The Nazi invaders had taken over her homeland, but 25-year-old Lyudmila Pavlichenko would
not give them any peace.
An innate sharpshooter, the young woman was then tasked with countering the German snipers
at Sevastopol in the summer of 1941, where she learned all about endurance and restraint.
As she silently looked for enemies without moving even a single finger for hours, the
Red Army sniper suddenly spotted a German helmet, or a fraction of it.
She then pulled the trigger, and much to her dismay, the tin hat waggled like: (QUOTE)
"The head of a toy elephant, and disappeared."
She had fallen for an enemy trick and betrayed her position.
Immediately, the Germans opened a squall of fire so aggressively that she would not dare
raise her head.
She called for help, shouting: (QUOTE) “Machine gunners save me!"
Friendly fire then appeased the enemy for a moment, and she was able to crawl back.
But once she figured out her opponents' ploys, Pavlichenko became unstoppable and was feared
by even the bravest of Nazi soldiers.
As she put it: (QUOTE) "After a while, things went very well."
A Natural
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Belova was born in 1916 to Russian parents in a small town in modern-day
Ukraine known as Bila Tserkva.
Shortly after turning 14, her family relocated to Kiev.
She described herself as a tomboy, athletically competitive, and disobedient in the classroom,
and recalled that as a teenager, a cocky boy in her neighborhood bragged about his marksmanship
and aim at the shooting range: (QUOTE) “I set out to show that a girl could do as well.
So I practiced a lot.”
Like many other youngsters of her time, she enrolled in a paramilitary sporting organization
that specialized in training youths in weapon handling and military manners.
Fiercely ambitious from her early years, she did not take long to become an amateur sharpshooter,
even earning the Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge and a marksman certificate.
At 16, the young woman married Alexei Pavlichenko and took his last name.
Then, in 1932, she gave birth to their only son, Rostislav, but the marriage was dissolved
not long after.
Still, she would keep her ex-husband's last name for the remainder of her life.
After that, the young mother returned to live with her parents while she pursued her education
and future career, attending night school and working day shifts as a metal grinder
at the Kiev Arsenal factory.
At the age of 21, she enrolled at the University of Kiev to study history and become a teacher,
and also joined a Red Army sniping school.
Still, the grim situation in the continent was quickly escalating, and international
tensions rising.
In her memoirs, Pavlichenko reminisced: (QUOTE) “We had to think about what a new war would
be like and when it would arrive on our doorstep.”
In January of 1941, the State History Library in Kiev gave her a senior research assistant
position, and she would have to leave for Odessa on a 4-month secondment.
At the train station, she said farewell to her parents.
Her son, however: (QUOTE) “Would not let go of my hand [...] Tears were welling up
in his eyes, and I tried to comfort him [...] I could not have imagined that I would be separated
from him for almost three years!”
The Nazis would invade her homeland only a few months later.
Duty Calls
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Pavlichenko was 24 years old and ready to serve the Motherland.
She was among the first round of volunteers at the Odessa recruiting office,and initially
requested to join the infantry, but was pushed to become a nurse instead.
Pavlichenko insisted on fighting, and the resilient woman even showed the officers her
prizes, certificates, and badges.
She recalled: (QUOTE) “They wouldn’t take girls in the army, so I had to resort to all
kinds of tricks to get in.”
She then enlisted in the 25th Chapayev Rifle Division.
Nevertheless, the Red Army struggled with a shortage of guns, and thus the now-private
had to help dig trenches at first.
She used to carry a fragmentation grenade, and later wrote: (QUOTE) “It was very frustrating
to have to observe the course of battle with just a single grenade in one’s hand."
One day, Pavlichenko joined a unit defending a nearby hill.
Upon reaching a wounded colleague that was too weak to use his rifle, he handed her the
weapon.
It was her chance to prove herself: (QUOTE) “My turn came to occupy the firing position.
I lay there and watched the Rumanians digging themselves in only three or four hundred yards
away.
We were strictly forbidden by the commander to shoot without his permission.
I passed the word down the line, “May I fire?” and waited impatiently for a reply.
Instead, the commander sent back the question, “Are you sure of hitting them?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then fire!”
The young sniper hit a soldier, who then flung his arms and dropped to the ground.
She then spotted a second one and hit him too.
Pavlichenko’s career had just begun.
The Realities of War
Being a sniper in those battles was an extremely dangerous job, one that required sneaking
between the enemy lines, often far away from her own company.
Besides, she had to sit perfectly still for hours to avoid being detected by enemy snipers.
When Pavlichenko first found herself close to the enemy, she was paralyzed by fear, and
she couldn’t as much as lift her Mosin-Nagant 7.62-millimeter rifle with a PE 4x telescope.
A fellow soldier then set his position beside her, but a German bullet took him down as
they were settling in.
Pavlichenko later recalled: (QUOTE) “He was such a nice, happy boy.
After that, nothing could stop me.”
The sniper got her first two official hits that same day, successfully eliminating two
German scouts carrying out reconnaissance activities in the area.
During her first 75 days at war, Pavlichenko scored 187 enemy hits and she proved a standout
in the fighting at Odessa.
Notably, 100 of her hits were German officers.
Pavlichenko was then appointed Senior Sergeant in August of 1941, but the early days of the
German invasion brought significant enemy advances, and the young sniper and her unit
were forced to withdraw.
The Soviet Army sent the order to evacuate in October, and after proving her worth and
making a name for herself, she was sent to Crimea to fight in the battle of Sevastopol.
She recalled: (QUOTE) “The history of wars can show nothing to compare with the defense
of Sevastopol.
We were one odd Russian to every ten Germans.”
Rise to Fame
In late 1941, Pavlichenko was designated commander of her own sniper platoon in the Battle of
Sevastopol.
At first, she had a rough time, as the new recruits thought it was some kind of joke
that their commander was a woman.
However, she would soon earn the respect and admiration of her superiors, peers, and subordinates
alike.
She recalled that in early December of 1941, the Germans would carelessly move around the
trenches, almost unaware of Russian snipers and the danger they posed.
Led by the expert, the Soviet snipers wiped out a dozen Germans in two days, including
two officers.
But the enemy retaliated with an insane mortar attack.
Pavlichenko wrote: (QUOTE) “For an hour or two, the Nazis fired 5-centimeter leichter
Granatwerfer 36, the light mortars that they kept in every infantry platoon.
From one fox hole we would instantly switch to another one that had been equipped in the
depths of the forest, and from there we would observe mortar bombs weighing 910g exploding
by our former refuge among the trees, lighting up with little orange puffs and scattering
dozens of small splinters all around.
I used to refer to such enemy action as a ‘concert of German classical music’.”
Pavlichenko was eventually upgraded to a counter-sniper, the riskiest job she could get in the field.
However, she outsmarted every Axis sniper she confronted, vanquishing 36 of them, with
one taking the hit after a 3-day chase.
By May of 1942, Pavlichenko had 257 confirmed hits, and was cited by the War Council of
the Southern Red Army.
She merely remarked: (QUOTE) “I’ll get more.”
Pavlichenko was wounded several times during the 8-month fight in Sevastopol, but would
not even consider being far from the battlefield for long.
Less than a year had elapsed from the moment she joined the Army, and by now she was known
as ‘Lady Death,’ a fearsome hunter.
A Threat Like No Other
The enemy dreaded Pavlichenko so much that she was even bribed several times.
The Germans would blare messages over their loudspeakers enticing the star sniper and
saying things like: (QUOTE) “Lyudmila Pavlichenko, come over to us.
We will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a German officer.”
When the bribes did not work, the enemy resorted to threats, claiming that they would tear
her into 309 pieces, her exact score by then.
Pavlichenko was amused by the attention, delighted even, but would never betray her country.
Desperate to put a halt to her mounting score, the Germans eventually bombed her position,
and shrapnel wounded Pavlichenko in the face.
It would be the last time she would be wounded in battle, as her superiors insisted that
she was worth more to the war effort if she was alive.
Thus, she was evacuated from the port via submarine and assigned as a sniper instructor
instead.
An Unlikely Friendship
As a Red Army standout, Pavlichenko became a respectable figure in Soviet propaganda
and was sent on a tour to the United States, Canada, and Great Britain in an effort to
galvanize support for the so-called Second Front.
Pavlichenko was even invited to the White House, becoming the first Soviet citizen to
visit.
As she met with President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the women
immediately bonded, and both advocated for gender equality.
Still, the American media did not take the female sniper seriously and ridiculed her
with silly questions regarding her makeup and nail polish.
Tired of the nonsense, the heroine pointed out her tally and stated in front of a crowd
in Chicago: (QUOTE) “Don’t you think that you have been hiding behind my back for too
long?”
Pavlichenko soon returned home and trained several successful snipers.
Then, when the war ended, she finally got her history degree and worked as a researcher
for the Soviet Navy.
Despite the international frictions, her old friend Eleanor Roosevelt paid her a visit
in 1957, and they both embraced, much to the disgust of their guards.
Legacy
The sniper’s last years were full of suffering, as she struggled with post-traumatic stress
disorder and alcoholism, not to mention the loss of a romantic partner who passed away
in her arms at the front.
Pavlichenko, with the rank of Lieutenant in the Army and Major in the Soviet Navy, then
lost her life to a stroke at age 58.
The legendary sniper was made a Hero of the Soviet Union and was featured in a commemorative
post stamp, while her memoirs have inspired several songs and movies.
She was one of 2,000 female snipers recruited by the Red Army in World War 2, of whom barely
500 survived.
And with a score of 309 confirmed hits, she secured a place among the top five snipers
of all time.
As she put it with her characteristic wit: (QUOTE) “I intended to raise my tally to
1,000 Nazis.
But before you can wipe out the thousandth cut-throat, you have to survive 999 times
after taking an accurate shot at an enemy.”
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