gun. It's ramming at you! This is one moment... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. It’s all over!”
• “As long as he hears... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, is it really possible to die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He’s already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I’m still whispering something to him... I’m calming him down... The names have been erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain..."
• “We captured a nurse... A day later, when we recaptured that village, there were dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers lying everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her breasts were cut off... She was impaled... It was frosty, and she was white and white, and her hair was all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack we found letters from home and a green rubber bird. A children's toy..."
• “Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. No other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I gnawed it, bandaged it... I bandaged it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I’ll fight again.” In a fever..."



• “The whole war I was afraid that my legs would be crippled. I had beautiful legs. What to a man? He’s not so scared if he even loses his legs. Still a hero. Groom! If a woman gets hurt, then her fate will be decided. Women's destiny..."
• “The men will build a fire at the bus stop, shake out the lice, and dry themselves. Where are we? Let's run for some shelter and undress there. I had a knitted sweater, so lice sat on every millimeter, in every loop. Look, you'll feel nauseous. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice... I had them all..."
• “We strived... We didn’t want people to say about us: “Oh, those women!” And we tried harder than men, we still had to prove that we were no worse than men. And for a long time there was an arrogant, condescending attitude towards us: “These women will fight…”
• “Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream!”



• “Let’s go... There are about two hundred girls, and behind us there are about two hundred men. It's hot. Hot Summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild... And after us there are red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide anything here? The soldiers follow behind and pretend that they don’t notice anything... They don’t look at their feet... Our trousers dried up, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds there, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything... We kept watch: when the soldiers hung their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces... Later they guessed and laughed: “Master, give us some other underwear. The girls took ours.” There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... Not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, appeared only two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts... Well, let's go... Wearing boots! My legs were also fried. Let's go... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The bombing is terrible, men - who knows where to hide. Our name is... But we don’t hear the bombing, we have no time for bombing, we’d rather go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... Here it is... The shame was worse than death. And several girls died in the water..."
• “We were happy when we took out a pot of water to wash our hair. If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was an elderly man and understood everything, didn’t take excess underwear from his duffel bag, and if he’s young, he’ll definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves..."



• “How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there!” They lured young p... our men. Front-line b... Military bitches..." They insulted me in every way... The Russian dictionary is rich... A guy is seeing me off from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What happened to you?" - "Never mind. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet in boots were worn out - size forty. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I'm used to being responsible for myself. I was waiting for kind words, but I didn’t understand them. They are like children's to me. At the front among the men there is a strong Russian mate. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin.”
• “My legs were gone... My legs were cut off... They saved me there, in the forest... The operation took place in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there wasn’t even iodine; they sawed my legs, both legs, with a simple saw... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away, we went to another partisan detachment to get iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw... A carpenter's saw... We had a surgeon, he himself also had no legs, he talked about me, other doctors said this: “I bow to her. I have operated on so many men, but I have never seen such men. He won’t scream.” I held on... I'm used to being strong in public..."
• “My husband was a senior driver, and I was a driver. For four years we traveled in a heated vehicle, and our son came with us. During the entire war he didn’t even see a cat. When he caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Dear kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don't see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you.” A child... Everything about a child should be childish... He fell asleep with the words: “Mommy, we have a cat. We now have a real home."



• “Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass... Our signalman. She dies - a bullet hit her heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. She looked: “What a pity, girls.” Then she paused and smiled at us: “Girls, am I really going to die?” At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she shouts: “Don’t die! Do not die! You have a letter from home...” Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting... Our Klava sat down next to her and opened the envelope. A letter from my mother: “My dear, beloved daughter...” A doctor is standing next to me, he says: “This is a miracle. Miracle!! She lives contrary to all the laws of medicine...” They finished reading the letter... And only then Anya closed her eyes...”
• “I stayed with him one day, then the second, and I decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’ll stay here with you.” He went to the authorities, but I couldn’t breathe: well, how can they say that she wouldn’t be able to walk for twenty-four hours? This is the front, that's clear. And suddenly I see the authorities coming into the dugout: major, colonel. Everyone shakes hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and everyone said their word that the wife found her husband in the trench, this is a real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let me look at such a woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life..."
• “Near Stalingrad... I’m dragging two wounded. If I drag one through, I leave it, then the other. And so I pull them one by one, because the wounded are very serious, they cannot be left, both, as it is easier to explain, have their legs cut off high, they are bleeding. Minutes are precious here, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled further away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I discovered that I was dragging one of our tankers and one German... I was horrified: our people were dying there, and I was saving a German. I was in a panic... There, in the smoke, I couldn’t figure it out... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming... Ah-ah... They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else’s medallion, someone else’s watch, everything was someone else’s. This form is cursed. So what now? I pull our wounded man and think: “Should I go back for the German or not?” I understood that if I left him, he would soon die. From loss of blood... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag them both... This is Stalingrad... The most terrible battles. The very best... There cannot be one heart for hatred and another for love. A person has only one.”



• “My friend... I won’t give her last name, in case she gets offended... Military paramedic... Wounded three times. The war ended, I entered medical school. She didn’t find any of her relatives; they all died. She was terribly poor, washing the entrances at night to feed herself. But she didn’t admit to anyone that she was a disabled war veteran and had benefits; she tore up all the documents. I ask: “Why did you break it?” She cries: “Who would marry me?” “Well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” She cries even louder: “I could use these pieces of paper now. I’m seriously ill.” Can you imagine? Crying."
• “It was then that they began to honor us, thirty years later... They invited us to meetings... But at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. Men wore them, but women did not. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Completely different... Let me tell you, they took away our victory... They did not share the victory with us. And it was a shame... It’s unclear..."
• “The first medal “For Courage”... The battle began. The fire is heavy. The soldiers lay down. Command: “Forward! For the Motherland!”, and they lie there. Again the command, again they lie down. I took off my hat so they could see: the girl stood up... And they all stood up, and we went into battle..."

About 12% of the population of the occupied territories collaborated to one degree or another with the Nazi invaders.

Pedantic Germans found work for everyone. Men could serve in police detachments, and women worked as dishwashers and cleaners in soldiers' and officers' canteens. However, not everyone earned an honest living.

Horizontal betrayal

The Germans approached the “sexual” issue in the occupied territories with their characteristic punctuality and calculation. IN major cities brothels were created; the Nazis themselves called them “brothel houses.” From 20 to 30 women worked in such establishments, and rear service soldiers and soldiers kept order. military police. The employees of the brothel houses did not pay any taxes or taxes to the German “supervisors”; the girls took everything they earned home.

In cities and villages, meeting rooms were organized at soldiers’ canteens, in which, as a rule, women “worked”, working as dishwashers and cleaners.

But, according to the observations of the Wehrmacht rear services, the established brothels and visiting rooms could not cope with the volume of work. Tension among the soldiers grew, quarrels broke out, which ended in the death or injury of one soldier and disbat for another. The problem was solved by the revival of free prostitution in the occupied territories.

To become a priestess of love, a woman had to register with the commandant’s office and go through medical examination and provide the address of the apartment where she will receive German soldiers. Medical examinations were regular, and infection of occupiers with venereal disease was punishable by death. In turn, German soldiers had a clear instruction: it was mandatory to use condoms during sexual contacts. Infection with a venous disease was a very serious crime, for which a soldier or officer was demoted and sent to disbat, which was almost equivalent to a death sentence.

Slavic women in the occupied territories did not take money for intimate services, preferring payment in kind - canned food, a loaf of bread or chocolate. The point was not in the moral aspect and the complete lack of commercialism among the employees of the brothel houses, but in the fact that money during the war did not have much value and a bar of soap had much greater purchasing power than the Soviet ruble or occupation Reichsmarks.

Punished with contempt

Women who worked in German brothels or cohabited with German soldiers and officers were openly condemned by their compatriots. After the liberation of the territories, employees of military brothels were often beaten, had their heads shaved, and were showered with contempt at every opportunity.

By the way, local residents liberated territories very often wrote denunciations against such women. But the position of the authorities turned out to be different; not a single case was opened for cohabitation with the enemy in the USSR.

In the Soviet Union, “Germans” were the name given to children that women gave birth to from the German invaders. Very often, babies were born as a result of sexual violence, so their fate was unenviable. And it's not a matter of severity Soviet laws, but in the reluctance of women to raise the children of enemies and rapists. But someone put up with the situation and left the children of the occupiers alive. Even now, in the territories captured by the Germans during the Second World War, you can find older people with typically German features persons who were born during the war in remote villages of the Soviet Union.

There were no repressions against the “Germans” or their mothers, which is an exception. For example, in Norway, women caught cohabiting with fascists were punished and prosecuted. But it was the French who distinguished themselves the most. After the fall of the fascist empire, about 20 thousand French women were repressed for cohabitation with German soldiers and officers.

Fee of 30 pieces of silver

From the first day of the occupation, the Germans carried out active propaganda, looking for people who were dissatisfied Soviet power, and persuaded them to cooperate. On captured Soviet territories They even published their own newspapers. Naturally, Soviet citizens worked as journalists in such publications and began to voluntarily work for the Germans.

Vera Pirozhkova And Polyakov Olympics (Lidiya Osipova) began to cooperate with the Germans almost from the first day of the occupation. They were employees of the pro-fascist newspaper “For the Motherland”. Both were dissatisfied with the Soviet regime, and their families suffered to one degree or another during the mass repressions.

The newspaper “For the Motherland” is an occupation German two-color newspaper published from the autumn of 1942 to the summer of 1944. Source: ru.wikipedia.org

The journalists worked for their enemies voluntarily and fully justified any actions of their masters. They even called the bombs that the Nazis dropped on Soviet cities “liberation bombs.”

Both employees emigrated to Germany when the Red Army approached. There was no persecution by military or law enforcement agencies. Moreover, Vera Pirozhkova returned to Russia in the 90s.

Tonka the machine gunner

Antonina Makarova is the most famous female traitor of World War II. At the age of 19, Komsomol member Makarova ended up in the Vyazemsky Cauldron. A soldier emerged from the encirclement with a young nurse Nikolay Fedchuk. But the joint wandering of the nurse and the fighter turned out to be short-lived; Fedchuk abandoned the girl when they reached his home village, where he had a family.

Then Antonina had to move alone. The Komsomol member’s campaign ended in the Bryansk region, where she was detained by a police patrol of the notorious “Lokot Republic” (a territorial formation of Russian collaborators). The police took a liking to the captive, and they took her into their squad, where the girl actually performed the duties of a prostitute.

The female part of our multinational people, together with men, children and the elderly, bore all the hardships on their shoulders Great War. Women wrote many glorious pages in the chronicle of the war.

Women were on the front line: doctors, pilots, snipers, in air defense units, signalmen, intelligence officers, drivers, topographers, reporters, even tank crews, artillerymen and served in the infantry. Women actively participated in the underground, in the partisan movement.

Women took on many “purely male” professions in the rear, since men went to war, and someone had to stand behind the machine, drive a tractor, become a lineman railways, master the profession of metallurgist, etc.

Figures and facts

Military service in the USSR is an honorable duty not only for men, but also for women. This is their right written in Art. 13th Universal Law military duty, adopted by the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 1, 1939. It states that People's Commissariats The Defense and Navy are given the right to recruit women into the army and navy who have medical, veterinary and special technical training, as well as recruit them for training fees. In wartime, women who have the specified training may be drafted into the army and navy to perform auxiliary and special service. The feeling of pride and gratitude of Soviet women to the party and government regarding the decision of the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was expressed by Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR E.M. Kozhushina from the Vinnitsa region: “All of us, young patriots,” she said, “are ready to speak out in defense of our beautiful Motherland. We women are proud that we are given the right to protect it on an equal basis with men. And if our party, our government calls, then we will all come to the defense of our wonderful country and give a crushing rebuff to the enemy.”

Already the first news of Germany’s treacherous attack on the USSR aroused boundless anger and burning hatred of their enemies among women. At meetings and rallies held throughout the country, they declared their readiness to defend their Motherland. Women and girls went to party and Komsomol organizations, to military commissariats and there they persistently sought to be sent to the front. Among the volunteers who applied to be sent to the active army, up to 50% of the applications were from women.

During the first week of the war, applications to be sent to the front were received from 20 thousand Muscovites, and after three months, 8,360 women and girls of Moscow were enrolled in the ranks of the defenders of the Motherland. Among the Leningrad Komsomol members who submitted applications in the first days of the war with a request to be sent to the active army, 27 thousand applications were from girls. More than 5 thousand girls from the Moskovsky district of Leningrad were sent to the front. 2 thousand of them became fighters of the Leningrad Front and selflessly fought on the outskirts of their hometown.

Created June 30, 1941 State Committee Defense (GKO) adopted a number of resolutions on the mobilization of women to serve in the air defense forces, communications, internal security, on military roads... Several Komsomol mobilizations were carried out, in particular the mobilization of Komsomol members in Navy, V Air Force and signal troops.

In July 1941, over 4 thousand women Krasnodar region asked to send them to the active army. In the first days of the war, 4 thousand women of the Ivanovo region volunteered. About 4 thousand girls from the Chita region, over 10 thousand from the Karaganda region became Red Army soldiers using Komsomol vouchers.

From 600 thousand to 1 million women fought at the front at different times, 80 thousand of them were Soviet officers.

The Central Women's Sniper Training School provided the front with 1,061 snipers and 407 sniper instructors. Graduates of the school destroyed over 11,280 enemy soldiers and officers during the war.

At the end of 1942, the Ryazan Infantry School was given an order to train about 1,500 officers from female volunteers. By January 1943, over 2 thousand women arrived at the school.

For the first time during the Patriotic War, female combat formations appeared in the Armed Forces of our country. 3 aviation regiments were formed from female volunteers: 46th Guards Night Bomber, 125th Guards Bomber, 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment; Separate women's volunteer rifle brigade , Separate women's reserve rifle regiment

Snipers Faina Yakimova, Roza Shanina, Lidiya Volodina.

While near Moscow, the 1st Separate Women's Reserve Regiment also trained motorists and snipers, machine gunners and junior commanders of combat units. There were 2899 women on staff.

Some women were also commanders. One can name Hero of the Soviet Union Valentina Grizodubova, who throughout the war commanded the 101st Long-Range Aviation Regiment, where men served. She herself made about two hundred combat missions, delivering explosives, food to the partisans and removing the wounded.

The head of the ammunition department of the artillery department of the Polish Army was engineer-colonel Antonina Pristavko. She ended the war near Berlin. Among her awards are the orders: "Renaissance of Poland" IV class, "Cross of Grunwald" III class, "Golden Cross of Merit" and others.

In the first war year of 1941, 19 million women were employed in agricultural work, mainly on collective farms. This means that almost all the burdens of providing food for the army and the country fell on their shoulders, on their working hands.

5 million women were employed in industry, and many of them were entrusted and command posts- directors, shop managers, foremen.

Culture, education, and health care have become a matter of concern mainly for women.

Ninety-five women in our country have high rank Heroes of the Soviet Union. Our cosmonauts are among them.

The largest representation of participants in the Great Patriotic War among other specialties were female doctors.

Of the total number of doctors in active army There were about 700 thousand, women were 42%, and among surgeons - 43.4%.

More than 2 million people served as middle and junior medical workers at the fronts. Women (paramedics, nurses, medical instructors) made up the majority - over 80 percent.

During the war years, a coherent system of medical and sanitary services for the fighting army was created. There was a so-called doctrine of military field medicine. At all stages of the evacuation of the wounded - from the company (battalion) to hospitals in the rear - female doctors selflessly carried out the noble mission of mercy.

Glorious patriots served in all branches of the military - in aviation and Marine Corps, on warships Black Sea Fleet, Northern Fleet, Caspian and Dnieper flotillas, in floating naval hospitals and ambulance trains. Together with the horsemen, they went on deep raids behind enemy lines, were in partisan detachments. With the infantry we reached Berlin. And everywhere doctors provided specialized assistance to those injured in battle.

It is estimated that female medical instructors of rifle companies, medical battalions, and artillery batteries helped seventy percent of wounded soldiers return to duty.

For special courage and heroism, 15 female doctors were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

A sculptural monument in Kaluga reminds of the feat of women military doctors. In the park on Kirov Street, a front-line nurse in a raincoat, with a sanitary bag over her shoulder, stands at full height on a high pedestal. During the war, the city of Kaluga was the center of numerous hospitals that treated and returned tens of thousands of soldiers and commanders to duty. That is why they built a monument in a holy place, which always has flowers.

History has never known such massive participation of women in the armed struggle for the Motherland as was shown soviet women during the Great Patriotic War. Having achieved enrollment in the ranks of the soldiers of the Red Army, women and girls mastered almost all military specialties and, together with their husbands, fathers and brothers, carried military service in all branches of the Soviet Armed Forces.

Unidentified Soviet private girls from an anti-tank artillery unit.