The Unwomanly Face of War Page 9

  I’m at the wheel…We pick up the dead after the battle; they’re scattered over the field. All young. Boys. And suddenly there’s a young girl lying there. Killed…Everybody falls silent.

  Vera Iosifovna Khoreva

  ARMY SURGEON

  How I prepared to go to the front…You won’t believe…I thought it wouldn’t be for long. We’ll defeat the enemy soon! I took one skirt, my favorite one, two pairs of socks, one pair of shoes. We were retreating from Voronezh, but I remember going to a store and buying another pair of high-heeled shoes. I do remember that we were retreating, everything was black, smoky (but the store was open—a miracle!), and for some reason I felt like buying a pair of shoes. Such elegant little shoes, I remember as if it were today…I also bought some perfume…

  It was hard to renounce all at once life as it had been up to then. Not only my heart but my whole body resisted. I remember how happy I was when I came running out of the store with those shoes. I was inspired. And there was smoke everywhere…Rumbling…I was already in the war, but I still didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t believe it.

  And there was rumbling all around…

  * * *

  OF EVERYDAY LIFE AND ESSENTIAL LIFE

  * * *

  Nonna Alexandrovna Smirnova

  PRIVATE, ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNNER

  We dreamed…We wanted to go to war…

  We were assigned seats in a train car, and classes began. Everything was different from the way we had pictured it at home. We had to get up early, and run around all day. But the former life still lived in us. We were indignant when the section commander, Sergeant Gulyaev, who had a fourth-grade education, taught us the regulations and mispronounced certain words. We wondered: what can he teach us? But he taught us how not to perish…

  After the quarantine, before we took the oath, the sergeant major brought our uniforms: overcoats, forage caps, army shirts, skirts, and, instead of underwear, two long-sleeved men’s shirts of unbleached calico, stockings instead of footwraps, and heavy American boots, iron shod at the heels and toes. By my height and constitution I turned out to be the smallest in the company, five feet tall, shoe size five, and, naturally, military industry did not provide for such tiny sizes, and America certainly did not supply us with anything that small. I was given a pair of size ten boots. I put them on and took them off without unlacing them, and they were so heavy that I dragged my feet on the ground as I walked. When I marched on stone pavement, my iron-shod boots made sparks, and my gait resembled anything but a marching step. It’s awful to remember the nightmare of my first march. I was ready to do great deeds, but I wasn’t ready to wear size ten boots instead of five. They were so heavy and ugly! So ugly!

  The commander saw me marching and called me out.

  “Smirnova, what kind of step is that? Haven’t you been taught? Why don’t you pick up your feet? Put in three extra turns of duty…”

  I answered: “Yes, sir, Comrade First Lieutenant, three extra turns of duty!” I turned to go and fell down. I fell out of my boots…My feet were all bloody blisters…

  Then it became clear that I could no longer walk. The company shoemaker, Parshin, was ordered to make me a pair of size five boots out of an old tarpaulin…

  Antonina Grigoryevna Bondareva

  LIEUTENANT OF THE GUARDS, SENIOR PILOT

  And there was so much that was funny…

  Discipline, regulations, insignia—we didn’t master all this wisdom at once. We were standing guard by the plane. And the regulations say that if anyone comes, we should stop him: “Halt, who goes there?” My friend saw the regimental commander and shouted, “Halt, who goes there? Excuse me, but I’m going to shoot!” Imagine? She shouted, “Excuse me, but I’m going to shoot!” Excuse me…Ha-ha-ha…

  Klavdia Ivanovna Terekhova

  AIR FORCE CAPTAIN

  The girls arrived at school with long braids…With their hair done up…I also had braids around my head…But how could we wash it? Where to dry it? Suppose you’ve just washed it, and there’s an alarm, you have to run. Our commander, Marina Raskova, told us all to cut off our braids. The girls cut them and wept. Lilya Litvyak, later a famous pilot, couldn’t bring herself to part with her braid.

  I went to Raskova.

  “Comrade Commander, your orders have been carried out, only Litvyak refused.”

  Marina Raskova, despite her feminine gentleness, could be a very strict commander. She sent me away.

  “What kind of party organizer are you if you can’t get your people to carry out an order! About-face, march!”

  Dresses, high-heeled shoes…How sorry we were to put them away. It was boots during the day, and in the evening at least a little time in shoes in front of the mirror. Raskova saw it and a few days later came the order: pack all the women’s clothes and mail them home. So there! But as a result we finished studying a new plane in six months instead of two years, as it would have taken in peaceful times.

  In the first days of training we lost two teams. There were four coffins. All three of our regiments sobbed out loud.

  Raskova stepped forward.

  “Friends, wipe your tears. These are our first losses. There will be many of them. Clench your hearts like a fist…”

  Later, at the front, we buried without tears. We stopped crying.

  We flew fighters. The altitude itself was a terrible strain on a woman’s whole body. Sometimes your stomach was pressed right up against your spine. But our girls flew and shot down aces, and what aces! You know, when we walked by, men looked at us with astonishment: “They’re women pilots.” They admired us…

  Vera Vladimirovna Shevaldysheva

  FIRST LIEUTENANT, SURGEON

  In the fall I was summoned to the recruiting office…The commander received me and asked: “Do you know how to parachute?” I confessed that I was afraid. He spent a long time persuading me to become a paratrooper: handsome uniform, chocolate every day. But I’d been afraid of heights since childhood. “And what about antiaircraft artillery?” As if I knew anything about antiaircraft artillery? Then he suggests: “Let’s send you to a partisan unit.” “And how can I write to mama in Moscow from there?” He takes a red pencil and writes on my assignment: “Steppe Front…”*14

  On the train a young captain fell in love with me. He spent a whole night standing in our car. He had already been burned by the war, had been wounded several times. He looked at me, looked, and then said: “Verochka, only don’t lower yourself, don’t become coarse. You’re so delicate now…I’ve already seen everything!” And more in the same vein, meaning it’s hard to come out pure from the war. From hell.

  A friend and I spent a month traveling to the 4th Guards Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front. We finally arrived. The chief surgeon came out for a few moments, looked us over, and led us to the surgery room: “Here’s your operating table…” Ambulances were driving up one after another, big cars, “Studebakers.” The wounded were lying on the ground, on stretchers. We only asked: “Who should we take first?” “The silent ones…” An hour later I was standing at my table, operating. And so it went…You operate around the clock, then take a short nap, quickly rub your eyes, wash—and go back to your table. And every third man was dead. We had no time to help them all. Every third man…

  At Zhmerinka station we came under a terrible bombardment. The train stopped, and we ran. Our political commissar had had his appendix removed the day before, and that day he, too, ran. We sat in the forest all night, and our train was blown to pieces. In the morning German planes began combing the forest. Where to hide? I couldn’t burrow into the ground like a mole. I put my arms around a birch tree and stood there: “Oh, mama, my mama!…Can it be I’ll perish? If I survive, I’ll be the happiest person in the world.” When I told people afterward how I held on to the birch tree, they all laughed. I was such an easy target. Standing up tall, a white birch…Hilarious!

  I met Victory Day in Vienna. We went to the zoo, I wanted so much to g
o to the zoo. We could have gone to see a concentration camp. They took everybody there to see it. I didn’t go…Now it surprises me that I didn’t go…I wanted something joyful. Funny. To see something from a different life…

  Svetlana Vasilyevna Katykhina

  PRIVATE IN A FIELD BATH-AND-LAUNDRY UNIT

  There were three of us: mama, papa, and myself…My father was the first to leave for the front. Mama wanted to go with my father, she was a nurse, but he was sent in one direction, she in another. I was only sixteen…They didn’t want to take me. I kept going to the recruiting office, and after a year they took me.

  We traveled by train for a long time. Soldiers were returning from the hospitals with us, and there were also some young fellows. They told us about the front, and we sat listening open-mouthed. They said there would be shooting, and we sat and waited: when would the shooting begin? So that when we came we could say we had already been under fire.

  We arrived. But they didn’t give us rifles, they sent us to the cauldrons and tubs. The girls were all my age, loved and pampered in their families. I was an only child. But there we had to carry firewood, stoke the stoves. Then we took the ashes and used them in cauldrons instead of soap, because there was always a shortage of soap. The linen was dirty, full of lice. Bloody…In winter it was heavy with blood…

  Sofya Konstantinovna Dubnyakova

  SERGEANT MAJOR, MEDICAL ASSISTANT

  To this day I remember my first wounded man. His face…He had a compound fracture of the middle third of the thigh bone. Imagine it, the bone sticking out, a shrapnel wound, everything turned inside out. That bone…I knew theoretically what to do, but when I crawled over to him and saw it, I felt faint, nauseous. And suddenly I hear: “Drink some water, dear nurse…” It was the wounded man speaking. He pitied me. I remember that picture as if it were now. When he said it I came to my senses: “Ah,” I thought, “you damned Turgenev young lady! A man is perishing and you, tender creature, feel nauseous…” I opened a first-aid kit, covered up the wound—and felt better, and was able to give the man proper aid.

  Now I watch films about the war: a nurse on the front line, she’s neat, clean, not in thick pants, but in a skirt, a pretty forage cap on top of her head…Well, it’s not true! How could we have pulled a wounded man out, if we were like that…You’re not going to go crawling about in a skirt with nothing but men around. And to tell the truth, they issued us skirts only at the end of the war, for dressing up. We also got some knitted cotton underwear instead of men’s shirts. We were so happy we didn’t know what to do. We unbuttoned our tunics to show it off…

  Anna Ivanovna Belyai

  NURSE

  A bombardment…They bombed and bombed, bombed and bombed and bombed. Everybody rushed and ran somewhere…I’m running, too. I hear someone moan: “Help…Help…” But I keep running…A few minutes later, something dawns on me, I feel the first-aid bag on my shoulder. And also—shame. Where did the fear go! I run back: it was a wounded soldier moaning. I rush to bandage him. Then a second, a third…

  The battle ended during the night. In the morning fresh snow fell. Under it the dead…Many had their arms raised up…toward the sky…You ask me: what is happiness? I answer…To suddenly find a living man among the dead…

  Olga Vasilyevna Korzh

  MEDICAL ASSISTANT IN A CAVALRY SQUADRON

  I saw my first dead man…I stood over him and cried…Mourned for him…Then a wounded man called to me: “Bandage my leg!” His leg was torn off, hanging out of the trouser leg. I cut the trouser leg off: “Put my leg down! Put it beside me.” I did. If they’re conscious, they won’t give up their arm or leg. They take it along. And if they’re dying, they ask that it be buried with them.

  During the war I used to think I’d never forget anything. But things get forgotten…

  Such a young, attractive fellow. And he lies there dead. I thought all the killed got buried with military honors, but they took him and dragged him into the hazel bushes. Dug a grave…Without a coffin, without anything, they put him in the ground and simply covered him over. The sun was shining brightly—on him, too…A warm summer day…There was no tarpaulin, nothing, they laid him out in his army shirt and jodhpurs, as he was, and it was all new, he had obviously arrived recently. So they laid him out and buried him. The hole was very shallow, just enough to lay him in. And the wound was small, a mortal one—in the temple, but there was little blood, and the man lay as if alive, only very pale.

  After the artillery fire the bombing began. They bombed that place. I don’t know what was left of it…

  And how did we bury people in an encirclement? Right there, next to the trench we ourselves were sitting in, we put them in the ground—that’s all. There was just a little mound. Of course, if the Germans came right after, or some tanks, they would trample it down at once. There would be ordinary ground left, not a trace. We often buried in the woods under the trees…Under the oaks, the birches…

  Even now I can’t go to the forest. Especially where there are old oaks or birches…I can’t sit there…

  Vera Borisovna Sapgir

  SERGEANT, ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNNER

  I lost my voice at the front…My beautiful voice…

  My voice returned when I came back home. The family got together in the evening, we drank: “So, Verka, sing for us.” And I began to sing…

  I left for the front a materialist. An atheist. I left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who had been well taught. And there…There I began to pray…I always prayed before a battle, I read my prayers. The words were simple…My own words…They had one meaning, that I would return to mama and papa. I didn’t know any real prayers and didn’t read the Bible. No one saw me pray. I did it in secret. On the sly. Cautiously. Because…We were different then, people lived differently. You understand? We thought and understood differently…Because…I’ll tell you a story…Once a believer turned up among the new arrivals, and the soldiers laughed at him when he prayed: “Well, did your God help you? If he exists, how does he put up with all this?” They were unbelievers, like the man who cried at the feet of the crucified Christ, “If He loves you, why doesn’t He save you?” I read the Bible after the war…Now I read it all the time…And that soldier, he was no longer a young man, he didn’t want to shoot. He refused: “I can’t! I won’t kill!” Everybody agreed to kill, but he didn’t. At that time…A terrible time…Because…They court-martialed him and two days later they shot him…Bang! Bang!

  A different time…Different people…How can I explain it? How?…

  Fortunately I…I didn’t see those people, the ones I killed…But…All the same…Now I realize that I killed them. I think about it…Because…Because I’m old now. I pray for my soul. I told my daughter that when I die she should take all my medals and decorations, not to a museum, but to a church. Give them to the priest…They come to me in my sleep…The dead…My dead…Though I never saw them, they come and look at me. I keep searching with my eyes, maybe someone was only wounded, badly wounded, but could still be saved. I don’t know how to put it…But they’re all dead…

  Maria Selivestrovna Bozhok

  NURSE

  The most unbearable thing for me was the amputations…They often amputated so high up that they’d cut off the whole leg, and I could barely hold it, barely carry it to the basin. I remember they were very heavy. I would take it quietly, so that the wounded man wouldn’t hear, and carry it like a baby…A small baby…Especially if it was a high amputation, way above the knee. I couldn’t get used to it. Under anesthesia the wounded men would groan or curse. Well-rounded Russian curses. I was always bloody…Blood is dark red…Very dark…

  I wrote nothing to mama about it. I wrote her that everything was fine, that I had warm clothes and boots. She sent three of us to the front, it was hard for her…

  Maria Petrovna Smirnova (Kukharskaya)

  MEDICAL ASSISTANT

  I was born and grew up in Crimea, near Odessa. In 1941 I finished tenth gra
de in the Slobodka high school, Kordymsky district. When the war began, I listened to the radio for the first few days. I realized that we were retreating. I ran to the recruiting office. They sent me home. I went there twice more and was refused twice more. On July 28 the retreating units passed through our Slobodka, and I went to the front with them without any call-up.

  When I first saw a wounded man, I fainted. Later I got over it. When I went under fire to a wounded soldier for the first time, I screamed so loud that it seemed I drowned out the noise of the battle. Then I got used to it…Ten days later I was wounded. I extracted the shrapnel myself, and bandaged myself.

  December 25, 1942…Our 333rd Division of the 56th Army occupied an elevation on the approach to Stalingrad. The enemy decided to take it back at all costs. A battle began. Tanks attacked us, but our artillery stopped them. The Germans rolled back, and a wounded lieutenant, the artillerist Kostia Khudov, was left in no-man’s-land. The orderlies who tried to bring him back were killed. Two first-aid sheepdogs (this was the first time I saw them) crept toward him, but were also killed. And then I took off my flap-eared hat, stood up tall, and began to sing our favorite prewar song: “I saw you off to a great deed,” first softly, then more and more loudly. Everything became hushed on both sides—ours and the Germans’. I went up to Kostia, bent down, put him on a sledge, and took him to our side. I walked and thought: “Only not in the back, better let them shoot me in the head.” So, right now…right now…The last minutes of my life…Right now! Interesting: will I feel the pain or not? How frightening, mama dear! But not a single shot was fired…