The woman raised herself a little—she still couldn’t get up—and handed me a beautiful mother-of-pearl powder box. This was obviously the thing she cherished most. I opened the powder box, and the smell of the powder, when there was shooting around, explosions…It was something…I want to weep even now…The smell of the powder, that little mother-of-pearl lid…The little baby, a girl…Something homey, something from a real woman’s life…
Taissia Petrovna Rudenko-Sheveleva
CAPTAIN, COMPANY COMMANDER IN THE MOSCOW FLEET, NOW A RETIRED LIEUTENANT COLONEL
A woman in the navy…That was something forbidden, even unnatural. People thought it would be bad luck for a ship. I was born near Fastov. In our village the women teased my mother to death: what did you give birth to—a girl or a boy? I wrote a letter to Voroshilov himself, asking to be accepted in the Leningrad Artillery School. They accepted me only on his personal order. The only girl.
When I finished the school, they still wanted me to stay on dry land. Then I stopped telling them that I was a woman. My Ukrainian last name, Rudenko, saved me.* But on one occasion I gave myself away. I was scrubbing the deck, suddenly heard a noise, and turned around: a sailor was chasing a cat that had ended up on the ship, no one knew how. There was a belief, probably from the earliest times, that cats and women bring bad luck at sea. The cat didn’t want to quit the ship, and its dodges would have been the envy of a world-class football player. The whole ship was laughing. But when the cat nearly fell into water, I got frightened and screamed. And it was evidently such a girlish treble that the men’s laughter stopped at once. Silence fell.
I heard the commander’s voice: “Watchman, is there a woman on board?”
“No, sir, Comrade Commander.”
Panic again—there was a woman on board.
…I was the first woman to be a commissioned officer in the navy. During the war I was in charge of arming the ships and the naval infantry. Then an article appeared in the British press saying that some incomprehensible creature—neither man nor woman—was fighting in the Russian navy. And that no man would ever take this “lady with a dirk” for a wife. Not take me for a wife?! No, you’re mistaken, my good sir, the most handsome officer will take me…
I was a happy wife and am still a happy mother and grandmother. It’s not my fault that my husband was killed in the war. And I loved the navy all my life and still do…
Klavdia Vasilyevna Konovalova
JUNIOR SERGEANT, COMMANDER OF AN ANTIAIRCRAFT GUN
I worked in a factory…In a chain factory in our village of Mikhalchikovo, Kstovsky district, Gorki region. When men began to be recruited and sent to the front, I was transferred to a machine to do men’s work. From there I was transferred to the forge shop as a hammerer, to make ship’s chains.
I asked to be sent to the front, but the factory superiors used various pretexts to keep me there. Then I wrote to the district Komsomol committee and in March 1942 received a summons. I was leaving with several other girls, and the whole village came to see us off. We went on foot twenty miles to Gorki, and there they distributed us to various units. I was sent to the 784th Middle-caliber Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment.
Soon I was appointed number-one gunlayer. But that wasn’t enough for me; I now wanted to become a loader. True, that was regarded as purely a man’s job: you had to work with thirty-pound shells and carry out intense fire at a rate of one salvo every five seconds. It was not in vain that I had worked as a hammerer. Within a year I was promoted to the rank of junior sergeant and appointed commander of the second gun, which was serviced by two girls and four men. From the intense firing the gun barrels turned red-hot and it became dangerous to use them. We were forced, against all the rules, to cool them off with blankets moistened with water. The guns couldn’t stand it, but people could. I was a tough, strong girl, but I know that in the war I was capable of doing more than in peaceful life. Even physically. An unknown strength surged up from somewhere…
Hearing about the Victory on the radio, I roused my team by sounding the alarm and gave my last command: “Azimuth—fifteen zero-zero. Angle of elevation—ten-zero. Detonator—hundred and twenty, pace—ten!”
I myself went to the breechblock and began a four-round salute in honor of our Victory after four years of war.
At these shots, everybody who was at the battery position came running, along with the battery commander, Slatvinsky. He ordered me put under arrest for the unauthorized action, but then canceled his decision. And we all went on saluting together from personal weapons, embracing and kissing each other. Drank vodka, sang songs. And then wept all night and all day…
Galina Yaroslavovna Dubovik
PARTISAN OF THE 12TH STALIN MOUNTED PARTISAN BRIGADE
I carry a handheld machine gun on my shoulder…I’ll never admit it’s heavy. Otherwise who would keep me as number two? Inadequate fighter, to be replaced. They’d send me to the kitchen. That’s a disgrace. God forbid I should spend the whole war in the kitchen. I’d just cry…
Were women sent on missions equally with men?
They tried to spare us. You had to ask to be sent on a combat mission, or somehow to deserve it. To prove yourself. For that you needed boldness, desperateness of character. Not every girl was capable of it. We had a girl, Valya, working in the kitchen. She was so gentle, timid, you couldn’t imagine her with a rifle. She would, of course, shoot in extremity, but she never yearned for action. Me? I yearned. I dreamed!
Yet in school I was a quiet girl…Inconspicuous…
Elena Ivanovna Variukhina
NURSE
The order: be in place within twenty-four hours…Assignment: to the 713th Mobile Field Hospital…
I remember I appeared in the hospital in a black marquisette dress and sandals, and over it I was wearing my husband’s cape. They issued me a military uniform, but I refused to put it on, because everything was three or four sizes too big for me. They reported to the head of the hospital that I was insubordinate to army discipline. He didn’t take any measures—let’s just wait, in a few days she’ll change clothes herself.
In a few days we were moving to another place, and came under heavy bombardment. We hid in a potato field, and it had rained just before. Can you imagine what became of my marquisette dress and what my sandals turned into? The next day I was dressed like a soldier. In full uniform.
Thus began my military path…All the way to Germany…
In the first days of January 1942 we entered the settlement of Afonevka, in the Kursk region. There was heavy frost. Two school buildings were chock-full of the wounded: they lay on stretchers, on the floor, on straw. There weren’t enough trucks and fuel to evacuate them to the rear. The head of the hospital decided to make up a train of horse-drawn wagons from Afonevka and the neighboring settlements.
The next morning the train arrived. The horses were driven only by women. In the sledges lay hand-woven blankets, sheepskin coats, pillows. Some even brought featherbeds. To this day I can’t remember without tears what happened then…Those scenes…Each woman chose a wounded man and began preparing him for the road and murmuring over him: “My dear little son!” “There, my dearest!” “There, my pretty one!” Each woman brought along a bit of home-cooked food, even warm potatoes. They wrapped the wounded in their homey things, put them carefully into the sledges. To this day it sits in my ear, this prayer, this soft women’s murmuring: “There, my dearest,” “There, my pretty one…” I’m sorry, and even feel remorse, that we didn’t ask these women’s last names then.
I also remember how we moved through liberated Belorussia and didn’t meet any men in the villages. Only women met us. There were only women left…
* * *
OF THE SILENCE OF HORROR AND THE BEAUTY OF FICTION
* * *
Anastasia Ivanovna Medvedkina
PRIVATE, MACHINE GUNNER
Can I find the right words? I can tell about how I shot. But about how I wept, I can’t. That will
be left untold. I know one thing: in war a human being becomes frightening and incomprehensible. How can one understand him?
You’re a writer. Think up something yourself. Something beautiful. Without lice and filth, without vomit…Without the smell of vodka and blood…Not so frightening as life…
Anna Petrovna Kalyagina
SERGEANT, MEDICAL ASSISTANT
I don’t know…No, I understand what you’re asking about, but words fail me…I have no words…How can I describe it? I need…In order to…A spasm suffocated me, as it does now: at night I lie in the stillness and I suddenly remember. I suffocate. In shivers…Like this…
The words are somewhere…We need a poet…Like Dante…
Olga Nikitichna Zabelina
ARMY SURGEON
Sometimes I hear music…Or a song…a woman’s voice…And there I find what I felt then. Something similar…
But I watch films about the war—not right. I read a book—not right. No, not it. It doesn’t come off. I start talking, myself—that’s also not it. Not as frightening and not as beautiful. Do you know how beautiful a morning at war can be? Before combat…You look and you know: this may be your last. The earth is so beautiful…And the air…And the dear sun…
Liubov Eduardovna Kresova
UNDERGROUND FIGHTER
We lived in the ghetto behind barbed wire…I even remember that this happened on a Tuesday. For some reason, I paid attention later that it had been Tuesday. Tuesday…I don’t remember the date or the month. But it was Tuesday. I went up to the window by chance. Across the street from our house a boy and girl were sitting on a bench kissing. There were pogroms around, shootings. And they were kissing! I was astounded by this peaceful picture…
At the other end of the street, which was short, a German patrol appeared. They, too, saw it all, they had good eyesight. I had no time to think about anything. Of course I didn’t…Shouting. Racket. Gunshots…I…No thoughts…The first feeling—fear. I only saw that the boy and the girl stood up—and had already fallen. They fell down together.
And then…A day passed, a second…a third…I was still thinking about it. You must understand: they didn’t kiss at home, but outside. Why? They wanted to die like that…They knew they would die in the ghetto anyway, and they wanted to die differently. Of course, this was love. What else? What else could it have been…Only love.
So, I’ve told you…And, true, it came out well—beautiful. But in reality? In reality I was horrified…Yes…What else? It just occurred to me…They were fighting…They wanted to die beautifully. That was their choice, I’m sure…
Irina Moiseevna Lepitskaya
PRIVATE, RIFLEMAN
Me? I don’t want to talk…Although…In short…these things can’t be talked about…
Antonina Albertovna Vyzhutovich
PARTISAN NURSE
A mad woman wandered around the town…She never washed, never combed her hair. Her five children had been killed. All of them. And killed in different ways. One had been shot in the head, another in the ear…
She used to come up to people in the street…anybody…And say, “I’ll tell you how my children were killed. Which one to begin with? With Vasenka…They shot him in the ear! And Tolik in the head…Well, which one?”
Everybody fled from her. She was crazy, that’s why she could tell…
Anna Mikhailovna Perepelka
SERGEANT, NURSE
I remember just one thing: the cry—victory! All day the cry rang out…Victory! Victory! Brothers! At first I didn’t believe it, because we were already used to the war—as if that was life. Victory! We won…We were happy! Happy!
* * *
* Most Russian family names have a feminine ending for women (Ivanov becomes Ivanova), but often Ukrainian names, such as Rudenko, do not.
I talk about the same thing all the time…In one way or another I keep coming back to it…
Most often I talk about death. About their relationships with death—it constantly circled around them. As close and as habitual as life itself. I try to understand, how was it possible to survive amid this endless experience of dying? To look at it day after day. To think. To try it on despite yourself.
Is it possible to talk about it? What lends itself to words and to our feelings? And what is ineffable? More and more questions arise for me, and fewer and fewer answers.
Sometimes I come home after these meetings with the thought that suffering is solitude. Total isolation. At other times it seems to me that suffering is a special kind of knowledge. There is something in human life that it is impossible to convey and preserve in any other way, especially among us. That is how the world is made; that is how we are made.
I met one of the heroines of this chapter in the auditorium of the Belorussian State University. The students were noisily and happily putting away their notebooks after the lecture.
“How were we then?” she replied to my first question with a question. “The same as these students of mine. Only dressed differently, and girls’ jewelry was simpler. Steel rings, glass beads. Rubber sneakers. We didn’t have these jeans and tape recorders.”
I followed the hurrying students with my eyes, and the story was already beginning…
Stanislava Petrovna Volkova
SECOND LIEUTENANT, COMMANDER OF A SAPPER PLATOON
A girlfriend and I finished university before the war, and sapper’s school during the war. We came to the front as officers…second lieutenants. They met us like this: “Good for you, girls! It’s fine that you’ve come, girls. But we’re not sending you anywhere. You’ll be with us at headquarters.” That was how they met us at the headquarters of the corps of engineers. We about-faced and went looking for Malinovsky, commander in chief of the front. While we went around, a rumor spread through the settlement that two girls were looking for the commander in chief.
An officer came up to us and said, “Show me your papers.”
He examined them. “Why are you looking for the commander in chief? You’re supposed to go to the headquarters of the corps of engineers.”
“We were sent as commanders of sapper platoons, and they want to keep us at headquarters. But we insist on being only commanders of sapper platoons, and only at the front line.”
Then this officer took us back to the headquarters of the engineer corps. For a long time they all talked and talked, there was a whole cottage full of people, and everybody gave advice and some laughed. But we held our ground, that we had an assignment, that we are supposed to be only commanders of sapper platoons.
Then the officer who brought us there got angry. “Young ladies! Do you know how long the commander of a sapper platoon lives? The commander of a sapper platoon lives only two months…”
“We know. That’s why we want to go to the front line.”
There was nothing to be done; they wrote out the assignment. “Well, all right, we’ll send you to the 5th Shock Army. What a shock army is you probably know, the name itself tells you. Constantly on the front line…”
And they told us all sorts of horrors. We were glad.
“Agreed!”
We came to the headquarters of the 5th Shock Army. A cultivated captain was sitting there. He received us very nicely, but when he heard that we wanted to be commanders of sapper platoons, he clutched his head.
“No, no! What are you saying? We’ll find work for you here at headquarters. Are you joking? There are only men there, and suddenly the commander’s a woman—it’s crazy. No, no!”
For two days they worked on us like that. I’m telling you…Persuading…We didn’t budge: only commanders of sapper platoons. We didn’t give an inch. That wasn’t the end of it. Finally…Finally we got our assignments. I was brought to my platoon…The soldiers looked at me, one mockingly, another even angrily, yet another just shrugged his shoulders, which made everything clear at once. When the battalion commander said, “I present to you your new platoon commander,” they suddenly howled: “Hoo-o-o…” One
even spat: “Pfui!”
A year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, these same boys, those who were still alive, carried me on high to my dugout. They were proud of me.
If you ask what color war is, I’ll tell you—the color of earth. For a sapper…The black, yellow, clayey color of earth…
We’re on a march somewhere…Spend the night in the forest. We make a bonfire, and the bonfire burns, and everybody sits very quietly, some are already asleep. I’m falling asleep, looking at the fire. I sleep with my eyes open: some moths, some bugs fly into the fire, they fly all night long, without a sound, without a rustle, they silently disappear into this big fire. Others come flying after them…I’m telling you…Just like us. We marched and marched. Rolling like a stream.
Two months later I wasn’t killed, I was wounded. My first wound was light. And I stopped thinking about death…
Appolina Nikonovna Litskevich-Bairak
SECOND LIEUTENANT, COMMANDER OF A SAPPER-MINER PLATOON
In my childhood…I’ll begin with my childhood…During the war I was afraid most of all to remember my childhood. Precisely childhood. One shouldn’t recall the most tender things during a war…Not the most tender things…It’s a taboo.
Well, so…In my childhood my father used to give me a crew cut with an electric hair clipper. I recalled it when we got our haircuts and suddenly turned into young soldiers. Some girls were frightened…But I easily got used to it. My element. Not for nothing did my father say, “It’s a boy I’ve got here, not a girl.” The blame for it all went to a passion of mine, for which I often got yelled at by my parents. In winter I used to jump down from a steep bank onto the snow-covered river Ob. After classes I would put on my father’s old cotton-padded trousers and tie them over my felt boots. Tucked my thick jacket into the trousers and tightened the belt. On my head was a long-eared hat, tied under the chin. Bundled up like that, waddling clumsily like a bear, I went to the river. I ran as fast as I could and jumped off the cliff…
The Unwomanly Face of War Page 23