The weary warriors of the coastal army were greeted by the sight of a magnificent white city as yet unscarred by battle. Here it was unusually calm and peaceful: no artillery attacks or front lines with constant combat. Only now and then did Nazi aircraft appear but they had not inflicted on Sevastopol the heavy damage seen at Odessa. In the rays of the warm Crimean sun its shady streets, parks slightly touched by autumnal colour and public gardens with luxuriant flowerbeds gladdened the eye with their festive and completely pre-war appearance and the brightness of their colours.
The city was spread out over the shores of several bays, and the entrance to the main one was protected by the two ancient forts, the Konstantin and the Mikhail. Their great white stone walls with embrasures were reflected in the waters of the harbour. On the top of Central Hill shone the blue dome of the Cathedral of St Vladimir, the burial vault of four admirals, heroes of the city’s first siege. Amidst the winding lanes of History Boulevard stood monuments to the fallen warriors of the Fourth Bastion, the Yazenov Redoubt and the Kostomarov Battery, as well as the multi-figured bronze memorial to General Totleben and his brave sappers who successfully waged a subterranean struggle against the British, French and Italian forces who besieged Sevastopol in 1854.
I had never been here before. After the bustle, variety and many features of Odessa, whose population numbered over 600,000, Sevastopol seemed small and provincial. In Odessa the rhythm of life was set by a large commercial seaport which hosted dozens of ships from different countries of the world. Foreign passenger liners, cargo ships or tankers could not even approach this, the main naval base of the Black Sea Fleet. Only the narrow grey hulks of Soviet destroyers, minesweepers and patrol boats occupied the quays of South Bay or awaited repairs by the piers of the Sergo Ordzhonikidze naval works.
In some unfathomable way the heroic past still suffused the character of modern Sevastopol, its residents, their habits and customs. That appealed to me. The city presented itself not as a jaunty mariner disembarked from the deck of an ocean-going merchantman, as in Odessa, but as a stern warrior gripping his weapon and gazing into the distance. On the southern borders of our homeland he stood as a permanent sentry, responsible for the peace and security of his native land.
The people of Sevastopol greeted the defenders of Odessa hospitably. There were many wounded on the ships of our convoy (up to 3,000). They were immediately put in hospitals, which were located in various districts: in Holland Bay, in Strelets Bay, in Balaklava and in the city hospitals. A place was found for me and other patients of the 47th Medical Battalion in a small infirmary in Strelets Bay. My regimental mates who needed rest rather than treatment were taken to Historic Boulevard, in the centre of the city. The main forces of the coastal army were located in Korabelnaya Storona, the major part in the grounds of the anti-aircraft gunnery college.
Personnel were dispatched to public baths, had their linen and uniforms changed, and were fed in the canteen; 500g of bread were distributed per person. This period of rest was most appreciated by those who had left the battlefield just two days earlier. The Chapayevs hoped they would be allowed to rest for a week at least. Their wishes were not answered; by 21 October our division had already been loaded onto a train at the railway station and dispatched to the north of the Crimean Peninsula to stop the German advance on the Ishun lines.
I remained in Sevastopol as my head wound had not healed. It was rebandaged every two days and the medics promised to take the stitches out soon. In spite of this, I got permission to go out on half-hour walks down to the sea. Then, when the stitches were removed and I was transferred to a battalion of recuperating patients based at the Black Sea Fleet crew premises, I was able to request leave to go into the city.
The leave pass was given to me by Major N.A. Khubezhev, a jovial and talkative man. When I introduced myself, he took an interest in my award – the inscribed sniper rife – and offered me a transfer from the 25th, which was now located heaven-knew-where, to the naval infantry, promising me the rank of principal sergeant major and assuring me that the Black Sea sailor’s pea jacket with brass buttons would suit me incomparably better than my khaki-coloured infantry tunic. He extolled his friends among the leadership – Captain Lvovsky in the 16th Naval Infantry Battalion, Senior Lieutenant Unchur in the 17th, Captain Yegorov in the 18th and Captain Chernousov in the 19th Battalion. However, the naval infantry did not seem to me to be any better than the ordinary terrestrial infantry. I had become strongly attached to the Stepan Razin Rifle Regiment, having been through the epic saga of Odessa with them. In war anything can happen. A regiment is not a needle in a haystack; it was bound to turn up somewhere, along with the whole coastal army, which, having retreated from the Ishun lines under pressure from the Fritzes, was now breaking through to the main naval base of the Black Sea Fleet along dirt roads through the southern Crimean range.
Having got out of the barracks and into the city, I strolled around on my own and took pleasure in its peaceful appearance. The trams were running around the city ring, and the shops, cafeterias, public baths, hairdressers and various services – metalwork, tailoring, shoe repairs – were open. True, Sevastopol, which had had a population of over 100,000 before the war, now looked empty. Many of its residents, especially those with children, had been evacuated to the Caucasus and to Krasnodar Territory. However, in the evenings, after the working day was over, the people of Sevastopol would dress up and go out to stroll along the Marine or Historic Boulevards, visit the Lunacharsky city theatre, where plays were still staged as before, or the three cinemas, which showed the best pre-war Soviet films: Chapayev, The Tractor Drivers, In the Enemy Rear, Minin and Pozharsky, The Little Humpbacked Horse and others.
First, I visited the cultural venues that were still open: the superb Black Sea Fleet museum, situated in an ancient building with cannons by the entrance, and the panorama of Historic Boulevard, The Storming of Sevastopol, 6 June 1855, a work by the artist Frantz Rubaud, which is remarkable for its realistic depiction and the force of its impact on viewers. I did not want to leave, so strong was the attraction of this work of art. It seemed as though time had gone backwards and you were really standing among the defenders of the Malakhov Heights. This brought to mind the thought that we now had to repeat the feat of our forebears and defend the city to the last drop of blood.
Sevastopol, which was founded by an edict of Empress Catherine the Great, also had a more ancient history. I took a tram out to Balaklava, a fishing settlement 12km from the city, to view the ruins of the Genoese fortress of Chimbalo and I also visited Tauric Chersonesus, established as far back as the fifth century bc, where I saw the remains of the ancient Greek city, including the foundations of buildings, the basilica, an ancient theatre, fortress towers and walls forming a special area like a barbican for fighting enemy infantry which had broken through to the fortifications.
I could do this because I had money of my own from four months of my soldier’s pay. A serviceman in his first year of service got 10 rubles 50 kopecks a month, a corporal sniper – 30 rubles, and a sergeant sniper and section commander – 35 rubles. I spent about 20 rubles on Vesna (Spring) brand chocolates. To my surprise, they were being sold at the Sevastopol army store at the pre-war price.
In the meantime, events in the Crimea were unfolding. On 26 October 1941 the German 11th Army under the command of Colonel General Erich von Manstein, had made it onto the peninsula. Four days later, on Thursday, 30 October, military action commenced on the more distant approaches to the main naval base of the Black Sea Fleet. The quadruple ordnance battery of the 54th Coastal Defences opened fire on a column of German armoured transports, troop-carriers, motorcycles and Stu.G.III self-propelled guns moving along the road towards the village of Nikolayevka.1 The column was halted by some accurate firing. This day is regarded as the start of the siege of Sevastopol.
An order of 30 October 1941 from the head of the city garrison, Rear-Admiral G.V. Zhukov, was read out to us during drill on the parade ground at the fleet crew premises. It began:
1) The enemy has broken through the front line; his advance mechanized units have entered the Yevpatoria-Saki District, threatening Sevastopol . . . 3) Units of the Sevastopol garrison operating in conjunction with ships and coastal artillery must not allow the enemy into the main naval base and must annihilate him on the approaches to Sevastopol . . .
The order mentioned the dispositions of our military units along the forward line from the village of Kamara to the estuary of the river Kach. On land the defence was up to the sixteen batteries of naval infantry, the militia and other detachments located in the city at that moment. The order did not affect me, as I was registered, as before, in the 1st Battalion of the 54th Rifle Regiment, but nobody knew where it was located. Major Khubezhev did not give me leave on that day and again offered a transfer to the naval infantry. Along with the other recuperating troops, I busied myself with tidying the grounds.
I did not have time to regret this. In the afternoon, following dinner, two young assistants from the naval library turned up. They were on their usual weekly round of fleet units, collecting books they had issued to soldiers earlier and offering new ones. In an instant a crowd gathered around them. The troops were exchanging books, chatting with the girls about what they had read, and putting in requests. I borrowed a tattered booklet in a soft cover with a coloured drawing depicting the 4th Bastion in 1854: a big cannon on a gun carriage with small wheels, some soldiers and an officer next to it. Above the picture was the name of the author, Leo Tolstoy, and the title, Sevastopol Sketches. There were books by other writers, too: Chernyshevsky, Chekhov, Alexei Tolstoy, Sholokhov, Maxim Gorky – but Leo Tolstoy enjoyed much greater demand.
It was a long time since my hands had held a book – the student’s faithful companion. I had had to forget about them since I donned a uniform and became a Red Army soldier in the 25th Chapayev Division. Books had been left behind, in my pre-war life, and now they reminded me of peace, stability and modern comforts. Not without some excitement, I opened the cover. I had read Sevastopol Sketches, of course, but a very long time ago, probably as a child. One of the library girls began to talk to me about the work. She warmly recommended it, saying it was interesting and quite relevant to the current scene. I agreed with her: not even 100 years had passed and new conquerors were now approaching the legendary city with the same intentions.
Reading helped to pass the time. As a participant in the first defence of the city, young artillery lieutenant Count Tolstoy knew what he was talking about when he described military action. In my younger years, I had probably failed to appreciate how accurate the great writer was in his psychological detail. But now, as I recalled the battle for Odessa, I was amazed at the perceptiveness with which he conveyed the feelings of a man who is sensing mortal danger in combat for the first time:
The long whistle of a cannon ball or shell while you are climbing the hill will have an unpleasant impact. You will suddenly realize, and in quite a different way from before, the significance of those shots which you heard in the city. Some quietly joyous recollection will suddenly flash up in your imagination, your own person will begin to occupy you more than your observations; your attention to everything around will diminish and a sort of unpleasant feeling of indecisiveness suddenly overpower you. Despite this ignoble voice, which has suddenly spoken up within you at the sight of danger, and, especially if you have looked at the soldier who trots past you with a laugh, waving his arms and sliding down the hill across the liquid mud, you force yourself to silence this voice, unwittingly thrust out your chest and raise your head higher.
Tolstoy drew vivid portraits of his comrades in arms, the soldiers and officers of the Russian imperial army who were fighting back then on the bastions. It is as if he brought these heroes closer to us by making their thoughts, dreams and actions comprehensible. I do not think that anyone before him spoke so convincingly of the sources of the Russian warrior spirit.
It is even highly possible that, out of vanity or simply for pleasure, a naval officer will want to do a bit of firing in your presence, ‘to order the gunner and crew to the cannon’. And in a lively and cheerful fashion, about fourteen sailors, some thrusting their pipes into their pockets, others chewing the last fragments of a crust, their metal-capped boots rapping the platform, will go up to the cannon and load it. Take a look at the faces, the bearing, the movements of these men; in every wrinkle of each sun-tanned broad-cheeked face, in every muscle, in the breadth of these shoulders, in the girth of the legs shod in enormous boots, in every movement – calm, firm, unhurried – you can see those principal traits that make up the strength of the Russian, simplicity and stubbornness; but here on every face it seems to you that, apart from those hallmarks, the danger, malice and suffering of war have also laid down traces of an awareness of their own dignity and of lofty thought and feeling.2
I was also drawn to Tolstoy’s description of Sevastopol’s scenery and weather, and the local placenames: Severnaya Storona, Korobelnaya Storona, Malakhov Kurgan, Sapun-Gora, Mekenzievy Gory, Sukharnaya Balka, Martynov Ovrag, Rechka Chornaya, Pavlovsky Mysuk and Kulikovo Polye. Until now I had operated on flat steppe landscapes where visibility was generally excellent and the distances to the target were easily determined. Target shooting in the hills was a completely different matter.
On the morning of 4 November 1941, Major Khubezhev gave me some good news. The commander of the coastal army, General Petrov, had arrived in Sevastopol yesterday along with his headquarters staff and was lodged at the coastal defence command post at the Chersonese barracks. I decided to obtain a meeting with him, but it was not easy for a sergeant to approach a general. I was helped by the fact that his adjutant recognized me.
Petrov looked to me the same as ever: spruce and energetic. The white dust of the Crimean roads had settled on his jacket with its general’s stars on the tabs. A brown cavalry harness with a belt and two shoulder straps firmly gripped his lean figure, and the holster of the Korovin pistol which was issued to senior commanders had been noticeably moved to his right-hand side. As usual, Petrov held a riding crop in his hands, even though it was in a vehicle that he toured the firing lines, acquainting himself with the military units that occupied them and viewing the sites and the military engineering works. The commander stopped as he got out of a Gorky-produced GAZ-M1 car. I strode towards him, stood at attention and announced myself: ‘Sergeant Pavlichenko, Comrade Major-General. Permission to speak.’
‘Greetings, Lyudmila.’ He smiled. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Excellent, Comrade Major-General.’
‘So, are we going to beat the Nazis in Sevastopol?’
‘Absolutely, Comrade Major-General.’
‘I have to inform you that you are now a senior sergeant and will command a sniper platoon.’ Petrov removed his pince-nez and wiped it with a snow-white handkerchief. ‘When the reinforcement drafting takes place, select some suitable personnel and teach them the skills of sharpshooting.’
‘Yes, Major-General!’ I responded cheerfully and, lowering my voice, asked with concern, ‘But where is my regiment, Ivan Yefimovich?’
‘I think the Razins are on the road between Yalta and Gurzuf. They’ll be in Sevastopol in five days. Will you wait for them?’
‘Yes, Comrade Major-General. Since my earliest days of service my heart has been with the 1st Battalion of Captain Sergienko and my beloved 2nd Company.’
‘I admire your dedication to the army.’ Petrov smiled again.
In accordance with orders from the commander of the coastal army, all the necessary documents were prepared for me at the staff headquarters and I was issued an authorization for the regiment and the quartermaster. I had to acquire various components of the winter uniform – for example, a cap with earflaps, a padded jacket and warm underwear. It was with special pleasure that I attached to the tabs of my tunic the three dark ruby triangles denoting my new military rank of senior sergeant. Apart from that I was entitled to a leather belt with a shoulder strap, a single-pin brass buckle and a holster with ramrod to accommodate a pistol.
I never subsequently parted with this firearm, the Tula-Tokarev given to me in Sevastopol. I had it with me in sniper’s hideouts, on leave in the city and, of course, on parade, and, following evacuation, it accompanied me to Novorossiysk and then to Moscow. The TT became my talisman. While hunting for Fritzes in the Crimean forest I relied, in the event of failure, not so much on the grenade which always hung from my belt, but on my ‘Totosha’ [TN: a pet-name for Anton] (as we called the Tokarev pistol in the army). Neither the Russians nor the Germans took snipers prisoners, but shot them directly on the spot. For women there was another variation – death preceded by gang rape.3 Therefore, the grenade was for rolling under the enemy’s feet, seven bullets from the TT were for anyone who came too close, and the eighth was for yourself.
I do not deny that a pistol weighing 825g without its eight-cartridge magazine is somewhat heavy for a woman’s hand. Some even reproached the Russian engineer Tokarev because his weapon was too similar to the invention of the ‘pistol king’, John Moses Browning, especially the Belgian-produced 1903 model. But is it for those of us concerned with practical shooting to listen to theoreticians’ disputes remote from real life? The most important thing was that the TT met all the demands of the front line: a powerful 7.62mm-calibre cartridge which could penetrate a brick wall 100mm thick, a sturdy barrel, a reliable trigger mechanism and a conveniently shaped butt.4
My regimental comrades approached Sevastopol on 9 November 1941, and, together with the entire 25th Rifle Division, occupied positions along a 12km line in the third defence sector, i.e. on the Mekenzi hills, between the Belbek and Chornaya rivers, approximately 20 to 25km from the city. Here, forested heights alternated with fairly deep ravines, known locally as ‘balkas’. For instance, Tyomnaya Balka, situated close to Kamyshly gully, or Martynov Balka, next to Martynov gully. Also located there were several Tartar villages: Kamyshly, Belbek, Biyuk-Otarka, Zalitskoi, Duvankoi and also the Mekenzi hills railway junction. At a height of over 300 metres above sea level lay the village of Mekenzia, sometimes designated on maps as ‘No. 2 Forest Cordon’. At the end of the eighteenth century the village actually belonged to a rear-admiral of the Russian imperial navy, Thomas MacKenzie, who was a Scottish highlander by origin.
By now, the firing lines for the defenders of Sevastopol had already been prepared: the trenches, communication passages, dugouts, artillery and machine-gun emplacements and reinforced-earth firing points. The soldiers and officers of the 54th Rifle Regiment, the 287th Rifle Regiment, and the 3rd Regiment and 7th Brigade of the marine infantry, which were now becoming part of our division, had received an order to make a stand 1 to 2km to the west of Mekenzia village, which had earlier been captured by the Germans.
Arriving at the regiment’s positions, I hoped to see all my fellow servicemen in good health, since I had no knowledge of the way the battles had gone in the north of the peninsula at the end of October. But at the command post I was greeted not by Major Matusyevich, who was known to all of us from the defence of Odessa, but by Major Vasily Ivanovich Petrash, who had been transferred to us from the 31st Regiment, where he had previously commanded a battalion. To my question about Matusyevich, Petrash replied that he was wounded but would probably soon return to the regiment. I then went to the command post of the 1st Battalion. Here, instead of Captain Sergienko, I beheld a lieutenant who was not known to me – a tall, slim man of about thirty-five, who had clearly come out of the reserves. On introducing myself I handed him my documents. He glanced through them cursorily, then gave me a stern look of dissatisfaction.
‘You wish to become a platoon commander, Senior Sergeant? Are you really up to it?’
‘That’s not for me to decide, Comrade Lieutenant, but senior command.’
‘Which senior command do you mean? I, for instance, am opposed to women occupying field positions in the army. You’re a sniper, so fire away at the Nazis by all means. But orders will be issued by those who are supposed to issue them.’ And he casually tossed my documents onto the desk.
‘Who is supposed to, Comrade Lieutenant?’ I was not going to give in.
‘Men, of course . . .’
However, Lieutenant Grigory Fyodorovich Dromin was forced to change his views. It was plainly explained to him that the decision about my appointment had been taken not by the commander of the 25th Division, Major-General Kolomiyets, but by the commander-in-chief of the coastal army, Major-General Petrov. Naturally, as a result of this, my relations with the present commander of the 1st Battalion did not improve. True, Dromin left me in peace, but at the same time he had no intention of praising me or reprimanding me, and even less of rewarding me.
From the command post of the 1st Battalion a winding forest trail led to the lines of the 2nd Company. The army sappers had constructed good, deep, dugouts in the Mekenzi hills. On entering one of them, I came across Corporal Fyodor Sedykh. That was a joy and a half. We embraced and kissed three times on the cheek according to Russian custom. My old battle comrade did not look well; he was much thinner, his features were sunken, and he had a light wound on his left hand. We immediately heated some water in a mess tin for tea, got some sugar and plain biscuits, and sat down to talk.
Fyodor painted some gloomy pictures. The Nazis had come into contact with our units on 24 October on the Red Army lines near Ishun. Our troops had stoutly beaten them back and launched counter-attacks, but gradually the enemy’s superiority in artillery and aviation began to tell. As well as that, the firing lines were badly prepared; the Soviet forces were deployed almost in open steppe. Captain Sergienko, for instance, was seriously wounded in the leg, the bone was shattered from a direct mortar hit on the battalion command post, which occupied a simple trench; he was dispatched deep into the rear. Almost half the 2nd Company had fallen victim to enemy artillery. The sniper’s platoon was not even worth mentioning. The regiment had 600–700 men left from a peacetime contingent of just over 3,000 soldiers and officers.
‘To the left of the 95th Division the Razin Regiment of the 25th Division was advancing,’ L.N. Bacharov, one of the participants in this combat operation, later recalled.
The Razins began well. They were well coordinated and, shouting ‘Hurrah!’, took on the Nazis with bayonets. The 2nd Company was sent into attack by the secretary of the regimental Party bureau, Semyashkin. Over 100 Nazis were killed by the 3rd company. Its commander, Senior Lieutenant Yeryomenko, was wounded but continued to direct the engagement . . . The coastal division fought in the Crimea with the same selfless valour as at Odessa, where they had been only eight days earlier. However, there was a feeling that our initial success would not be sustainable; the infantry were very poorly supported by artillery, few batteries had been moved up, and shells were in short supply. The attack was preceded by a burst of fire only fifteen minutes long. None of our air force was in the skies. Everything pointed to the haste and lack of preparation with which the advance had been launched . . . At midday on 26 October the German forces moved forward, supported by a large number of aircraft and tanks. In the days that followed the enemy increased their forces and followed up on their success.5
Fyodor and I shared pleasant memories of Captain Sergienko. While he had been in charge of the 1st Battalion, life went well for everyone. Why this was, we did not even bother to think. An experienced and able officer, attentive to the needs of his subordinates, but demanding at the same time, he enjoyed boundless respect from his troops. The regimental commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Svidnitsky and later Major Matusyevich, also paid heed to his advice.
For me Captain Sergienko was like a guardian angel, especially, what is more, regarding personal matters. I am not giving away any secrets if I say that serving as a woman in the army has its particular challenges. One’s behaviour in male company must be even-handed, strict and beyond reproach; no flirting with anyone, ever! But life takes its own course and there were times when difficulties arose. They were not created at all by rank-and-file soldiers, but rather by my ‘comrade officers’, using both their status as commanders and the clause in the military code that a commanding officer’s order must be fulfilled and one must answer for failure to do so in accordance with wartime laws. We called this ‘taking a fancy to’. That is why I preferred to spend more time on the front line, albeit under enemy fire. Here the chances of catching the eye of some amorous possessor of three or four little cubes or bars on his collar tabs (that is, from the middle and senior officer corps) remained minimal. If something like this happened, Battalion Commander Sergienko would ask the aspirant directly: ‘What do you want from her?’ For some reason nobody had the courage to answer him honestly. With this, the soliciting, awkward conversations and indecent proposals generally concluded. Unfortunately, I know nothing of the further fortunes of this brave and noble man.
While our 54th Regiment was being kept in divisional reserve, Corporal Sedykh and I tackled various organizational matters. We had to receive reinforcements, take possession of and examine the new rifles (Three Lines with PE sights) and study the defence sector that had been entrusted to the 2nd Company. It was becoming obvious that the trenches were not deep, no more than 50cm, and there were no communication passages at all in some places. The soldiers would have to do something about this and what they needed were not sniper rifles but small sapper’s spades. We had the honour of seeing the commander of our division, Major-General Kolomiyets, on the morning of 10 November. He came to reconnoitre the locations, went around the lines and sternly pointed out the poorly constructed earthen fortifications.
According to the establishment laid down by the People’s Commissariat of Defence on 5 April 1941, a rifle platoon was composed of quite a large group – fifty-one troops. It was commanded by a lieutenant armed with a pistol; he had a deputy with the rank of senior sergeant, who had a PPD-40 submachine gun and a dispatch rider (for communication with superiors) with a Mosin rifle. The platoon consisted of four rifle sections, which were headed by sergeants (all armed with SVT-40s).
Attached to the platoon was a mortar section (four men along with a sergeant plus a 50mm mortar). I am recounting this in such detail in order to highlight that I had nothing like this at my disposal. Companies and battalions were now often commanded by lieutenants, and this had come to be the case back in Odessa, where the average officer corps in Red Army detachments was usually put out of commission after two or three weeks of combat. It is even strange to recall the numerical strength of a platoon being fifty troops; at various periods in the defence of Sevastopol they comprised roughly between twenty and twenty-five soldiers, but never more than this. The Degtyrev-designed PPD-40 and, later, the Shpagin’s PPSh-41 – with drum magazines for the seventy-one pistol-cartridges – were indisputably effective weapons in close combat, but there was a catastrophic shortage of them in rifle units during the first months of the war. It would appear that our two platoons of regimental scouts had only about twenty-five to thirty PPD-40s between them. The 50mm-calibre mortar was referred to generally as the company mortar. According to the records there were twenty-seven of them in the regiment, but that was only according to the records . . .
Over two days, 10–11 November, the regiment received reinforcements. For the most part these were troops from the marine infantry battalions which were hastily formed in Sevastopol at the end of October. Now they had to join ranks with us Razins, who had come through the crucible of war, and quickly accustom themselves to serving on dry land. They were getting ready to fight the Fascist German invaders to the last drop of blood but had a poor idea of what these coming battles would be like.
Those sailors who ended up in my platoon were particularly surprised and our initial acquaintance sometimes resulted in some amusing scenes. Thus, one day four bold young guys in black caps with earflaps, naval pea jackets and trousers ‘wide as the Black Sea’, as the saying goes, burst into the dugout and declared that they had been assigned to the detachment of Senior Sergeant Pavlichenko. At that moment I was leafing through the book by my great teacher, studying his tips on shooting in hill country. Fyodor Sedykh, who was checking the breeches of new rifles along with three servicemen, offered them a seat. They put their kitbags on the earth floor, sat down unhurriedly on the wall benches and began to look around. They noticed me, glanced at one another and smiled in unison. ‘So, you’re serving here too, are you, lass?’ one of them asked.
‘I am,’ I replied.
‘Great!’ He winked at his mates. ‘We’ve ended up in the right place. What a smashing medic! Honestly, a real beauty – can’t take your eyes off her. Let’s get acquainted. I’m Leonid, and your name is . . .?’
‘Lyudmila.’
‘Well, Lyuda, don’t frown. Be a bit nicer to the sailors. It won’t do you any harm.’
‘In that case you will have to stand at attention and line up in front of me and announce your presence to the commander, as you are supposed to in accordance with the military code.’
‘But where’s the commander?’
‘I’m the commander.’
‘Quit having us on, Lyuda. That’s no way to carry on.’
I had to explain sternly to the lads who was in charge here. Completely bewildered, they nevertheless stood in line at attention, introduced themselves as required, and listened to my first instructions as commander. The expression of surprise never left their faces. It was as if the naval infantrymen expected that any minute now this vexatious misunderstanding would be resolved and that those present would be laughing along with them at what was, in their view, a ridiculous situation. For there was no way such a thing could happen in our army: a woman commanding a sniper platoon!
Yet Leonid Burov and his three friends subsequently gave the best possible account of themselves in combat. Of course they were not able to become real sharpshooters in a week of training, but they acquired the initial skills of handling a sniper rifle and shot quite well under my direction (I would calculate the distance to the target and show them how to regulate the drums on the telescope sights) – especially in the event of frontal attacks from the enemy. They were brave men and it is a pity that Burov lost his life so early on.
The village of Mekenzia, or No. 2 Forest Cordon, was situated on the flat summit of a hill rising 310 metres above sea level. It was surrounded by forest with thick undergrowth of the usual Crimean bushes: juniper, hornbeam, garland thorn, dogwood and wild rose. The warden’s homestead consisted of several small one-storey structures, with a vegetable garden and orchard adjacent to them. The old manor house, long fallen into ruin, was located not far away from it, but was almost invisible on account of the trees. The village had become a juncture between the positions of our forces and the German ones in the third sector of the Sevastopol defence district. It stood on a strategically important road which led to the valley of Kara-Koba. If they took it, the enemy would be able to get through to the rear of the city’s defenders on the easterly side. Besides, by driving our units back some distance from the village, the Germans would force their way through to the Mekenzi hills railway station and from there to the northern shore of the biggest and longest bay, which would have sealed the fate of the city.
In the first days of November 1941 the Nazis seized the village of Mekenzia itself but did not penetrate further for the time being. They were gathering their strength for a new strike. The Soviet senior command considered it essential to drive the enemy out of there, and fierce battles for the village went on for two weeks, almost until the end of November. Here the soldiers and officers of the 54th Stepan Razin Regiment shed blood for Sevastopol for the first time. It was at first light on 12 November. Our battalion was fighting on lines north of the village. The divisional commander, Major-General Kolomiyets, arrived at the command post to observe the battle. After assessing the situation, he set the Razins a combat objective: to attack the Fritzes on 14 November, surround them in the village, and wipe them out after taking control of this point.
‘And so to our first serious counter-attack at Sevastopol,’ the commander of the glorious Chapayev Division, Trofim Kolomiyets, wrote subsequently.
All the infantry of the third sector opened fire on the enemy forward line and its closest rear units in the district of Cherkez-Kermen [now the village of Krepkoye]. I had moved beforehand to the command post of the 2nd Razin Battalion, which was inflicting the blow and from there I observed the attack. It began successfully. With a speedy assault, the companies reached the first line of German trenches. Over the course of several minutes the enemy was crushed. While the 2nd and 3rd Companies were pursuing the Nazis, who were dashing through the forest, the 1st was cutting off the road leading from Cherkez-Kermen to the village of Mekenzia. The encirclement of the village began.
The Fascists lodged there resisted furiously. The fire was such that our troops had to go to ground. Grossman [chief gunner of the 25th Rifle Division] assisted them with artillery fire. But, while the gunners were crushing the Nazi resistance by the village of Mekenzia, German infantry appeared from the Cherkez-Kermen side. However, the Razins were holding on stoutly and the Fascist attack was choking. Then fresh German units approached from Cherkez-Kermen and everything started again. On our side two reserve platoons were brought into action, but this was plainly not enough. Major Matusyevich decided to withdraw one company from the approaches to the village and counter-attack the enemy reserve with it . . . The battle continued for more than three hours. The Razins were thus unable to complete their objective in full. However, the Germans received such palpable losses that they did not undertake any active moves against our division for another five days.6