Vera Vladimirovna Shevaldysheva
FIRST LIEUTENANT, SURGEON
I saw…Every day…But I couldn’t be reconciled to that. A young, handsome man dies…I wanted to hurry up and, well…and kiss him. To do something feminine, since I couldn’t do anything as a doctor. At least to smile. To caress him. To take his hand…
Many years after the war a man confessed to me that he remembered my young smile. For me he was an ordinary wounded man, I didn’t even remember him. He told me that my smile brought him back to life, from the other world, as they say…A woman’s smile…
Sofya Krigel
SERGEANT MAJOR, SNIPER
We arrived at the 1st Belorussian Front…Twenty-seven girls. Men looked at us with admiration: “Not laundresses, not telephone operators, but sniper girls. It’s the first time we’ve seen such girls. What girls!” The sergeant major composed a poem in our honor. The sense of it was that girls should be delicate, like roses in May, and the war shouldn’t cripple their souls.
As we were leaving for the front, each of us gave an oath: there will be no romances there. It would all happen, if we survived, after the war. Before the war we didn’t have time even to kiss. We looked at these things more strictly than young people nowadays. For us to kiss meant love for the rest of your life. At the front, love was forbidden. If the superiors found out about it, one of the couple as a rule was transferred to another unit. They were simply separated.
We cherished our love and kept it secret. We didn’t keep our childish oaths…We loved…
I think that if I hadn’t fallen in love at the war, I wouldn’t have survived. Love saved us. It saved me…
Sofya K—vich
MEDICAL ASSISTANT
You ask about love? I’m not afraid of telling the truth…I was what’s called a field campaign wife. A war wife…A second one. An unlawful one.
The first commander of the battalion…
I didn’t love him. He was a good man, but I didn’t love him. But I went to his dugout after several months. What else could I do? There were only men around, so it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of them all. It was less frightening in battle than after battle, especially if we pulled back for a rest or re-formation. When there’s shooting, gunfire, they call out, “Nurse! Dear nurse!” But after the battle each of them lies in wait for you…You can’t get out of the dugout at night…Did other girls talk to you about that or did they not confess? They were ashamed, I think…Kept quiet. Proud! All sorts of things happened, because we didn’t want to die. It’s too bad to die when you’re young…And for men it was hard to live for four years without women…There were no bordellos in our army, and there weren’t any pills. Maybe somewhere they took care of those things. Not here. Four years…Commanders could allow themselves something, but not simple soldiers. Discipline. But no one talks about it…It’s not done…I, for instance, was the only woman in the battalion. I lived in a common dugout with the men. They gave me a separate space, but what kind of space was it, if the whole dugout was twenty square feet. I used to wake up at night because I waved my arms—I’d slap one on the cheek, or the hands, then another. I was wounded and got into a hospital. I waved my arms there, too. A floor attendant woke me up in the night: “What’s the matter?” How could I tell her?
The first commander was killed by a mine fragment.
The second commander of the battalion…
I loved him. I went into combat with him, I wanted to be near him. I loved him, and he had a beloved wife, two children. He showed me their photographs. And I knew that after the war, if he stayed alive, he would go back to them. To Kaluga. So what? We had such happy moments! We lived such happiness! Once we came back…A terrible battle…And we were alive. He wouldn’t have had the same thing with anyone else! It wouldn’t have worked! I knew it…I knew that without me he wouldn’t be happy. He wouldn’t be happy with anyone as we were happy together in the war. He wouldn’t…Never!
At the end of the war I got pregnant. I wanted it…But I raised our daughter by myself, he didn’t help me. Didn’t lift a finger. Not a single present or letter…or postcard. The war ended, and love ended. Like a song…He went to his lawful wife and the children. He left me his photo as a memento. I didn’t want the war to end…It’s a terrible thing to say…to open my heart…I’m crazy. I was in love! I knew that love would end together with the war. His love…But even so I’m grateful to him for the feeling he gave me, and that I had known with him. I’ve loved him all my life, I’ve kept my feeling through the years. I have no need to lie. I’m an old woman. Yes, through my whole life! And I don’t regret it.
My daughter reproached me: “Mama, why do you love him?” Yet I love him…I recently found out that he died. I wept a lot. Because of it I even quarreled with my daughter: “Why do you weep? He’s been long dead for you.” But I love him even now. I remember the war as the best time of my life, I was happy then…
Only, please, don’t give my last name. For my daughter’s sake…
Ekaterina Nikitichna Sannikova
SERGEANT, RIFLEMAN
During the war…
I was brought to the unit…To the front line. The commander met me with the words, “Take your hat off, please.” I was surprised…I took it off…In the recruiting office we were given crew cuts, but while we were in the army camps, while we were going to the front, my hair grew back a bit. It began to curl, I had curly hair. Tight curls…You can’t tell now, I’m already old…And so he looks and looks at me: “I haven’t seen a woman for two years. I just want to look.”
After the war…
I lived in a communal apartment. My neighbors were all married, and they insulted me. They taunted me: “Ha-ha-ha…Tell us how you whored around there with the men…” They used to put vinegar into my pot of boiled potatoes. Or add a tablespoon of salt…Ha-ha-ha…
My commander was demobilized. He came to me and we got married. We went and got registered, that’s all. Without a wedding. And a year later he left me for another woman, the director of our factory canteen: “She wears perfume, and you smell of army boots and footwraps.”
So I live alone. I don’t have anybody in the whole wide world. Thank you for coming…
Anastasia Leonidovna Zhardetskaya
CORPORAL, MEDICAL ASSISTANT
And my husband…It’s good he isn’t here, he’s at work. He told me strictly…He knows I like to talk about our love…How I made my wedding dress out of bandages overnight. By myself. My friends and I spent a month collecting bandages. Trophy bandages…I had a real wedding dress! I still have a picture: I’m in this dress and boots, only you can’t see the boots. But I remember I wore boots. I concocted a belt out of an old forage cap…An excellent little belt. But what am I…going on about my own things…My husband told me not to say a word about love—no, no, but to talk about the war. He’s strict. He taught me with a map…For two days he taught me where each front was…Where our unit was…I’ll tell you, I wrote it down. I’ll read it…
Why are you laughing? What a nice laugh you have. I also laughed…What kind of historian am I! I’d better show you that photo, where I’m in that dress made of bandages.
I like myself so much in it…In a white dress…
* * *
OF A STRANGE SILENCE FACING THE SKY AND A LOST RING
* * *
Maria Selivestrovna Bozhok
NURSE
I left Kazan for the front as a nineteen-year-old girl…
Six months later I wrote my mother that people thought I was twenty-five or twenty-seven. Every day is spent in fear, in terror. Shrapnel flies, you think your skin is torn off. And people die. They die every day, every hour, it feels like every minute. We didn’t have enough sheets to cover them. We laid them out in their underwear. There was a strange silence in the wards. I don’t remember such silence anywhere. When a man dies he always looks up, never to the side or at you, if you’re next to him. Only up…At the ceiling…But
as if he’s looking into the sky…
And I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t hear a single word of love in that hell. I wouldn’t believe it. The war went on for so many years, and I don’t even remember a single song. Not even the famous “Dugout.” Not a single one…I only remember: when I was leaving home for the front, there were cherry trees blossoming in the garden. I walked and kept looking back…Later I probably came across gardens along the way, they must have blossomed during the war. But I don’t remember…In school I was such a laugher, but here I never smiled. If I saw a girl pluck her eyebrows or use lipstick, I was indignant. I was categorically against it: how was it possible, how could she want to be attractive at such a time?
There were wounded around, there was moaning…Dead people have such yellow-green faces. How could I think of joy? Of my happiness? I didn’t want to combine love with that. With those things…It seemed to me that there, in those surroundings, love would perish instantly. What love can there be without festivity, without beauty? Once the war ends, there’ll be a beautiful life. And love. But here…Here, no. What if I suddenly die, and the man who loves me suffers? Such a pity. That’s how I felt…
My present husband courted me there; we met at the front. I didn’t want to hear him: “No, no, when the war’s over, only then will we be able to talk about it.” I’ll never forget how once, on returning from a battle, he asked me, “Do you have some nice little blouse? Please put it on. Let me see you in a blouse.” But all I had was an army shirt.
I used to tell my girlfriend who got married at the front, “He didn’t bring you flowers. Didn’t court you. And suddenly—marriage. What kind of love is that?” I didn’t approve of her feelings.
The war ended…We looked at each other and didn’t believe that the war had ended and we were still alive. Now we were going to live…We were going to love…But we had forgotten all that, we didn’t know how to do it. I came home, I went with mama to have a dress made. My first postwar dress.
My turn came and they asked me, “What kind of dress do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“You come to a dressmaker, and you don’t know what kind of a dress you want?”
“No, I don’t…”
I hadn’t seen a single dress in five years. I’d even forgotten how a dress is made. That there are all sorts of tucks, slits…Low waist, high waist…Incomprehensible to me. I bought a pair of high-heeled shoes, walked up and down the room, and took them off. I put them in the corner, thinking, “I’ll never learn to walk in them…”
Elena Viktorovna Klenovskaya
PARTISAN
I want to remember…I want to tell what an extraordinarily beautiful feeling I brought away from the war. Almost no words can convey with what rapture and admiration men regarded us. I lived in the same dugouts with them, slept on the same bunks, went on the same missions, and when I froze so that I felt my spleen freeze in me, my tongue freeze in my mouth, a little longer and I’d faint, I begged, “Misha, undo your coat, warm me up.” He’d do it: “Well, is that better?” “It is.”
I’ve never met with anything like it in my life. But it was impossible to think of anything personal when the Motherland was in danger.
But there was love?
Yes, there was. I encountered it…But you must forgive me, maybe I’m not right, and this isn’t quite natural, but in my heart I disapproved of those people. I thought that it wasn’t the time to be concerned with love. Around us was evil. Hatred. It seems many thought the same way…
And how were you before the war?
I liked to sing. To laugh. I wanted to be a pilot. I didn’t even think about love! It wasn’t the main thing in my life. The main thing was—the Motherland. Now I think we were naïve…
Svetlana Nikolaevna Liubich
MEDICAL VOLUNTEER
In the hospital…They were all happy. They were happy because they were still alive. There was a twenty-year-old lieutenant who was upset that he had lost a leg. But then, in the midst of universal grief, it seemed like happiness: he was alive, and, just think, he was only missing one leg. The main thing was—he was alive. He’d have love, and he’d have a wife, and everything. Nowadays it’s an awful thing to find yourself without a leg, but then they all hopped around, and smoked, and laughed. They were heroes and all that! Just think!
Did you fall in love there?
Of course, we were so young. As soon as the new wounded arrived, we always fell in love with somebody. My girlfriend fell in love with a first lieutenant, he was wounded all over. She pointed him out—there he is. So I, too, decided to fall in love with him. When he was taken away, he asked me for a photo. I had one photo taken somewhere at a train station. I took this photo to give to him, but then I thought: what if this isn’t love, and I’ve given him the photo? They were already taking him away. I gave him my hand in which I clutched the photo, but I couldn’t bring myself to open my fist. That’s the whole of my love…
Then there was Pavlik, also a lieutenant. He was in great pain, so I put a chocolate under his pillow. And when we met, this was after the war, already twenty years after, he began to thank my friend, Lilya Drozdova, for this chocolate. Lilya said, “What chocolate?” Then I confessed that it was me…And he kissed me…After twenty years he kissed me…
Lilya Alexandrovskaya
ART SINGER
Once after a concert…In a big evacuation hospital…The head doctor came up to me and asked, “We have a badly wounded tankman here in a separate room. He reacts to almost nothing, maybe your singing will help him.” I went to the ward. As long as I live, I’ll never forget this man, who by some miracle got out of a burning tank, burned from head to foot. He lay motionless, stretched out on the bed, his face black, eyeless. My throat was seized with a spasm, and for a few moments I couldn’t get hold of myself. Then I began to sing quietly…I saw the man’s face stir slightly. He whispered something. I bent over and heard, “Sing more.” I sang for him more and more, all my repertoire, till the doctor said, “It seems he’s fallen asleep…”
Nina Leonidovna Mikhai
SERGEANT MAJOR, NURSE
Our battalion commander and the nurse Liuba Silina…They loved each other! Everybody could see that. He went to battle and she…She said she wouldn’t forgive herself if he didn’t die before her eyes, and she didn’t see him in his last moment. “Let them kill us together. With the same shell.” They wanted to die together or to live together. Our love was not divided into today and tomorrow, there was only today. Each of us knew that you love now, and the next moment either you or this man would be no more. In war everything happens more quickly: both life and death. In those few years we lived a whole life. I’ve never been able to explain it to anybody. Time is different there…
In one battle the commander was badly wounded, and Liuba lightly, just a scratch on a shoulder. He was sent to the rear, and she stayed on. She was pregnant, and he gave her a letter, “Go to my parents. Whatever happens to me, you’re my wife. And we’ll have our son or our daughter.”
Later Liuba wrote to me that his parents didn’t accept her and didn’t recognize the child. And the commander died.
For many years I’ve been meaning…I wanted to go and visit her, but it didn’t work out. We had been bosom friends. But to go so far—to the Altai. Recently a letter came telling me she had died. Now her son invites me to come and visit her grave…
I’d like to go…
Lilya Mikhailovna Butko
SURGICAL NURSE
Victory Day…
We gathered for our traditional reunion. I came out of the hotel, and the girls said to me, “Where have you been, Lilya? We cried our eyes out.”
It turned out that a man had approached them, a Kazakh, and asked, “Where are you from, girls? What hospital?”
“Who are you looking for?”
“I come here every year looking for a nurse. She saved my life. I fell in love with her. I want to find her.”
My girls laughed.
“You’re looking for a nurse, but she’s a granny by now.”
“No…”
“You must have a wife? Children?”
“I have grandchildren, and I have children, and I have a wife. I’ve lost my soul…I have no soul…”
The girls told me that, and together we recalled: might he be that Kazakh of mine?
…They brought a young Kazakh boy. Really very young. We operated on him. He had seven or eight intestinal ruptures and was considered hopeless. He lay there so indifferently that I noticed him at once. Each time I had a spare moment I’d run to see him: “How are you doing?” I gave him intravenous injections, took his temperature, and he made it. He began to recover. Our hospital was on the front line, we didn’t keep the wounded for long. We rendered first aid, tore them from the clutches of death, and sent them on. He was supposed to be taken away with the next party.
He lay on a stretcher, and they told me he had asked for me.
“Nurse, come closer to me.”
The Unwomanly Face of War Page 26