Today we will talk about an unusual heroic girl who served in the Danube military flotilla
in the reconnaissance of the Marine Corps battalion Katya Mikhailova. This girl with
weapons in her hands participated in many battles, went to combat and sabotage landings, sometimes
led sailors in attacks, was wounded more than once, was awarded several orders and medals.
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as this helps us spread information about the heroes of the war
and not forget at what cost our ancestors got this victory!
As you know, there has always been a traditional prejudice against women in the navy.
But Katya Mikhailova was really an extraordinary person.
She was sixteen when the war began. The daughter of the commander of the Red Army,
left a total orphan in early childhood, she was brought up in the Leningrad orphanage,
and lived a lot in the family of her older sister during the summer. Her sister was a
doctor. Nine classes and nursing courses made up her entire education by the summer of 1941.
Her brother, who at that time served as a pilot on the border, in Brest,
invited her to come to him on vacation. On the way, she spent several days in Moscow,
walked around the museums of the capital, wandered the streets, and on the evening of June 21 got on
a train going to Brest. In the morning, already outside Smolensk, she was awakened by explosions:
German planes bombed a train, and for the first time she saw panic, blood and death.
In one light dress, with a carry-on case containing only half of bread and a piece of
sausage, she, along with the surviving passengers, returned on foot to Smolensk. The next morning
she came to the city recruiting office and asked to be sent to the front as a nurse.
Besieged by a crowd of volunteers, an angry and sleepless military commissar
looked with irritation at the little girl who stood at his table.
“You need to go to kindergarten, but not to the front,” he kicked her out of the office.
Katya went out into the street with the same, but already empty suitcase. She did not know anyone
in Smolensk. She did not have any documents - she even left her Komsomol card at home in Leningrad.
But she was not used to being discouraged. There was a military hospital on the outskirts of the
city, and she began working there as a volunteer - helping nurses and orderlies. Then the front
moved closer. Once the hospital was bombed, and the remaining wounded were taken to the east.
Then Katya came to the rifle unit, which took up defenses near Smolensk.
So Katyusha Mikhailova went to the war shore, and became a fighting soldier of the front line.
She went on reconnaissance, together with the infantrymen, she repulsed enemy attacks, bandaged
the wounds of her comrades. In late autumn, on the distant approaches to Moscow near Gzhatsk,
she was seriously wounded in the leg, and she was hospitalized, first to the Urals, then to Baku.
Since childhood, Katya dreamed of the sea, of service on ships. And as soon as her leg
healed a little, she asked the Baku military commissar to send her to the navy.
Now she had new documents - a Komsomol card and a certificate of injury.
She was sent as a nurse to an ambulance ship. There were battles at Stalingrad, medical ships
climbed up the Volga, took the wounded and carried them across the sea to Krasnovodsk.
And then it turned out that Katya had the qualities of a real sailor - the autumn
stormy Caspian could not rock her, in the strongest storms she remained on her feet.
Here she was soon awarded the title of Chief Petty Officer and awarded the badge
"Excellence in the Navy". But the ambulance service burdened the girl, she wanted to go
to a warship or to a front-line naval unit.
In the summer of 1942, she learned that a battalion of marines for the Azov military
flotilla was being formed from volunteers in Baku, and she came to the battalion commander.
He was a stern sailor, flatly refused: "We do not take women." She came the second,
third time, but no persuasion helped. Then Katya wrote a letter to Moscow, to the government,
and from there an order was received to enroll her in the battalion.
The battalion commander could only obey. But the sailors greeted her unfriendly.
It seemed to them almost an insult to the arrival of a girl in the battalion,
and even a small, fragile-looking girl. Someone from the Odessa wits immediately
awarded her with the mocking nickname. But Katya steadfastly endured all the ridicule
and did not allow herself any indulgences either in the service or in studies?
Dear friends, do you think a woman can serve in the navy on an
equal basis with men? Write your opinion in the comments please.
In the summer of 1943, the marines were transferred to the Azov coast.
There the battalion's combat path began,
which then ran for many hundreds of kilometers and ended in the Austrian capital Vienna.
Ekaterina Mikhailova cherishes three military orders and five military medals at home.
And for each of these awards - an important, unforgettable stage in her front-line path. Each
of them personifies the shore, which Katyusha Mikhailova went to in battle with her comrades,
the shore occupied by the Nazis, spewing fire and death.
Medal of Honor". This is the capture of Temryuk, the baptism of fire of the new
battalion. This is a landing in the floodplains, when the water in the quiet creeks stood up in
columns under the explosions of mines. She was there, in the epicenter itself, walked
up to her chest in salt water, shot, dragged the wounded into the boats. Temryuk is a small town,
but it was so expensive to us: more than half of the battalion remained there.
Order of the Patriotic War she got for Kerch. Night landing in a storm on a deserted coast
and then for many days of hand-to-hand fighting recaptured the bridgehead near the villages of
Zhukovka and Gleyka. At night, female pilots flew in from the Taman coast in crackling U-2s
and threw rusks and canned food to the sailors. And the chink with fresh water
was in no man's land - between the German and our trenches. At night it was possible to draw water,
during the day people were tormented by thirst. And only Katya sometimes rescued the sailors.
The Germans have already learned that there is one girl among the sailors
defending the small bridgehead. They even knew her name. Sometimes, during the calm hours,
they shouted from the German trenches: - Rus sailor! Rus Ivan! Show Katyusha!
Shoot - no ... Then she, leaving her machine gun on the parapet,
took the bucket and walked to the chink at full height. "Katya, come back! Katyusha,
they will kill you!" - shouted after the sailors. But she walked, and the Germans did not shoot,
they, laughing, leaned out of the trenches, waved their hands to her and played the harmonica:
"Katyusha came ashore." The girl returned with a full bucket and watered the sailors.
The day came when they attacked the enemy, threw it back and united with
the troops that occupied the outskirts of Kerch. There, at the Voikov factory,
they were once surrounded by the Nazis - several dozen sailors, a group of wounded and she, Katya.
The Germans demanded that they surrender, threatening to blow up the factory building
where the sailors were stationed. In response, they swore to die in battle. They managed to
hold out until night, and then with a fight break through the enemy's ring.
At the same time, they took with them all the wounded.
Crimea was liberated. It was Danube's turn.
The battalion was transferred to Odessa, and it became part of the Danube military flotilla.
The first combat operation of the Danube was the storming of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky.
They took him at night, disembarking from rubber boats at the steep bank of the Dniester.
They landed under enemy machine-gun fire, with a bright glow of flares. In the water near
the coast there were seven rows of barbed wire, and behind them a five-meter steep,
from the ridge of which machine guns were shot and German grenades flew at the attacking sailors.
Our detachment was headed by senior lieutenant Bogorodsky. He was badly wounded by an explosive
bullet and began to fall into the water. One of the sailors noticed this and rushed to help,
supported him with his hands and dragged him along the water to the shore. But in front
there was a barbed wire in several rows, and the Germans beat from machine guns, throw grenades.
And suddenly, under the bullets and fragments of grenades, Katyusha ran up. Together they
took the senior lieutenant in their arms and carried him through the wire,
throwing it with raincoats and whatever. They carried him ashore under the cliff.
Katyusha bandaged the commander's hand and quickly disappeared with a submachine gun in her hands.
Senior Lieutenant Bogorodsky survived thanks to her.
Katya was one of the first to find herself under the cliff. Small, dexterous, she, clinging to the
roots and branches of the bushes, quickly climbed up and dragged her comrades to her, raising the
machine gun. After the girl helped other sailors to climb the steep, she rushed to the side from
where the german machine gun was hitting, and threw grenades at him, destroying the entire crew.
In the morning Belgorod-Dnestrovsky was taken. Katya received a small wound here,
and later the commander awarded her for this battle.
A memorable liberation campaign began along the Danube. Here they are, medals "For the liberation
of Belgrade", "For the capture of Budapest", "For the capture of Vienna." But of all the battles,
the most memorable for her was the storming of the Ilok fortress in December 1944.
Ilok stands on a high mountain above the Danube in the region of the Yugoslav city of Vukovar.
It was necessary to take it from the land side, but in order to divert the enemy's forces, fifty
marines, landed on a small Danube island near the fortress. Among whom was Katya Mikhailova.
The Danube overflowed, flooded the low-lying banks, and when the boats
brought the sailors to the island at night, it was under water. Then the sailors settled down
on the branches of half-flooded trees and opened fire, attracting the attention of the enemy.
The Nazis were alarmed: the island was very close to the fortress.
Mines fell on the sailors, and enemy infantry in boats with machine guns surrounded them.
Wounded and killed appeared. An enemy bullet pierced Katya's arm. She hastily retightened
the wound and continued to shoot. But she also had to bandage her wounded comrades.
When there was no one to bandage, she again fought off the advancing Nazis from the machine gun.
Two hours later, of the fifty paratroopers, only thirty were combat-ready, but they were
all wounded. The ammunition was coming to an end. The situation was critical when they
heard in the distance "Hurray!" and a skirmish that broke out in the area of ​​the fortress.
Taking advantage of the fact that the enemy pulled back forces to suppress the paratroopers, our
and Yugoslavian infantry rushed forward and took Ilok from land. The marines completed their task.
The complexity of this operation lay not only in the fact that a small group of sailors
withstood a long and unequal battle surrounded, but also in the fact that it took place in
winter and in icy water. When soviet boats came to take off the surviving paratroopers,
it was difficult to tear some of them from the trees - they were so numb.
Katya, already weakened from blood loss, numb in the icy water, was carried by the surviving
paratroopers in their arms to the approaching boat. The wound was serious, although the bullet
did not touch the bones. In addition, a two-hour stay in ice-cold water affected her, and Katya
fell seriously ill. In the end, she was sent to the rear hospital of the sailors in Izmail.
Doctors did a lot to save Katyusha's life. She was between life and death for a long time,
but they succeeded and Katya came back to her battalion. At this time the Battle of
Budapest was going on, and the paratroopers were fighting in the Hungarian capital.
She caught up with her battalion behind Budapest,
near Komarno, and again participated in all battles and landings, including
the famous assault on the imperial bridge, when the sailors landed in daylight in the
depths of the enemy's position and in a fierce attack captured and held the remaining bridge.
This bridge connected the Hungarian town of Komarom and the Czechoslovak town of Komarno.
It was mined, and German sappers had already set fire to the fuse cords, when a group of scouts,
among whom was Katya, ran up to the bridge under enemy fire. They were the vanguard
of the paratroopers. Everything was decided by seconds, and the sailors rushed forward.
The Georgy Veretennikov ran to the burning cords and cut them off. Katya was next to him,
and while he trampled the smoldering cords, she, dragging the entire troop along with her, rushed
with a machine gun across the bridge and was the first to break into the streets of Komarno.
Katya Mikhailova was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the battle at
Ilok. The former commander of the Danube Flotilla, Vice-Admiral Kholostyakov,
wrote something like this in the award list: "Ekaterina Mikhailova, being herself wounded,
standing up to her throat in the water, participated in the battle and provided assistance
to other wounded." In the award department, after reading this description of the feat, they
considered it a clear fiction and returned the award list to the headquarters of the flotilla.
Vice-Admiral Kholostyakov had no choice but to award her with only the second Order of the Red
Banner. Which he did in front of the formation of sailors.
Victory has come. Having said goodbye to her comrades in arms,
the demobilized chief sergeant in a black, well-worn marine overcoat and with a skinny
duffel bag over her shoulders returned to her native Leningrad. She was no longer at her home,
there were no relatives - her sister and her husband died at the front,
the brother-pilot died a hero's death in the last days of the war. She felt lonely.
Katya Mikhailova brought from the war not only courage in the face of danger, the ability to
look death in the eye. Service in the navy, even more tempered her stubborn character,
not to be afraid of any difficulties, or hard work.
She decided that she would become a doctor, and immediately after arriving in her hometown, she
applied to the Leningrad Medical Institute. She was accepted on preferential terms as a front-line
soldier. But what a difficult and long battle this study turned out to be for her at first!
She had only recently turned twenty, and was almost the same year as the other freshmen who
had come here after ten-year school. But they seemed like children in comparison with her,
a woman of such a rich biography, a combat sailor, a warrior who had gone through the heat of battles
and shed blood more than once. But in another, her peers left her far behind:
they came to the institute well prepared, and her school knowledge has been pretty weathered
in the four years of the war. I had to catch up with my peers, as soon as possible.
But I had to eat and dress - Katya did not bring any trophies from the front.
A small student scholarship in post-war years could not feed. I had to work as a night watchman,
then as a vegetable cutter at the base, then as a nurse in a hospital.
Sometimes, when she returned late from work, she was so tired to the limit but found time
for studying textbooks even in the bed. Then sleep finally overcame her, she fell asleep
with a book in her hand for two or three hours, but, barely waking up, she began to read again.
One day she learned about the arrival of her colleague, the former sailor of
the Danube flotilla, Ivan Drozdov. Near Ilok, in that very memorable landing,
he was seriously wounded in the stomach, and Katyusha made his first dressing. After the war,
in 1947, because of this wound, Drozdov had to undergo an operation in Leningrad.
In this difficult time, when she had to work and study, tensely catching up with her classmates,
she considered it her important duty to visit a fighting friend. For three months, while Drozdov
was in the hospital, Katyusha visited him, persuaded him to agree to a complex operation,
supported the patient, inspired him with confidence in the success of the doctors.
Katyusha, having received a doctor's diploma, celebrated it like Victory Day. A hero is always
a hero - in battle, in peaceful work, and in studies. Soon she met her future husband -
designer Demin, the same front-line soldier, only not a sailor, but a signalman. Here her son was
born. Here, for the first time, she entered her apartment, provided to her family by the factory.
A peaceful, simple woman doctor who protects the health of people, wife, mother, mistress
of the house. And only front-line photos in the album, orders and medals in a box and the scars
left by the German iron remind of what happened twenty years ago. Moreover, until the end of
her life, there will be a special, grateful, warm feeling for the fleet, for the sailors,
who in those harsh war years loved and cherished her like a sister, and were proud of her.
Dear friends, that's all for today. In my opinion,
this is a worthy path of a wonderful Soviet woman, a glorious Russian Katyusha!
And please write your opinion about could a woman serve in the navy or it is just for men?