{"id":112846,"date":"2017-07-25T08:46:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T12:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=112846"},"modified":"2017-07-25T10:37:04","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T14:37:04","slug":"we-were-a-cheerful-cargo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/25\/we-were-a-cheerful-cargo\/","title":{"rendered":"We Were a Cheerful Cargo"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Soviet women soldiers during World War II.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is known for her singular brand of oral-history collage, which the Swedish\u00a0Academy called \u201ca history of emotions \u2026 a history of the soul.\u201d Now, her first book, <\/i>The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II<\/span><\/a>\u2009, originally published in 1985, has been translated from the Russian by\u00a0Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky<\/a>, who were interviewed for our Writers at Work series in 2015. We\u2019re pleased to present an\u00a0excerpt below.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A CONVERSATION WITH A HISTORIAN<\/p>\n

\u2014At what time in history did women first appear in the army?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Already in the fourth century B.C.<\/small> women fought in the Greek armies of Athens and Sparta. Later they took part in the campaigns of Alexander the Great. The Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote about our ancestors: \u201cSlavic women occasionally went to war with their fathers and husbands, not fearing death: thus during the siege of Constantinople in 626 the Greeks found many female bodies among the dead Slavs. A mother, raising her children, prepared them to be warriors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014And in modern times?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014For the first time in England, where from 1560 to 1650 they began to staff hospitals with women soldiers.<\/p>\n

\u2014What happened in the twentieth century?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014The beginning of the century \u2026 In England during World War I, women were already being taken into the Royal Air Force. A Royal Auxiliary Corps was also formed and the Women\u2019s Legion of Motor Transport, which numbered 100,000 persons.<\/p>\n

In Russia, Germany, and France many women went to serve in military hospitals and ambulance trains.<\/p>\n

During World War II the world was witness to a women\u2019s phenomenon. Women served in all branches of the military in many countries of the world: 225,000 in the British army, 450,000 to 500,000 in the American, 500,000 in the German\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n

About a million women fought in the Soviet army. They mastered all military specialties, including the most \u201cmasculine\u201d ones. A linguistic problem even emerged: no feminine gender had existed till then for the words tank driver<\/em>, infantryman<\/em>, machine gunner<\/em>, because women had never done that work. The feminine forms were born there, in the war \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Maria Ivanovna Morozova (Ivanushkina)<\/strong><\/p>\n

CORPORAL, SNIPER<\/p>\n

This will be a simple story \u2026 The story of an ordinary Russian girl, of whom there were many then\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n

The place where my native village, Diakovskoe, stood is now the Proletarian District of Moscow. When the war began, I was not quite eighteen. Long, long braids, down to my knees \u2026 Nobody believed the war would last, everybody expected it to end any moment. We would drive out the enemy. I worked on a kolkhoz, then finished accounting school and began to work. The war went on \u2026 My girlfriends \u2026 They tell me: \u201cWe should go to the front.\u201d It was already in the air. We all signed up and took classes at the local recruitment office. Maybe some did it just to keep one another company, I don\u2019t know. They taught us to shoot a combat rifle, to throw hand grenades. At first \u2026 I\u2019ll confess, I was afraid to hold a rifle, it was unpleasant. I couldn\u2019t imagine that I\u2019d go and kill somebody, I just wanted to go to the front. We had forty people in our group. Four girls from our village, so we were all friends; five from our neighbors\u2019; in short\u2014some from each village. All of them girls \u2026 The men had all gone to the war already, the ones who could. Sometimes a messenger came in the middle of the night, gave them two hours to get ready, and they\u2019d be carted off. They could even be taken right from the fields. (Silence.) I don\u2019t remember now\u2014whether we had dances; if we did, the girls danced with girls, there were no boys left. Our villages became quiet.<\/p>\n

Soon an appeal came from the central committee of Komsomol for the young people to go and defend the Motherland, since the Germans were already near Moscow. Hitler take Moscow? We won\u2019t allow it! I wasn\u2019t the only one \u2026 All our girls expressed the wish to go to the front. My father was already fighting. We thought we were the only ones like that \u2026 Special ones \u2026 But we came to the recruitment office and there were lots of girls there. I just gasped! My heart was on fire, so intensely. The selection was very strict. First of all, of course, you had to have robust health. I was afraid they wouldn\u2019t take me, because as a child I was often sick, and my frame was weak, as my mother used to say. Other children insulted me because of it when I was little. And then, if there were no other children in a household except the girl who wanted to go to the front, they also refused: a mother should not be left by herself. Ah, our darling mothers! Their tears never dried \u2026 They scolded us, they begged \u2026 But in our family there were two sisters and two brothers left\u2014true, they were all much younger than me, but it counted anyway. There was one more thing: everybody from our kolkhoz was gone, there was nobody to work in the fields, and the chairman didn\u2019t want to let us go. In short, they refused us. We went to the district committee of Komsomol, and there\u2014refusal. Then we went as a delegation from our district to the regional Komsomol. There was great inspiration in all of us; our hearts were on fire. Again we were sent home. We decided, since we were in Moscow, to go to the central committee of Komsomol, to the top, to the first secretary. To carry through to the end \u2026 Who would be our spokesman? Who was brave enough? We thought we would surely be the only ones there, but it was impossible even to get into the corridor, let alone to reach the secretary. There were young people from all over the country, many of whom had been under occupation, spoiling to be revenged for the death of their near ones. From all over the Soviet Union. Yes, yes \u2026 In short, we were even taken aback for a while \u2026<\/p>\n

By evening we got to the secretary after all. They asked us: \u201cSo, how can you go to the front if you don\u2019t know how to shoot?\u201d And we said in a chorus that we had already learned to shoot \u2026 \u201cWhere? \u2026 How? \u2026 And can you apply bandages?\u201d You know, in that group at the recruiting office our local doctor taught us to apply bandages. That shut them up, and they began to look at us more seriously. Well, we had another trump card in our hands, that we weren\u2019t alone, there were forty of us, and we could all shoot and give first aid. They told us: \u201cGo and wait. Your question will be decided in the affirmative.\u201d How happy we were as we left! I\u2019ll never forget it \u2026 Yes, yes \u2026<\/p>\n

And literally in a couple of days we received our call-up papers \u2026<\/p>\n

We came to the recruiting office; we went in one door at once and were let out another. I had such a beautiful braid, and I came out without it \u2026 Without my braid \u2026 They gave me a soldier\u2019s haircut \u2026 They also took my dress. I had no time to send the dress or the braid to my mother \u2026 She very much wanted to have something of mine left with her \u2026 We were immediately dressed in army shirts, forage caps, given kit bags and loaded into a freight train\u2014on straw. But fresh straw, still smelling of the field.<\/p>\n

We were a cheerful cargo. Cocky. Full of jokes. I remember laughing a lot.<\/p>\n

Where were we going? We didn\u2019t know. In the end it was not so important to us what we\u2019d be. So long as it was at the front. Everybody was fighting\u2014and we would be, too. We arrived at the Shchelkovo station. Near it was a women\u2019s sniper school. It turned out we were sent there. To become snipers. We all rejoiced. This was something real. We\u2019d be shooting.<\/p>\n

We began to study. We studied the regulations: of garrison service, of discipline, of camouflage in the field, of chemical protection. The girls all worked very hard. We learned to assemble and disassemble a sniper\u2019s rifle with our eyes shut, to determine wind speed, the movement of the target, the distance to the target, to dig a foxhole, to crawl on our stomach\u2014we had already mastered all that. Only so as to get to the front the sooner. In the line of fire \u2026 Yes, yes \u2026 At the end of the course I got the highest grade in the exam for combat and noncombat service. The hardest thing, I remember, was to get up at the sound of the alarm and be ready in five minutes. We chose boots one or two sizes larger, so as not to lose time getting into them. We had five minutes to dress, put our boots on, and line up. There were times when we ran out to line up in boots over bare feet. One girl almost had her feet frostbitten. The sergeant major noticed it, reprimanded her, and then taught us to use footwraps. He stood over us and droned: \u201cHow am I to make soldiers out of you, my dear girls, and not targets for Fritz?\u201d Dear girls, dear girls \u2026 Everybody loved us and pitied us all the time. And we resented being pitied. Weren\u2019t we soldiers like everybody else?<\/p>\n

Well, so we got to the front. Near Orsha \u2026 The sixty-second Infantry Division \u2026 I remember like today, the commander, Colonel Borodkin, saw us and got angry: \u201cThey\u2019ve foisted girls on me. What is this, some sort of women\u2019s round dance?\u201d he said. \u201cCorps de ballet! It\u2019s war, not a dance. A terrible war \u2026\u201d But then he invited us, treated us to a dinner. And we heard him ask his adjutant: \u201cDon\u2019t we have something sweet for tea?\u201d Well, of course, we were offended: What does he take us for? We came to make war \u2026 And he received us not as soldiers, but as young girls. At our age we could have been his daughters. \u201cWhat am I going to do with you, my dears? Where did they find you?\u201d That\u2019s how he treated us, that\u2019s how he met us. And we thought we were already seasoned warriors \u2026 Yes, yes \u2026 At war!<\/p>\n

The next day he made us show that we knew how to shoot, how to camouflage ourselves in the field. We did the shooting well, even better than the men snipers, who were called from the front for two days of training, and who were very surprised that we were doing their work. It was probably the first time in their lives they saw women snipers. After the shooting it was camouflage in the field \u2026 The colonel came, walked around looking at the clearing, then stepped on a hummock\u2014saw nothing. Then the \u201chummock\u201d under him begged: \u201cOw, Comrade Colonel, I can\u2019t anymore, you\u2019re too heavy.\u201d How we laughed! He couldn\u2019t believe it was possible to camouflage oneself so well. \u201cNow,\u201d he said, \u201cI take back my words about young girls.\u201d But even so he suffered \u2026 Couldn\u2019t get used to us for a long time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then came the first day of our \u201chunting\u201d (so snipers call it). My partner was Masha Kozlova. We camouflaged ourselves and lay there: I\u2019m on the lookout, Masha\u2019s holding her rifle. Suddenly Masha says: \u201cShoot, shoot! See\u2014it\u2019s a German … \u201d<\/p>\n

I say to her: \u201cI\u2019m the lookout. You shoot!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we\u2019re sorting it out,\u201d she says, \u201che\u2019ll get away.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I insist: \u201cFirst we have to lay out the shooting map, note the landmarks: where the shed is, where the birch tree … \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to start fooling with paperwork like at school? I\u2019ve come to shoot, not to mess with paperwork!\u201d<\/p>\n

I see that Masha is already angry with me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, shoot then, why don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

We were bickering like that. And meanwhile, in fact, the German officer was giving orders to the soldiers. A wagon arrived, and the soldiers formed a chain and handed down some sort of freight. The officer stood there, gave orders, then disappeared. We\u2019re still arguing. I see he\u2019s already appeared twice, and if we miss him again, that will be it. We\u2019ll lose him. And when he appeared for the third time\u2014it was just momentary; now he\u2019s there, now he\u2019s gone\u2014I decided to shoot. I decided, and suddenly a thought flashed through my mind: he\u2019s a human being; he may be an enemy, but he\u2019s a human being\u2014and my hands began to tremble, I started trembling all over, I got chills. Some sort of fear \u2026 That feeling sometimes comes back to me in dreams even now \u2026 After the plywood targets, it was hard to shoot at a living person. I see him in the telescopic sight, I see him very well. As if he\u2019s close \u2026 And something in me resists \u2026 Something doesn\u2019t let me, I can\u2019t make up my mind. But I got hold of myself, I pulled the trigger \u2026 He waved his arms and fell. Whether he was dead or not, I didn\u2019t know. But after that I trembled still more, some sort of terror came over me: I killed a man?! I had to get used even to the thought of it. Yes \u2026 In short\u2014horrible! I\u2019ll never forget it …<\/p>\n

When we came back, we started telling our platoon what had happened to us. They called a meeting. We had a Komsomol leader, Klava Ivanova; she reassured me: \u201cThey should be hated, not pitied … \u201d Her father had been killed by the fascists. We would start singing, and she would beg us: \u201cNo, don\u2019t, dear girls. Let\u2019s first defeat these vermin, then we\u2019ll sing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And not right away \u2026 We didn\u2019t manage right away. It\u2019s not a woman\u2019s task\u2014to hate and to kill. Not for us \u2026 We had to persuade ourselves. To talk ourselves into it …<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the book <\/em>The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II<\/a> by Svetlana Alexievich and translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Copyright \u00a9 2017 by Svetlana Alexievich; Translation copyright \u00a9 2017 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. All Rights Reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excerpt of Svetlana Alexievich\u2019s \u201cThe Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II,\u201d translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7555],"tags":[29716,2861,18313,4279,17985,18312,8802,29713,28154,19741,29715,530,29714,2021],"class_list":["post-112846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-history","tag-female-soldiers","tag-history","tag-larissa-volokhonsky","tag-nobel-prize","tag-patriarchy","tag-richard-pevear","tag-russian","tag-sniper","tag-soviet-russia","tag-svetlana-alexievich","tag-the-unwomanly-face-of-war-an-oral-history-of-women-in-world-war-ii","tag-translation","tag-women-in-war","tag-world-war-ii"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSoviet Women Soldiers of World War 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