The Unwomanly Face of War

by Svetlana Alexievich

  I didn’t have very long to wait: in four months I would turn seventeen. Not eighteen yet, but at least seventeen. Then nobody could force me to go home! Nobody!

  In the regional committee everything went smoothly, but in the recruiting office I had to put up a fight. Because of my age, because of my eyesight. But the first helped the second…When they brought up the question of my age, I called the commissar a bureaucrat…And started a hunger strike…I sat next to him and didn’t budge for two days, refusing the offered slice of bread and a mug of boiled water. I threatened to die of hunger, but first to write who was guilty of my death. I don’t think this frightened him, but even so he sent me for a medical exam. All this was taking place in the same room. Next to him. When the doctor, having checked my vision, spread her arms, the commissar laughed and said that my hunger strike was unnecessary. He felt sorry for me. I answered that I could see nothing because of the hunger strike. Having gone to the window and closer to the ill-favored eye chart, I burst into tears. I wept…For a long time…until I learned the lower lines by heart. Then I wiped my tears and said that I was ready to be examined again. I passed.

  On November 10, 1942, having stocked up on food for ten days, as we had been told to, we (some twenty-five young girls) got into the back of a shabby truck, and began to sing “The Order Is Given,” replacing the words “for the Civil War” with “to defend our country.”

  From Kamyshino, where we took the oath, we marched on foot along the left bank of the Volga to Kapustin Yar. There an auxiliary regiment was stationed. And there, among the thousands of men, we somehow got lost. There were “buyers” coming from various units to recruit reinforcements. They tried to ignore us. Passed us over all the time…

  On the way I became friends with Annushka Rakshenko and Asya Bassina. Neither of them had any specialization, and I considered my own to be unmilitary. And therefore, whatever specialization was called out, the three of us together took three steps forward, thinking that we could master any specialization quickly, on the spot. But we were bypassed.

  But when we stepped forward at the command, “Drivers, tractor drivers, mechanics—three steps forward!” the “buyer”—he was a young first lieutenant—didn’t succeed in passing us over. I took not three steps but five, and he stopped.

  “Why do you select only men? I, too, am a tractor driver!”

  He was surprised. “It can’t be. Tell me the assignment number for tractor work.”

  “One, three, four, two.”

  “Have you melted any bearings?”

  I confessed honestly that I had completely melted two connecting rod bearings.

  “Very well. I’ll take you. For your honesty.” He nodded and went on.

  My girlfriends were standing with me. Next to me. The first lieutenant pretended that that’s how it should be. Ah, fuck it all…

  The commander of the unit, reviewing the reinforcements, asked the first lieutenant a question, “Why did you bring these girls?”

  The man was embarrassed and replied that he felt sorry for us: we might wind up in some place where we’d be killed like partridges.

  The commander sighed.

  “Very well. One to the kitchen, one to the stockroom, the most educated one to the headquarters as a clerk.” He paused and added, “A pity, such beautiful girls.”

  The “most educated one” was me, but to work as a clerk! And what did our beauty have to do with it? Forgetting about military discipline, I went through the roof: “We’re volunteers! We came to defend the Motherland. We’ll only go to the combat units…”

  For some reason the colonel yielded at once. “All right, let it be combat. These two—to the letuchki, to work on the machines, and the one with the glib tongue—to engine assembly.”

  This is how our service in the 44th Automobile–Armored Vehicle Field Shop began. We were a factory on wheels. On special trucks, called letuchki, machines were installed for milling, boring, polishing, turning. There was an electric generator, casting, vulcanization. Each machine was worked by two persons. Twelve hours of work without a moment of rest. The partner stayed while the other went to eat dinner, supper, breakfast. If one’s turn came to go on assignment, the other worked twenty-four hours. We worked in snow, in mud. Under bombardment. And no one told us again that we were beautiful. But beautiful girls were pitied at the war, more pitied. That’s true. It was a pity to bury them…A pity to send the death notice to their mamas…Ah, fuck it all…

  I often have dreams nowadays…I know I have them, but I rarely remember them. But I’m left with the impression that I have been somewhere…And come back…In a dream, what took years in real life takes just a second. And sometimes I confuse dream and reality…I think it was in Zimovniki, I just lay down for a couple of hours, when the bombardment began. Eh, you! Fuck it all…Better to be killed than spoil the pleasure of a two-hour nap. There was a big explosion somewhere nearby. The house rocked. But I still went on sleeping…

  Fear was absent in me, there was no such feeling. I give you my word. Only after the most violent raids, I had a throbbing in a tooth that had a cavity. And that not for long. I might still consider myself terribly brave, if, a few years after the war, owing to constant, unbearable, and totally incomprehensible pains in various parts of my body, I hadn’t had to consult specialists. And a very experienced neuropathologist, having asked my age, said in amazement, “To have ruined your whole vegetative nervous system by the age of twenty-four! How are you going to live?”

  I replied that I was going to live quite well. First of all, I was alive! I had dreamed so much of surviving! Yes, I had survived, but after just a few months of my civilian life, my joints got swollen, my right arm refused to work and was in terrible pain, my vision deteriorated, one of my kidneys turned out to have descended, my liver was not in the right place, and, as it turned out later, my vegetative nervous system was completely ruined. But all through the war I had dreamed that I would study. And the university became like a second Stalingrad for me. I finished it a year early, otherwise I would have run out of energy. Four years in the same overcoat—winter, spring, autumn—and an army shirt so faded it looked white…Ah, fuck it all…

  * * *

  *1 Stepan Bandera (1909–1959) is a controversial Ukrainian political figure. A nationalist and leader of a movement for independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union, he led forces against the advancing Red Army in 1944 with aid from Germany. In 1959 he was assassinated by the Soviet secret police.

  *2 Lidia Charskaya (1875–1938) was an actress at the prestigious Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and a prolific writer of popular fiction. Her work was officially banned in 1920.

  Over several years I recorded hundreds of stories…Hundreds of cassettes and thousands of typed pages are arranged on my bookshelves. I listen and read attentively…

  The world of war reveals itself to me from an unexpected side. Never before did I ask myself the questions: How could one, for instance, sleep for years in shallow trenches or on the bare ground by a bonfire, go around in heavy boots and overcoats, and finally—not laugh and dance? Not wear summer dresses? Forget about shoes and flowers…They were eighteen or twenty years old! I was used to thinking that there was no room for a woman’s life in the war. It is impossible there, almost forbidden. But I was wrong…Very soon, already during my first meetings with them, I noticed: whatever the women talked about, even if it was death, they always remembered (yes!) about beauty. It was the indestructible part of their existence: “She was so beautiful lying in the coffin…Like a bride…” (A. Strotseva, infantry soldier) or: “They were going to award me a medal, and I had an old army shirt. I sewed myself a collar out of gauze. Anyway it was white…It seemed to me at that moment that I was so beautiful. There was no mirror, I couldn’t see myself. Everything got smashed during a bombardment…” (N. Ermakova, radio operator). They told cheerfully and willingly about their naïve girlish ruses, little secrets, invisible signs of how in the “ma
le” everyday life of war and the “male” business of war they still wanted to remain themselves. Not to betray their nature. Their astonishing memory (after all, forty years had gone by) preserved a great number of small details of war life. Details, nuances, colors, and sounds. In their world everyday life and essential life joined together, and the flow of essential life had a value of its own. They recalled the war as a time of life. Not so much of action as of life. I observed more than once how in their conversations the small overrode the great, even history. “It’s a pity that I was beautiful only during the war…My best years were spent there. Burned up. Afterward I aged quickly…” (Anna Galai, submachine gunner).

  At a distance of many years some events suddenly grew bigger, others diminished. The human, the intimate grew bigger, becoming for me and, most curiously, even for them, more interesting and close. The human overcame the inhuman, if only because it was human. “Don’t be afraid of my tears. Don’t pity me. Let it be painful for me, but I’m grateful to you that I’ve recalled myself when I was young…” (K. S. Tikhonovich, sergeant, antiaircraft gunner).

  I also did not know this war. And did not even suspect it…

  * * *

  OF MEN’S BOOTS AND WOMEN’S HATS

  * * *

  Maria Nikolaevna Shchelokova

  SERGEANT, COMMANDER OF A COMMUNICATIONS SECTION

  We lived in the ground…like moles…But we did have some little trifles. In spring you would bring in a little sprig, set it up. Feel happy. Maybe tomorrow you won’t be there—that’s what we thought to ourselves. And you remember, remember…One girl received a woolen dress from home. We envied her, although wearing your own clothes wasn’t allowed. The sergeant major—a man, that is—grumbled, “They’d do better to send you sheets. It’s more useful.” We had no sheets, no pillows. We slept on branches or on hay. But I had a pair of earrings stashed away; I’d put them on at night and sleep with them on…

  When I got a concussion for the first time, I couldn’t hear or speak. I said to myself, “If the voice doesn’t come back, I’ll throw myself under a train.” I used to sing so well, and suddenly I had no voice. But my voice came back.

  I was so happy, I put on my earrings. I arrived for duty and shouted with joy, “Comrade First Lieutenant, Sergeant Shchelokova reporting for duty…”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Get out of here!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Pull the earrings off at once! What kind of soldier are you?”

  This first lieutenant was very handsome. All our girls were a little in love with him. He used to tell us that in war soldiers were called for and only soldiers. They needed soldiers…But we also wanted to be beautiful…All through the war I was afraid that I’d be hit in the legs and get crippled. I had beautiful legs. What is it for a man? Even if he loses his legs, it’s not so terrible. He’s a hero anyway. He can marry! But if a woman is crippled, it’s her destiny that’s at stake. A woman’s destiny…

  Vera Vladimirovna Shevaldysheva

  FIRST LIEUTENANT, SURGEON

  I smiled all through the war…I figured that I had to smile as often as possible, because a woman should bring light. Before we left for the front, our old professor told us this: “You have to tell every wounded soldier that you love him. Your strongest medicine is love. Love protects, it gives the strength to survive.” A wounded man lies there, he’s in so much pain that he weeps, and you tell him, “There, my dearest. There, my good one…” “Do you love me, nursie?” (They called all the young ones “nursie.”) “Of course, I do. Only get well quickly.” They could get offended, say bad things, but we never could. For one rude word they punished us with the guardhouse.

  Hard…Of course it was hard…Even, say, climbing into a truck wearing a skirt, when there are only men around. Those were special ambulance trucks, very high ones. Climb to the very top! Just try it…

  Nadezhda Vasilyevna Alexeeva

  PRIVATE, TELEGRAPHER

  They put us on a train…A freight train…We were twelve girls, the rest were all men. The train would go seven or ten miles and stop. Another seven or ten miles…Again a dead end. There was no water, no toilet…See?

  Men would make a fire at a halt, shake out lice, get dry. And what were we to do? We would go to some nook and get undressed there. I wore a knitted sweater; lice sat on every sixteenth of an inch, on every stitch. I’d look and get sick. There are head lice, clothes lice, pubic lice…I had them all…What was I to do? I couldn’t go and roast the lice together with the men. It was embarrassing. I threw the sweater out and stayed just in my dress. At some station an unknown woman gave me a jacket and some old shoes.

  We rode for a long time, and then walked for a long time. It was freezing cold. I walked and kept looking in the mirror to see whether I was frostbitten. Toward evening I saw that my cheeks were frostbitten. I was so stupid…I’d heard that when the cheeks are frostbitten, they turn white. Mine were very red. I thought, let them stay frostbitten for good. But the next day they turned black…

  Anastasia Petrovna Sheleg

  JUNIOR SERGEANT, AEROSTAT OPERATOR

  There were many pretty girls among us…We went to the bathhouse, and there was a hairdresser’s shop there. So, one after the other, we all dyed our eyebrows. The commander really gave it to us: “Have you come to fight or to a ball?” We spent the whole night crying and rubbing it off. In the morning he went around and repeated to each girl, “I need soldiers, not ladies. Ladies don’t survive in war.” A very strict commander. Before the war he had been a math teacher…

  Stanislava Petrovna Volkova

  SECOND LIEUTENANT, COMMANDER OF A SAPPER PLATOON

  It seems to me as if I’ve lived two lives—a man’s and a woman’s…

  When I came to training school, there was immediate military discipline. In class, at drill, in the barracks—everything was according to regulations. There were no allowances because we were girls. All we heard was, “Stop talking!” “Hey, you talkers!” In the evening we longed to sit and maybe do some embroidery…to recall something women do…It was strictly forbidden. We were all without a home, without domestic chores, and we felt out of sorts. We were given only one hour of rest: we could sit in the Lenin room, write letters, or stand at ease, talk. But without laughter or loudness—that wasn’t allowed.

  Could you sing songs?

  No, we couldn’t.

  Why couldn’t you?

  It wasn’t allowed. When you’re on the march, you can sing, if the order is given. The order was, “Leader, strike up!”

  So you couldn’t just sing?

  No, that was against regulations.

  Was it hard to get used to?

  I think I never really got used to it. You’ve just fallen asleep, and suddenly: “Reveille!” It was like the wind swept us off our beds. You begin to dress. A woman has more clothes than a man, you fuss with one thing, then another. Finally, belt in hand, you fly to the locker room. You grab your overcoat on the way and race to the armory room. There you put a cover on your shovel, hang it on your belt, attach a kit, buckle it anyhow. Grab a rifle, lock the bolt as you go, and literally roll down the stairs from the fourth floor. Once in line, you straighten yourself up. You’re given a few minutes to do all that.

  Now we’re at the front…My boots are three sizes too big, deformed, engrained with dust. The woman I stay with brings me two eggs: “Take them for the road. You’re so thin, you’re about to snap in two.” Quietly, so that she didn’t see, I broke those two little eggs and cleaned my boots. I was hungry, of course, but the woman’s instinct won out—I wanted to be pretty. You don’t know how rough the overcoat is on the skin, how heavy it all is, these men’s things: the belt and everything. I especially disliked the roughness of the overcoat on my neck, and also those boots. They changed your gait, changed everything…

  I remember we were sad. We went around sad all the time…

>   Maria Nikolaevna Stepanova

  MAJOR, HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS IN AN INFANTRY BATTALION

  It was not so easy to make soldiers out of us…Not so simple…

  We were issued uniforms. The sergeant major formed us up: “Align your toes.”

  We align them. The toes are even, but we’re not, because our boots are size twelve or fourteen. He keeps at it. “The toes, the toes!”

  Then, “Cadets, even up your chests!”

  That, of course, we can’t manage, and he yells at the top of his voice, “What have you got in your shirt pockets?”

  We laugh.

  “Stop laughing,” shouts the sergeant major.

  To drill us in the precise and correct way of saluting, he made us salute everything—from chairs to posters on the walls. Oh, he had a hard time with us.

  In some town we marched up to the bathhouse. The men went to the men’s half, we to the women’s. The women shout, cover themselves: “Soldiers are coming!” They couldn’t tell we were girls: we had boys’ haircuts and wore army uniforms. Another time we went to the toilet, and the women brought a policeman. We asked him, “So where do we go?”

  He then shouted at those women, “These are girls!”

  “What kind of girls, these are soldiers…”

  Bella Isaakovna Epstein

  SERGEANT, SNIPER

  All I remember is the road. The road…Advancing, retreating…

  When we arrived at the 2nd Belorussian Front, they wanted to have us stay at division headquarters. Meaning: you’re women, why go to the front line? “No,” we said, “we’re snipers, send us where we’re supposed to go.” Then they said, “We’ll send you to a regiment where there’s a good commander, he takes care of girls.” There were all sorts of commanders. So we were told.