The Unwomanly Face of War

by Svetlana Alexievich

  Well, so—what?! A hundred and some years later, the same question…

  * * *

  OF OATHS AND PRAYERS

  * * *

  Natalya Ivanovna Sergeeva

  PRIVATE, NURSE-AIDE

  I want to speak…to speak! To speak it all out! Finally somebody wants to hear us. For so many years we said nothing, even at home we said nothing. For decades. The first year, when I came back from the war, I talked and talked. Nobody listened. So I shut up…It’s good that you’ve come along. I’ve been waiting all the while for somebody, I knew somebody would come. Had to come. I was very young then. Absolutely young. Too bad. You know why? I didn’t even know how to remember…

  A few days before the war my girlfriend and I were talking about the war; we were certain there wouldn’t be any war. We went to the movies, there was a newsreel before the film: Ribbentrop and Molotov were shaking hands.*2 The words of the narrator stamped themselves on my memory: Germany is the faithful friend of the Soviet Union.

  Before the month was out German troops were already near Moscow…

  We were eight children in our family, the first four were all girls, I was the oldest. Papa once came home from work and wept: “I used to be happy that we had girls first…Brides-to-be. But now in every family someone is going to the front, and we have nobody…I’m too old, they won’t take me; you’re all girls, and the boys are still little.” In our family this was keenly felt.

  Courses for nurses were organized, and my father took me and my sister there. I was fifteen, my sister fourteen. He said: “This is all I can offer for our victory…My girls…” There was no other thought then.

  A year later I wound up at the front…

  Elena Antonovna Kudina

  PRIVATE, DRIVER

  During the first days…Total confusion in town. Chaos. Icy fear. Everybody was catching some sort of spies. People said to each other: “Don’t believe provocations.” Nobody could accept even the thought that our army had suffered a catastrophe, that it had been crushed in a few weeks. We had been told that we’d make war on other countries’ territory. “We won’t surrender an inch of our land…” And we were retreating…

  Before the war there were rumors that Hitler was preparing to attack the Soviet Union, but such talk was strictly forbidden. Certain organizations saw to that…You know what I mean? The NKVD…The Chekists…*3 If people whispered, it was at home, in the kitchen, and in the communal apartments—only in their own room, behind closed doors, or in the bathroom with water running. But when Stalin began to speak…He addressed us: “Brothers and sisters…” Then everybody forgot their grievances…We had an uncle sitting in a labor camp, mama’s brother, a railroad worker, an old Communist. He had been arrested at work…You know who arrested him? The NKVD…Our beloved uncle, and we knew he wasn’t guilty of anything. We believed it. He was decorated after the Civil War…*4 But after Stalin’s speech mama said: “We’ll defend the Motherland and sort it out later.” Everybody loved the Motherland.

  I ran to the recruiting office at once. I had angina, I still had a high temperature. But I couldn’t wait…

  Antonina Maximovna Knyazeva

  JUNIOR SERGEANT, LIAISON

  Our mother had no sons…There were five daughters. The announcement came: “War!” I had an excellent musical ear. Dreamed of studying at the conservatory. I decided that my ear would be of use at the front, that I’d be a liaison.

  We were evacuated to Stalingrad. And when Stalingrad was besieged, we volunteered to go to the front. All together. The whole family: mother and five daughters; my father was already fighting by then…

  Tatyana Efimovna Semyonova

  SERGEANT, TRAFFIC CONTROLLER

  Everybody had one wish: to get to the front…Scary? Of course it was scary…But all the same…We went to the recruiting office, and they told us: “Grow up, girls…You’re still green…” We were sixteen or seventeen years old. But I insisted and they took me. My friend and I wanted to go to sniper school, but they said: “You’ll be traffic controllers. There’s no time to teach you.”

  Mama waited at the station for several days to see us transported. She saw us going to the train, gave me a pie and a dozen eggs, and fainted…

  Efrosinya Grigoryevna Breus

  CAPTAIN, DOCTOR

  The world changed all of a sudden…I remember the first days…Mama stood by the window in the evening praying. I never knew that my mother believed in God. She looked and looked in the sky…

  I was mobilized; I was a doctor. I went out of a sense of duty. My papa was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defending the Motherland. Papa went to the recruiting office early in the morning. He went to get my papers, and he went early in the morning on purpose, so that everybody in the village could see that his daughter would be at the front…

  Lilya Mikhailovna Butko

  SURGICAL NURSE

  Summer. The last day of peace…The evening before, we went to a dance. We were sixteen. We went around in a group; together we took one home, then another. We still hadn’t broken up into separate couples. So we went, say, six boys and six girls.

  And just two days later these boys, tank-school students, who had taken us home from the dance, were brought back crippled, bandaged. It was dreadful! Dreadful! If I heard someone laugh, I couldn’t forgive it. How could anybody laugh, how could anybody be joyful, when such a war was going on?

  Soon my father went to join the militia. Only my little brothers and I remained at home. My brothers were born in ’34 and ’38. And I told mama that I would go to the front. She cried, and I, too, cried that night. But I ran away from home…I wrote to mama from my unit. There was no way she could fetch me back from there…

  Polina Semyonovna Nozdracheva

  MEDICAL ASSISTANT

  The command: Fall in…We lined up by height; I was the smallest. The commander comes, looks. Walks up to me: “What sort of Thumbelina is this? What are you going to do? Maybe you should go back to your mother and grow up a little?”

  But I no longer had a mother…My mother had been killed during a bombing…

  The strongest impression…For my whole life…It was during the first year, when we were retreating…I saw—we were hiding in the bushes—I saw one of our soldiers rush at a German tank with his rifle and beat the armor with the rifle butt. He beat, and shouted, and wept till he fell. Till a German submachine gun shot him. During the first year we fought with rifles against tanks and “Messers”…*5

  Evgenia Sergeevna Sapronova

  SERGEANT OF THE GUARDS, AIRPLANE MECHANIC

  I begged my mama…I pleaded with her: only you mustn’t cry…This didn’t happen at night, but it was dark, and there was constant howling. They didn’t cry, the mothers who were seeing their daughters off, they howled. But my mama stood as if made of stone. She controlled herself; she was afraid I would start crying. I was my mother’s daughter; they pampered me at home. Now my hair was cut like a boy’s, they left only a small lock in the front. She and my father didn’t want me to go, but I lived for one thing only: To the front, to the front! To the front! These posters we now see in the museums—“The Motherland is calling!,” “What have you done for the front?”—affected me very strongly. They were before our eyes all the time. And the songs? “Arise, vast country…Arise, for mortal combat…”

  As we rode along, we were struck that dead people lay right on the platforms. The war was already there…But youth holds its own, and we sang songs. Even something merry. Some sort of silly couplets.

  By the end of the war our whole family had taken part in it. Father, mama, sister—they all became railroad workers. They followed the frontline units and restored the tracks. And each of us got a medal “For victory”: father, mama, sister, and I…

  Galina Dmitrievna Zapolskaya

  TELEPHONE OPERATOR

  Before the war I worked as an army telephone operator…Our unit was stationed in the town of Borisov, where the war came du
ring the first weeks. The head of the unit had us all line up. We were not in the service, we weren’t soldiers, we were hired workers.

  He says to us: “A cruel war is beginning. It will be very difficult for you, girls. Before it’s too late, whoever wants to can go back home. Those who wish to stay at the front, step forward…”

  And all the girls, all of them, stepped forward. There were about twenty of us. We were all ready to defend our Motherland. Before the war I didn’t even like books about war. I liked to read about love. And now!

  We sat at the telephones all the time, around the clock. Soldiers brought us pots, we’d have a bite, doze off for a bit right there by the telephones, and then put our earphones on again. I had no time to wash my hair, so I asked: “Girls, cut off my braids…”

  Elena Pavlovna Yakovleva

  SERGEANT MAJOR, NURSE

  We went to the recruiting office time after time…

  And when we came yet again, after I don’t know how many times, the commissar almost threw us out: “If you had at least some profession. If you were nurses, drivers…What are you able to do? What will you do at the front?” But we didn’t understand him. This question had never presented itself to us: what will we do? We wanted to go to war, that’s all. It never dawned on us that to make war one had to be able to do something. Something specific. He took us unawares with his question.

  I and several more girls went to nursing school. We were told that we had to study for six months. We decided: no, that’s too long, it doesn’t suit us. There was another school where the studies took three months. True, we reckoned three months was also long. But the program there was just about to end. We asked to be allowed to take the exams. There was one month of studies left. At night we got practical training in the hospitals, and during the day we studied. Altogether, we studied for a little over a month…

  We were sent not to the front, but to a hospital. This was at the end of August ’41…Schools, hospitals, clubs were overcrowded with the wounded. But in February I left the hospital, you might say I ran away, deserted, it can’t be called anything else. Without any documents, with nothing, I ran away on a hospital train. I left a note: “Not coming for my shift. Leaving for the front.” That was all…

  Vera Danilovtseva

  SERGEANT, SNIPER

  I had a rendezvous that day…I flew there on wings…I thought that day he would confess to me: “I love you.” But he came all sad: “Vera, it’s war! We’re being sent from school straight to the front.” He studied in a military school. Well, so I, of course, at once imagined myself in the role of Joan of Arc. Only to the front and only with a rifle in my hands. We had to be together. Only together! I ran to the recruiting office, but they cut me off sternly: “For now only medics are needed. And you have to study six months.” Six months—that’s completely crazy! I was in love…

  They somehow persuaded me that I had to study. All right, I’ll study, but not to be a nurse…I want to shoot! To shoot like he does. Somehow I was ready for that. The heroes of the Civil War and those who fought in Spain often came to our school. Girls felt equal to boys; we weren’t treated differently. On the contrary, we had heard since childhood and at school: “Girls—at the wheel of the tractors!,” “Girls—at the controls of a plane!” Well, and there was love as well! I even imagined we’d be killed together. In the same battle…

  I had studied at the theater institute. Dreamed of becoming an actress. My ideal was Larissa Reisner.*6 A woman commissar in a leather jacket…I liked her because she was beautiful…

  Anna Nikolaevna Khrolovich

  NURSE

  My friends, who were all older than me, were taken to the front…I cried terribly, because I was left alone, I wasn’t taken. They told me: “You must study, little girl.”

  But my studies didn’t last long. Soon our dean made an announcement: “Once the war is over, you’ll finish your studies, girls. Now it’s necessary to defend the Motherland…”

  Our patrons from the factory saw us off to the front.*7 It was summertime. I remember the whole train was decorated with greenery, flowers…They gave us presents. I got some delicious homemade cookies and a pretty sweater. On the platform I danced a Ukrainian gopak with such enthusiasm!

  We rode for many days…At some station we girls got off the train with a bucket, to fetch some water. We looked around and gasped: there were trains passing by one after another with nothing but girls in them. They were singing. They waved to us—some with scarves, some with forage caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they had all been killed…Or taken prisoner. Now we were to replace them.

  Mama wrote a prayer for me. I put it into a locket; maybe it helped—I did come back home. Before combat I used to kiss that locket…

  Antonina Grigoryevna Bondareva

  LIEUTENANT OF THE GUARDS, SENIOR PILOT

  I was a pilot…

  When I was still in the seventh grade, a plane came flying to us. It was years ago, imagine, in 1936. Then it was a great novelty. And just then a slogan appeared: “Girls and boys—to the airplanes!” As a Komsomol member I was, of course, among the first. I signed up for the flying club at once. My father, to tell the truth, was categorically against it. Up to then in our family they had all been metallurgists, several generations of blast-furnace metallurgists. And my father thought that metallurgy was a woman’s work, and piloting wasn’t. The director of the flying club learned about it and allowed me to take my father for a flight in a plane. So I did. My father and I went up in the air together, and after that day he kept mum. He liked it. I graduated from the club with honors, I was good at parachuting. Before the war I had time to get married and give birth to a girl.

  From the first days of the war there were various reorganizations in our club: the men were taken, and we, the women, replaced them. We taught the cadets. There was a lot of work, we worked from morning till night. My husband was one of the first to leave for the front. All I had left was a photograph: he and I are standing together beside a plane in pilot’s helmets…I now lived together with my daughter; we lived all the time in the camps. How did we live? I would lock her up early in the morning, give her some porridge, and at four in the morning we already started flying. I would come back in the evening, and she would have eaten or not eaten; she would be all covered with that porridge. She didn’t cry, she just looked at me. She had big eyes, like my husband…

  At the end of 1941 I received a death notice: my husband had been killed near Moscow. He was a flight commander. I loved my daughter, but I left her with his family. And I started requesting to be sent to the front…

  The last night…I spent it kneeling by my daughter’s little bed…

  Serafima Ivanovna Panasenko

  SECOND LIEUTENANT, PARAMEDIC OF A MOTORIZED INFANTRY BATTALION

  I’ve turned eighteen…I’m so happy; it’s my birthday. And everybody around shouts: “War!!!” I remember how people wept. As many as I met outside, they all wept. Some even prayed. It was unusual…People in the street praying and crossing themselves. In school they taught us that there was no God. But where were our tanks and our beautiful planes? We always saw them during parades. We were proud! Where were our commanders? Budenny…*8 There was, of course, a moment of perplexity. And then we began to think about something else: how to win the war.

  I was a second-year student at the paramedical-obstetric school in the city of Sverdlovsk. I immediately thought: “Since it’s war, I must go to the front.” My papa was a longtime Communist; he had been a political prisoner before the revolution. He had instilled in us from childhood that the Motherland was everything, the Motherland must be defended. I didn’t hesitate: if I don’t go, who will? I’ve got to…

  Tamara Ulyanovna Ladynina

  PRIVATE, FOOT SOLDIER

  Mama came running to the train…My mama was strict. She never kissed us, never praised us. If we did something good, she just gave us a gentle look, that’s all. But this time she came runnin
g, held my head and kissed me, kissed me. And looked in my eyes…Looked…For a long time…I realized that I’d never see my mother again. I sensed it…I wanted to drop my kit bag and go back home. I felt sorry for everybody…My grandmother…And my little brothers…

  Then music began to play…The command: “Fall out! Get on the train…!”

  I kept waving for a long time…

  Maria Semyonovna Kaliberda

  SERGEANT MAJOR, LIAISON

  I was assigned to a communications regiment…I would never have agreed to go into communications, because I didn’t understand that that, too, meant fighting. A division commander came to us; we all lined up. Mashenka Sungurova was with us. This Mashenka Sungurova takes a step forward.

  “Comrade General, allow me to address you.”

  He says: “Well, address me, then, address me, Soldier Sungurova.”

  “Private Sungurova requests to be relieved of service in communications and sent where the shooting is.”

  You understand, we were all in that state of mind. We had the idea that this communications thing was very puny; it even humiliated us. We just had to be on the front line.

  The general’s smile disappeared at once.

  “My dear girls!” (And you should have seen how we looked then—without food, without sleep; in short, he spoke to us not as a commander, but as a father.) “You clearly don’t understand your role at the front. You are our eyes and ears. An army without communications is like a man without blood.”