Chapter 4 Battlefield Life and Trivia

Our dream... is to go to war... As soon as we got into the car, the training started.Everything is not as we imagined when we were at home. We have to get up very early, and there is no time for free activities, and we still retain the previous living habits.Gulyayev, the corporal squad leader who had only received a fourth-grade elementary school education, taught us military regulations. He couldn't even pronounce some words correctly, and we were very dissatisfied.From our point of view, what can he teach us?In fact, it is to teach us how to survive on the battlefield... After the medical examination, the oath of enlistment is required.The chief of staff brought a full set of military uniforms: military overcoat, boat cap, military uniform, and military skirt.Instead of blouses, two men's long-sleeved shirts made of thick cotton were issued; instead of leggings, a pair of long socks and a pair of heavy American leather shoes with thick iron palms on the front and back were issued.I was the shortest in the company, the lightest in weight, only 1.53 meters tall, and my shoes wore size 35.Needless to say, military factories do not make military shoes of such a small size, and the Americans will not supply us with such small shoes, so they sent me a pair of large leather shoes of size 42, which I don’t need to put on and take off. Untie the laces and insert your feet directly into the shoe shaft.These leather shoes are so heavy that I can only shuffle around in them.When I was walking in a queue, sparks burst out on the cobbled road, and my steps were weird, not like walking in a queue at all.That first march, which was so painful, is really terrible to think about now.I was planning to make contributions in the army, but I didn't expect to wear big leather shoes of size 42 on my feet of size 35, so heavy and ugly!so ugly!

The company commander stopped me when he saw me walking: "Smirnova, how do you walk in formation? Haven't you learned it? Why don't you raise your legs? I will punish you for three extra duties!" I replied, "Yes, Comrade Captain, three extra duties!" I turned to go, but fell before I could move my legs, and I was thrown out of the shoes... Both feet were worn by the shafts bleeding... That's when the truth became clear: I couldn't even walk.So Parshin, the shoemaker of the company, was ordered to remake a pair of high boots of size thirty-five for me out of old canvas...

There are a lot of ridiculous things... Discipline, doctrine, rank marks—all these military secrets are not quickly grasped.We just stand guard every day to guard the plane.According to the regulations, if someone comes over, he must be ordered to stop: "Stop, which one?" However, one of my female companions stood guard one day and saw the head of the regiment approaching from a distance, and shouted loudly: "Please stop, then Who is it? I'm sorry, but I'm going to shoot!" Are you saying it's ridiculous?She even shouted: "I'm sorry, I'm going to shoot!" I'm sorry... Hahaha...

When the girls first came to the aviation school, they all had long hair and wore various hairstyles.I also wear a large braid on top of my head.But how to wash your hair?Where to blow dry?I had just washed my hair when the alarm went off and I had to run out immediately.Our squad leader Marina Raskova ordered everyone to cut their long hair.The girls cried while cutting.The pilot Lilia Litwiak, who later won the honorary title, was reluctant to part with her long hair. I had no choice but to go to Raskova: "Comrade Captain, your order has been carried out, only Litvyak disobeyed the order."

Despite her feminine tenderness, Marina Raskova was a competent and very serious leader.She ordered me to go back: "If you can't even complete the instructions of your superiors, what kind of party group leader! Back-turn, start-go!..." Dresses, high-heeled shoes and so on, we really can't bear to throw these things away, so we hide them in the rucksack.Wear boots during the day, and sneak high heels in front of the mirror at night.This matter was discovered by Raskova—and after a few days, an order was issued: all women's clothes should be sent home by post.It must be so!However, we learned to fly the new aircraft in only half a year, which would take two years in peacetime.

Not long after the training started, we sacrificed two groups of trainees, a total of four coffins.There were three groups of us, and we all wept bitterly. Raskova stood up and spoke: "Girls, wipe away your tears. This is only our first loss, and there will be many more in the future. You must hold your weak hearts in your fists..." Later, during the war, we no longer shed tears when we buried our comrades, no one cried anymore. We fly fighter jets.As with any female body, height itself can be a terrible burden, sometimes as if the stomach is directly pressing against the spine.But we girls are great flyers, miracle performers, and top pilots!That's it!You know, when we fly, even the men watch in amazement: the female pilot is in the air again!They are envious of us...

It was in the fall and I was called to the military service commission...the service commissioner received me personally and he asked me: "Can you skydive?" Needless to say, there is chocolate to eat every day.But I have been afraid of heights since I was a child. "Then would you like to go to the anti-aircraft artillery unit?" Anti-aircraft artillery?I don't know what's going on.So he suggested: "Then let's send you to the guerrillas." I asked him: "When I get there, how can I write a letter to my mother in Moscow?" Finally, the military service commissioner had to write a red pencil on my dispatch card Wrote: "Go to the Prairie Front..."

On the train, a young captain fell in love with me and stayed in my compartment all night.He was physically and mentally traumatized in the war and was wounded many times.He looked at me repeatedly and said: "Little Vera, don't be discouraged and don't be rough. You are so gentle and lovely now...I have seen everything..." At that time, I was in such a good mood Now, of course what happened next, people said it was so hard to come out of the war clean.War is hell. My girlfriend and I walked for a month, and finally arrived at the Fourth Guards Army of the Ukrainian Second Front Army.Within minutes of our arrival, the attending surgeon came out, looked us over, took us into the operating room and said, "This is your operating table..." Ambulances came one by one, and Studebaker American heavy-duty trucks, some wounded were lying on the ground, and some were sleeping on stretchers. We only asked: "Who should be rescued first?" "First rescue the silent..." An hour later, I was already on the operating table to work up.I kept doing it...for several days and nights in a row, I took a short nap, then quickly rubbed my eyes, washed my face, and continued to do it.One of the two or three wounded always succumbed, and it was impossible for us to revive them all.A third died on the operating table.

We encountered very heavy bombing at the Smerlinka railway station.The train stopped and we all scattered for cover.There is a deputy political commissar who had his appendix removed yesterday and is already running today.We sat in the forest all night avoiding the plane, but the train was blown up to a heap of scrap metal.In the early morning, the German plane flew at a very low altitude again, searching the woods carefully.Where else can we hide?They can't drill down into the ground like a field mouse.I hugged a birch tree tightly and stood in prison: "Oh, my dear mother!...Did I just die like this? If I can survive, I will be the luckiest person in the world..." Afterwards, no matter whether I was right Everyone laughed when they told me how I clung to the birch tree.Actually, it was a close call, wasn't it?I just stood up straight, hugged the birch tree and screamed...

I was in Vienna for Victory Day.We took a trip to the zoo, which I've always been dying to go to.Originally, we could also visit the concentration camp. Everyone was taken to the concentration camp to see the exhibition for education, but I didn't go... Until now, I still wonder, why didn't I go? …In fact, I just don’t want to feel uncomfortable, I just want to be happy, happy, and want to see another life… There are three people in our family: mother, father and me.My father was the first to go to the front, and my mother wanted to go with my father. She was a nurse.But the father went to one place, and the mother went to another place.I was only sixteen years old at the time, and they didn't want me.I ran to the military service committee over and over again, and after more than a year of grinding, I was finally accepted.

We took a long train ride.With us were young men returning from the hospital to the front line.They told us stories from the front, and we sat around, dumbfounded.They said that we would encounter enemy planes strafing, and we waited restlessly: When did the enemy start strafing?So they said, well, let's go say hello and say we've all been shot. We have reached the front.Unexpectedly, instead of sending us to hold guns, we were asked to wash and cook.The girls were all my age. Before joining the army, our parents loved us very much. I was the only child in the family.Here I have to move firewood to light the stove.Finally we had to put away the ashes and put them in the pan to replace the soap, as the soap hadn't arrived and the original ones were used up.The shirts are all dirty, full of lice, and full of blood.. it's hard to wash blood off in winter.. I still remember the first wounded person I rescued, and I often think of that face... He had an open fracture near the base of the thigh.Just think about it, the bones are poked out, the wound is rotten, and the flesh is all turned out.The bones came out... Although I knew how to deal with this kind of wound from the books, when I crawled up to him and saw this, I couldn't hold it anymore and felt so sick that I wanted to vomit.Suddenly, I heard a voice: "Little nurse, give me some water to drink." This is the wounded man talking to me, so pitiful.I still remember this scene to this day.When he said this, I suddenly calmed down. "Huh!" I blamed myself, "What a noble girl in Turgenev's works! She is almost dead from injury, but you are a weak creature, what's so disgusting..." I quickly opened the first aid kit and bandaged his wound .With that, I began to gather my composure and to render my field service to the best of my ability. I often watch some war movies now: when nurses go to the front line, they are always neatly dressed and clean, not wearing cotton trousers, only wearing a short skirt, and wearing a boat-shaped cap on the ponytail hairstyle.Oh, it's so fake!Can we still carry the wounded like this? ...All around are men, how can you crawl around like this in a short skirt?To tell you the truth, it was only at the end of the war that the superiors sent us skirts as costumes.Only then did we receive knit underwear instead of men's denim shirts.Do you know?We were so ecstatic that we unbuttoned the front of our jumpers so people could see our underwear... We had air raids...the enemy planes bombed over and over again, bombing endlessly.People were scrambling to run for their lives... I ran as hard as I could.Suddenly I heard someone shouting weakly: "Help me...help me..." and I continued to run... After a while, the shouting sound came to my ears again, and I suddenly felt the pain in my shoulder. With the weight of an ambulance bag, there is also a sense of guilt.The fear was thrown out of the sky immediately!I turned my head and ran back: it turned out to be a wounded soldier moaning.I immediately rushed to bandage him, then the second, the third... The fighting didn't end until late at night.It snowed again in the early morning, and the heavy snow covered many, many corpses... Many people's arms were raised up...to the sky... Didn't you ask me if I felt happy at that time?Let me tell you: suddenly found a living person among the dead, that feeling is happiness... That was the first dead person I saw in my life...I bowed my head and stood beside him crying...I cried bitterly...At this moment, a wounded man shouted: "Come and bandage my leg!" One of his legs dangling on the trousers, already blown apart.I tore off his pants. "Give me my leg, next to me!" I did just that.They never lose their arms or legs as long as they are conscious.They want their broken limbs back, and even after they die, they have to be buried together. During the war I thought: I will never forget anything that happened.In fact, many things have been gradually forgotten by me... A young, handsome and funny boy was beaten to death, lying flat on the ground.I would have thought that all the dead would be solemnly buried, but they just lifted him up in a hazel grove and dug a hastily grave... without a coffin or any ceremony, just put him in the pit In, and then directly covered with soil.The sun was so strong, shining on him... It was a warm summer day, and there was no tarpaulin to cover the sun, and there was no funeral, so he had to wear the military uniform and breeches he was wearing.Fortunately, his costume was still brand new, obviously he had just arrived at the front line not long ago.So he was buried, in a shallow pit just wide enough for him to lie in.His wound was small, but fatal—a shot to the temple, and not much blood flowed.Such a person is lying there now, as if alive, but his face is pale. The strafing was followed by carpet bombing, which devastated the place.I don't know what's left... But how do we bury the dead in that situation?We had to dig a hole nearby, near the bunker we were staying in, and bury them.There was only a mound of earth left, and needless to say, as long as the Germans followed closely or drove over, the mound would be flattened immediately and become an ordinary flat ground, without leaving any traces.We used to bury comrades in the woods...under those oaks, under those birches... To this day I have not had the courage to go into the woods, especially with the old oaks and birches... I can't stay there... I lost my voice at the front... I have a beautiful singing voice... It wasn't until I returned home after the war that my voice recovered.In the evening, when family and friends gather for dinner, after a few glasses of wine, everyone will say: "Come on, Vera, let's sing a song." I will sing a song... When I left home to go to the front, I could be said to be a materialist, an atheist, a Soviet high school girl with good grades and good conduct.But when I got to the front line... I started to pray there... I prayed before every battle, I prayed aloud, and the prayers were very simple... They were all in my own vernacular... There was only one meaning, which was God's blessing I can live to go home to see my parents.I don't know the real way to pray, I've never read the Bible.No one saw me praying, I prayed secretly and carefully.Because... we were a different kind of people then, and we all had a different kind of life back then.do you understandWe think things are not the same as they are now, and we all understand... because... I'll tell you about an accident... Once, a religious man was found among the recruits, and when he prayed, the soldiers laughed at him: "How , What help did God give you? If God really exists, why would you allow all this to happen?" They absolutely don't understand a person who wants to cry in front of a Christ on the cross, saying that if Jesus loves you , why didn't he come to save you?I only started reading the bible after the war...now I'm going to read the bible all my life...speaking back to that soldier, he's not a young man anymore either, just don't shoot.He refused, saying: "I can't, I can't kill!" Everyone else agreed to kill, but he just didn't agree.era?What a time it was... a terrible time... just because he believed in religion... He was court-martialed and shot two days later... What a crime! It was another time...that was another kind of people...how can I explain it to you?How should I explain... Luckily, I've never met the people I killed... But, it's all the same anyway... Now I realize I'm a murderer too.Now that I think about it...it's because I'm old.I pray for my soul, and I tell my daughters that after I die, all my battle medals will not be sent to the museum, but to the church, to the priest...the dead, they often come to my dreams ...the people I killed... Although I have not seen them, they came to see me in my dreams.I searched and searched with my eyes wide open, maybe someone was just injured, although he was seriously injured, he could still be saved.I don't know what to say...they're all dead anyway... What I can't stand the most is amputation... I often have to do high amputation, that is, the whole leg is sawed off. When I move the broken leg out and put it in a basin, I can't even hold it.As I recall, those broken legs were heavy.I hugged me gently so that the amputee couldn't hear me, and I was as careful as holding a child, like taking care of a baby... Especially the leg that was almost amputated from the thigh, I couldn't bear it the most.Those wounded whose anesthesia was still working were either groaning or yelling, and all the curse words in Russian were exhausted.I'm always splattered with blood... like little cherries... but black... But I never write about these things when I write to my mother.I just write: everything is fine here, I am fed and clothed.Mother has sent three children to the front line, she is sad enough... I was born in Crimea...not far from Odessa. In 1941 I graduated from tenth grade at Slobod Secondary School in Keltenham.After the war broke out, I listened to the broadcast on the radio for the first few days.I understand, our army is retreating... I went to the Military Service Commission to enlist and was sent home.Went there two more times and got rejected twice. On July 28, the retreating troops passed us at Slobod, and I went to the front with them without any enlistment notice. The first time I saw the wounded, I fainted from fright.It survived after that.The first time I climbed to rescue the wounded under the hail of bullets, I screamed desperately, as if trying to overwhelm the roar of the artillery fire.Later, I got used to it completely. After ten days, I was injured myself, so I pulled out the shrapnel and bandaged myself... On December 25, 1942, the 333rd Division of our 56th Group Army stood firm on a high ground leading to Stalingrad.The enemy is determined to take it at any cost.The battle started, the German tanks attacked us, but our artillery hit them hard.The Germans backed off.In the open field one of our artillery lieutenants, Kosga Khudov, was wounded.Several health workers rushed to rescue him, but they all died.Two rescue dogs crawled over (the first time I saw such dogs in my life there) and were also killed.At this time, I pulled off the cotton hat, stood up straight, and sang a song that we loved most before the war, "I will accompany you to establish meritorious deeds", first in a low voice, and then in a loud voice.Soldiers on both sides - our side and the Germans' side - fell silent. I ran up to Kosgar, bent down, picked him up on the sled, and pulled him back to our position.As I walked, I thought to myself: "As long as I don't hit my back, I would rather let them hit my head." Every minute and every second at that time may be the last moment of my life... I wonder if I felt pain at that time?Terrible, my mother!But in the end, there was no gunshot... The clothes sent to us at that time were not enough: even the new ones were all stained with blood two days later.The first wounded I rescued was Captain Belov, and the last was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. When he came to my house in 1970, I showed my daughters where he had hurt his head, and there was a big scar there.I rescued a total of four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under the fire.A journalist made the calculation: a whole infantry battalion... We have to carry men who are two or three times heavier than ourselves, and the wounded are even heavier. There are also military coats and big leather boots, which must be taken away... put down one, and immediately go back to carry the next wounded person, which weighs another seventy to eighty kilograms... Every time I charge, I have to go back and forth like this five or six times, and I myself Forty-eight kilograms, the weight of a ballet dancer.Can't believe it now...how we could have done this back then... It was 1942, and we were on a mission across the front line, hiding near a cemetery.We know that the Germans are only five kilometers away.It was late at night, and they were firing umbrella flares.Flares were fired one after another, one dark and another bright, illuminating a large area brightly.The platoon leader took me to the edge of the cemetery and showed me where the flares had come from, and there was a bush where there might have been Germans.Although I am not afraid of the dead, and I have never been afraid of cemeteries since I was a child, but I was only twenty-two years old at the time, and it was my first time on guard, so I was terrified for two hours.As a result, in the morning I found a lock of fledgling gray hair.When I was on guard, I kept my eyes on the bush, it rustled and wobbled, and I always felt as if a German devil came out of it... It always seemed to be a shadowy figure...Ghosts and spirits were nearby... And I was alone... Standing guard at the cemetery late at night, is this a woman's job?Men take everything more simply, that's how they tend to think: time to stand guard, time to shoot... and for us, it's too hard to take.Or march and move thirty kilometers in one breath, carrying all the combat equipment on their backs, hot and tired, even the horses are tired and paralyzed... You want to ask what is the scariest thing in war?You are waiting for my answer... I know what answer you are waiting for... You think my answer must be that the most terrible thing in war is death, the loss of life. Huh, is that so?I know your guys, the journalist stuff... hahaha...why aren't you laughing?ah? I'm actually going to say a different answer... To me, the scariest, worst thing to do in war is to wear men's underwear, and that's the scariest thing.It's like to me... I can't describe it... Well, first of all, it's very ugly... You go to war, you're going to die for your country, but you're wearing men's underwear.It always looks ridiculous and absurd.Men's underwear at that time were long and wide and made of cotton sateen.There were ten girls in our shelter, all in men's underwear.Oh my goodness!Spring, summer, autumn and winter, four years have passed. Later, our army counterattacked and hit the border of the Soviet Union... In the words of our political commissar in our political class, we hit the beast's lair.When we got around the first Polish village, we all changed our costumes and our superiors gave us new uniforms... and... alas, they sent us panties and bras for the first time in the whole war first time.Hahaha... well, get it?We're finally looking forward to normal women's underwear... why don't you smileYou cried... yeah, why did you cry? I was not allowed to go to the front... I was just over sixteen, not seventeen.A neighbor of ours was conscripted. She was a medical assistant. When the enlistment notice was sent to her home, she kept crying because she had a very young boy at home.So I went to the military service board and said to them, "Let me go instead of her..." My mother refused to allow me to join the army. She said, "Nina, how old are you? Besides, the war will end soon." Mother It is to love children. When the soldiers saw me, some gave me rusks, some gave me sugar cubes, and they took good care of me.At that time, I didn't know that our army had a Katyusha rocket launcher, so it was camouflaged and hidden behind us.When the shooting started, the world was shaken, and the flames were everywhere.In an instant, I was stunned.The deafening roar, din, and lightning flashes terrified me, and I fell headlong into the puddle, losing my cap.The soldiers laughed and said, "What's the matter with you, little Nina? What's the matter with you, baby?" Often hand-to-hand combat... What do I remember best?What I remember most clearly is the sound of bones breaking during hand-to-hand combat... The hand-to-hand combat began: immediately there was this sound of bones breaking, cartilage rattling, and wild beasts screaming.Every time I charge, I always go up with the soldiers, of course I follow them, but only slightly behind, so to speak, right beside them.So I can see everything clearly and hear clearly... The men wrestled together and fought... To the death, slashing and killing without blinking, directly stabbing the bayonet into the mouth, piercing the eyes, Poking into the heart and stomach... How can I describe this scene...?I'm too weak...to describe that scene...in a word, women never see a man like this, they never see a man like this at home.Neither the women nor the children were seen.creepy... When I went back to my hometown in Tula after the war, I often had nightmares and shouted at night.My mother and younger sister often stay by my bed late at night... I am always woken up by my own screams... We have reached Stalingrad...there is a desperate battle, a place of life and death...the water and the ground are red with blood...and we must cross the Volga from one side to the other.Nobody paid any heed to our pleas: "What are you talking about, girls? Who needs you guys! We need rifle and machine gun shooters, not signalmen." But there were a lot of us, eighty-odd girls.In the evening, the older girls were accepted, and it was just me and another little girl who didn't want us because we were too short to grow up.They tried to keep us in the reserves, so I cried like hell... The first time I fought, the officers kept pushing me out of cover, and I always had to poke my head out of the trench so I could see everything for myself.At that time, I was full of curiosity, childish curiosity...very naive!The company commander shouted loudly: "Private Semyonova, Private Semyonova, are you crazy! My little ancestor...the enemy will kill you!" I didn't understand at that time, I just How come you will be killed when you come to the front line?I didn't know then how common and random death is.Death comes uninvited, not by appointment. The battered trucks brought reinforcements up, full of old men and boys.They were given two grenades each and went into battle. There were no guns at all, and guns could only be used on regular battlefields.After a battle, no one needs to be bandaged and rescued...all of them died in battle... I participated in the whole war from beginning to end... When I carried the first wounded on my back, my legs were limp.I walked with him on my back, weeping and murmuring in a low voice: "Don't die...don't die..." I bandaged him, cried, and coaxed him gently.At this moment an officer walked by and began to curse at me, even rudely... Why is he scolding you? Because it's not permissible to pity and cry like I do.I've exhausted myself, but there are many, many more wounded to save.We came all the way by car, and there were dead people lying everywhere...the clean-shaven heads turned blue, like potatoes that had been sunburned...they were scattered like potatoes everywhere...the posture was still running, but already Dead bodies lay in fields plowed by cannonballs... like scattered potatoes... I can no longer tell where it is or where it is... At one time, more than two hundred wounded were crowded into a wooden shed, and I was the only nurse.The wounded were transported directly from the battlefield, many, many.It seemed to be in some village... I don't remember where it was all these years ago... but I do remember that I didn't sleep for four days and I didn't sit down to catch my breath and everyone was calling me, "Nurse... little Nurse... help me, honey!..." I ran from person to person, tripped once, fell to the floor and passed out instantly.But the shouting woke me up again.At this time, an officer, a young lieutenant and also a wounded man, propped up the uninjured half of his body and shouted to them: "Be quiet! Don't scream, I order you!" He understood me and knew that I was exhausted, but others The people were still yelling, they were in terrible pain: "Nurse...Little nurse..." I jumped up and ran - I didn't know where to run or what to do.This is the first time I have cried loudly since I went to the front line... That's the thing...you never know your own heart.In winter, a group of captured German soldiers walked past our unit.They were shivering with cold, their heads covered with ragged blankets, and their overcoats were frozen.The severe cold prevented the birds in the forest from flying, and even the birds were frozen to death.There was a soldier among the captives...a little boy...the tears were freezing on his face...I was pushing a wheelbarrow of bread to the canteen.His eyes couldn't leave my cart all the time, he didn't look at me at all, he just stared at the wheelbarrow.It was bread... bread... I took out a loaf, broke a piece and gave it to him.He held it in his hand... still can't believe it.He doesn't believe I'll give him bread... No! I was happy in my heart at that time... I was happy because I didn't hate myself.I was also surprised by my behavior at the time...