About pzh and fighting girlfriends. Camping field wives: How did the front-line novels of famous commanders and military figures end?

Camping field wives - that was the name of front-line girlfriends in the Great Patriotic War.

Separated from their families, the generals and officers of the Red Army started "civilian wives" from among the female soldiers. Doctors, nurses, telephone operators and radio operators with an attractive appearance faced increased attention from their male colleagues. Commanders of different ranks courted with special perseverance. The officers, unlike ordinary soldiers, could afford to "spin the romance." Camping-combat wives began relationships with officers for love or convenience. Even some representatives of the high command had such concubines. For example, Marshal Zhukov appointed his fighting girlfriend as a personal nurse and awarded many awards. They went through the whole war together.

Before going over to the side of the enemy, General Vlasov had two field wives: military doctor Agnes Podmazenko and cook Maria Voronova. Podmazenko even became pregnant from Vlasov, and the general sent her to give birth in the rear. She bore him a son and received 5 years in the camps "for connection with a traitor to the motherland." The presence of marching-combat wives at the front was marked by the following events: - the hatred of legal wives from the rear to front-line girlfriends; - contempt of ordinary soldiers; - fear of "links" to a hot spot and a tribunal. A woman who became pregnant lost her certificate. For ordinary nurses, this meant disaster. The history of front-line love was often temporary. It ended in death or separation after the end of the war. Only a few field wives still managed to register their relationship with their "combat" comrades. [S-BLOCK]

Despite the presence of a legal wife in the rear, officers of the Red Army entered into relationships with temporary cohabitants. At the same time, many tried not to make such situations widely publicized or assign it the status of moral baseness. Interestingly, Marshal Zhukov took decisive action in the fight against the moral decay of the soldiers and issued an order to remove almost all women from headquarters and command posts.

"TOP SECRET. Order to the troops of the Leningrad Front No. 0055 mountains. Leningrad September 22, 1941 At the headquarters and at the command posts of the commanders of divisions, regiments, there are many women under the guise of serving, seconded, etc. A number of commanders, having lost the face of communists, simply cohabitate ... On September 23, 1941, remove all women from headquarters and command posts. Leave a limited number of typists only in agreement with the Special Department. Execution to be reported on September 24, 1941. Signature: Commander of the Leningrad Front, Hero of the Soviet Union, General of the Army Zhukov.

The famous Soviet poet Simonov in his poem "Lyrical" called field wives comforters:

Men say war...

And women are hurriedly hugged.

Thank you for being so easy

Not demanding to be called sweetheart,

Another, the one that is far away,

They were hastily replaced.

She is the beloved of strangers

In an unkind hour she warmed them with the warmth of an unkind body.

For such a work, he was almost deprived of his membership card.

There were no legal regulators of relations between military personnel of different sexes, writes Colonel of Justice Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev. Cohabitation in military collectives was often qualified as domestic decay and ended with the imposition of disciplinary and party penalties on the guilty or condemnation by an officer's court of honor. But in the archives of the military judicial department there was a trace of more complex conflicts between men and women that unfolded in wartime. Until the prosecution.

For example, in the report of the chairman of the military tribunal of the Northern Front, the following example is given. The commander of the 3rd platoon of the searchlight battalion of the guard, Senior Lieutenant E. G. Baranov, who cohabited with a Red Army woman Sh. Art. 74 part 2, 193-17 p. "e" and 193-2 p. "g" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The military tribunal of the 82nd division dismissed the case at the preparatory meeting only because Baranov had by that time entered into a legal marriage with Sh.

Before going over to the side of the enemy, General Vlasov had two field wives: military doctor Agnes Podmazenko and cook Maria Voronova. Podmazenko even became pregnant from Vlasov, and the general sent her to give birth in the rear. She bore him a son and received 5 years in the camps "for connection with a traitor to the motherland."
The presence of marching-combat wives at the front was marked by the following events:
- hatred of legitimate wives from the rear to front-line girlfriends;
- contempt of ordinary soldiers;
- fear of "links" to a hot spot and a tribunal.
A woman who became pregnant lost her certificate. For ordinary nurses, this meant disaster. The history of front-line love was often temporary. It ended in death or separation after the end of the war. Only a few field wives still managed to register their relationship with their "combat" comrades.

Despite the presence of a legal wife in the rear, officers of the Red Army entered into relationships with temporary cohabitants. At the same time, many tried not to make such situations widely publicized or assign it the status of moral baseness. Interestingly, Marshal Zhukov took decisive action in the fight against the moral decay of the soldiers and issued an order to remove almost all women from headquarters and command posts.

"TOP SECRET.
Order
troops of the Leningrad Front
№ 0055
mountains Leningrad September 22, 1941In the headquarters and at the command posts of the commanders of divisions, regiments, there are many women under the guise of serving, seconded, etc. A number of commanders, having lost the face of the Communists, simply cohabitate ... I order: Under the responsibility of the Military Councils of the armies, commanders and commissars of individual units, by September 23, 1941, remove all women from headquarters and command posts. Leave a limited number of typists only in agreement with the Special Department.Execution to be reported on 09/24/41.Signature: Commander of the Leningrad Front, Hero of the Soviet Union, General of the Army Zhukov.

The famous Soviet poet Simonov in his poem "Lyrical" called field wives comforters:

Men say war...

And women are hurriedly hugged.

Thank you for being so easy

Not demanding to be called sweetheart,

Another, the one that is far away,

They were hastily replaced.

She is the beloved of strangers

Here she regretted, as best she could,

In an evil hour warmed them

The warmth of an unkind body.

For such a work, he was almost deprived of his membership card.

There were no legal regulators of relations between servicemen of different sexes, writes Colonel of Justice Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev. Cohabitation in military collectives was often qualified as domestic decay and ended with the imposition of disciplinary and party penalties on the guilty or condemnation by an officer's court of honor. But in the archives of the military judicial department there was a trace of more complex conflicts between men and women that unfolded in wartime. Until the prosecution.

For example, in the report of the chairman of the military tribunal of the Northern Front, the following example is given. The commander of the 3rd platoon of the searchlight battalion of the guard, Senior Lieutenant E.G. Baranov, who cohabited with a Red Army woman Sh. Art. 74 part 2, 193-17 p. "e" and 193-2 p. "g" of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The military tribunal of the 82nd division dismissed the case at the preparatory meeting only because Baranov had by that time entered into a legal marriage with Sh.

The author of the book "Direct fire on the enemy" - Isaac Kobylyansky began to fight in 1942 near Stalingrad. He was then a sergeant, commander of the gun crew of a battery of 76-mm regimental guns, nicknamed "Farewell, Motherland!" for their open positions at the forward edge. Unlike many military memoirs, the book does not tire the reader with descriptions of battles; it tells only about a few dramatic battles. Much more space is devoted to a sincere account of the perception of the war at first by an inexperienced city boy who believed official propaganda. Frank, with a bit of humor, stories about their own delusions and mistakes, about many "abnormal" situations in the war cause a smile, but more often they make you think. Together with the author, his brother-soldiers became the heroes of the book. With genuine warmth, he describes his closest friends, the true heroes of the war.

Have you seen the film "Military Field Romance" by Pyotr Todorovsky? He, like Isaac Kobylyansky, is also a front-line soldier, and what you will read today is, in fact, what is left behind the scenes of this film, in terms of love relationships between commanders and subordinate women they like. "Dirty?" - tell you. And I don't blame either one or the other. I have no such moral right. People always want to love and be loved... Even in war. And it is true.

Together with us they froze and got wet, next to us, when it was possible, they warmed up and dried out by the fire. There were about twenty of them in the regiment: telephone operators, nurses, two typists.

Most of the “girlfriends” ended up in the regiment after completing short-term courses for nurses or signalmen. Only Vera Mikhailovna Penkina, the senior physician of the sanrota, graduated from the medical institute before the war.

Why did so many girls go to the army, to the front voluntarily? There were, I think, several completely different reasons for this. Some were driven by patriotic motives, others were fed up with the deprivations to which the rear was doomed. There was another undoubtedly serious motive: men in the rear became a rarity, and at the front one could easily find his betrothed or, at worst, a temporary, as they say now, partner.

The least life-threatening, if it is permissible to talk about security at the front, the girls' duty stations were the regimental headquarters (as a typist or telephone operator) and the regimental sanitary company (from a doctor to a nurse). The girls who served in the medical platoons of the battalions, those who bandaged the wounded on the battlefield, who carried the helpless (and so heavy!) Soldiers from under enemy fire, were exposed to the most serious danger. Here girls were a rarity, most of the orderlies were elderly men.

Getting into such a place as our regiment, every girl from the first minute became the object of frank desire for dozens, if not more, of men who were hungry for women. It was rare to be left without a partner, even rarer were those who refused cohabitation for moral reasons.

Olya

In our regiment, I knew the only girl who, on principle, refused many offers, did not succumb to coercion, was not afraid of threats. It was eighteen-year-old blond Olya Martynova, a Rostovite. Small in stature, plump and blue-eyed, if it weren’t for the soldier’s clothes and tarpaulin boots, she could be mistaken for a high school student. Somehow in mid-September 1943, when we were making long marches along the steppe roads of the Zaporozhye region, I happened to be next to Olya, and we started a leisurely frank conversation. Olya joined our regiment in the spring, and before that she had completed a one-year nursing course, which she entered out of patriotic motives in the fall of 1941 after graduating from high school. Her parents remained in occupied Rostov, and only recently she received the first letter from them, full of hope for the speedy return of her daughter. Olya told me about the endless demands and pressures for intimacy she had experienced since her arrival in the regiment. “But I refused everyone, because I didn’t go to the front for this,” this absolutely naive girl, unlike all others, shared with me very sweetly, burping. Olina's intransigence cost her dearly - she was the only one sent to the rifle battalion as a nurse in the sanitary platoon. Fate kept Olya for half a year, but when in early October we began to storm the Prishibsky heights, which are near Tokmak and Molochansk, a shell fragment pierced the girl’s chest, instantly ending her young life. It so happened that, walking ahead of the guns along the passage through the anti-tank ditch, I saw how below, at the bottom of the ditch, two soldiers were laying someone's lifeless body covered in blood on a stretcher.

Peering, I recognized Olya. The orderlies also told that she died while crawling to help the wounded.

* * *

The fate of my other brother-soldiers was completely different. I'm not talking about the fact that they survived, we had two cases when the girls were injured.

This means that many became "field marching wives" (abbreviated - PJ) of the officers. There was an unspoken order according to which the combat unit first reported to the regiment commander, his deputy and chief of staff about all the women who arrived in the regiment. According to the results of the report, "smotrin", and sometimes a short interview, it was determined where (this often meant to whom in bed) a new fellow soldier would be sent to serve. If the high boss was currently a “bachelor” and foresaw that he would be able to make her his PJ, then he ordered the future nominal commander of the newcomer: “Enlist in your staff and send at my disposal.” Usually they did not refuse such a fate, they agreed willingly, although the difference in age often reached a quarter of a century, or even more. Rarely anyone from this category of girls was also stopped by marital status and the presence of children with a future patron. It was clear in advance that from the point of view of life, supplies, food, and security, the commander's life will be in a privileged position. Making this choice, the girl harbored the hope of eventually becoming the real wife of this man and, as best she could, tried to win his heart. I know of several cases where PJs got their way, but more often than not they were abandoned and tended to be alone for the rest of their days.

Not always, however, the girls dutifully obeyed the choice of their superiors and accepted tempting offers. Sometimes, acting according to the dictates of their hearts, they chose an officer of a lower rank, although this threatened with unpleasant consequences. This is the kind of “military love triangle” that has developed and existed for quite a long time in our regiment.

Tasya

In the summer of 1943, the telephone operator Tasya arrived in our regiment. On the day of arrival, the chief of staff of the regiment, Major Bondarchuk, liked her, and he, sending this slender, cheerful girl to the first battalion, warned that Tasya would “serve” him personally. At first, that's how it was. But then it happened that Bondarchuk left for a few days on a business trip, I think to the army headquarters, and Tasya spent these days at the location of the battalion. Here she became better acquainted with the deputy battalion commander, senior lieutenant Savushkin. Short, round-faced, simple-looking, he was ten years younger than the major. Apparently, Tasya somehow liked him, since on the second day they were already inseparable, and Tasya did not take her loving eyes off the happy senior lieutenant. "Honeyweek" flew by for them in an instant. When Bondarchuk returned, Savushkin wanted to agree with him on the "resubordination" of Tasi, but this only caused an outburst of rage and a stream of threats from the chief of staff. Now Tasya had to visit Bondarchuk "on duty", but from time to time she managed to secretly meet with Savushkin "at the behest of her heart." The jealous and vengeful major learned about these meetings, but could not always prevent them. And he recouped on Savushkin, fortunately, his official position provided rich opportunities for this. Being a deputy commander of a rifle battalion is one of the most difficult and deadly officer positions. Savushkin was known in the regiment as a conscientious war worker. I will always remember him sitting with a telephone receiver pressed to his ear in a crevice of a rock near Sevastopol. There was a battalion command post here, but the entrance to the crevice was under the guns of German machine guns (this was evidenced by several corpses of our soldiers killed in an attempt to get to the command post during daylight hours). Savushkin had to leave his workplace two or three times a day, go to the companies or to the headquarters of the regiment, and he, without showing excessive emotions, conscientiously performed his difficult duties. He was like that throughout the war. Thirty years later, I saw a plump and balding Savushkin at a meeting of fellow veterans. I was struck that only one, and even the most modest military order, the Red Star, was attached to his chest. For those who knew how Savushkin fought, this seemed like a misunderstanding, especially when you are among veterans decorated with numerous orders and medals. I bluntly asked if the grandchildren had lost their grandfather’s orders, to which I received a bitter answer: “No, this is Bondarchuk ... his mother, he avenged so much that Tasya fell in love with me. He forbade the head of the combat unit, Kazinsky, to present me for awards and promotion. So I ended the war, as I began, - as a senior lieutenant. I have nothing to add to this story, since I don’t remember at all what happened to Tasya later. I only know that she did not become Savushkin's wife.

Vera Mikhailovna

Upon arriving at the regiment, the captain of the medical service, Muscovite Vera Penkina, an attractive girl of about twenty-five, behaved in a peculiar way. Possessing a fairly high military rank and a strong character, she kept herself independent and began by rejecting several marriage proposals from the top of the regiment on the move.

Looking around, Vera Mikhailovna herself chose a "friend of front-line life." They became the thirty-year-old commander of the mortar battery, Senior Lieutenant Vsevolod Lyubshin. A well-built, handsome brown-eyed man, he came from the Kuban Cossacks, lived in Kazakhstan before the war, taught military affairs at a secondary school.

Vera Mikhailovna (she taught all the officers of the regiment to address her by her first name and patronymic) did not fail with the choice of a friend. Vsevolod created for her almost ideal conditions of existence in terms of front-line conditions and his possibilities. The battery commander had several wagons at his disposal, one of which was covered with a tarpaulin during night crossings and served as Vera's bedroom. She could only dream of such luxury in her sanrote, especially since from time to time her indefatigable lover climbed into the wagon for a while to “warm up” (or “rest”). Vera Mikhailovna was a temperamental person, and often the soldiers of the battery, riding and walking next to the wagon, determined by ear what was happening under the tarpaulin.

When we were in the second echelon, and if everything was calm in the army, Vera managed to spend whole days in the position of regimental artillerymen (our battery commanders were friends, and we were always located nearby). Here she could enjoy delicious, cooked-to-order food, drink on a par with the men "People's Commissar's" vodka or some trophy drink. Having drunk, Vera Mikhailovna "fooled", became angry, swearing with might and main. I still remember her ugly act "under the degree", committed at the end of January 1945, when we stopped for a day in some Prussian estate.

Over the previous six months, we managed to collect a small collection of gramophone records with good melodies on the territory of Lithuania, Latvia and East Prussia, but the main value was hitherto unknown recordings of songs performed by Russian emigrants. They got a gramophone and, as soon as there was a quiet hour, they listened to “their” music with pleasure many times. Both the gramophone and the records were the common property of both batteries. And so, after a good collective libation in a spacious mansion, Vera Mikhailovna caused Seva a loud scandal and, in order to annoy him more sensitively, grabbed our treasure - a stack of records, lifted it over her head and slammed it down with all her might. (During these tragic seconds, we all froze and looked, probably, like the characters of Gogol's "silent scene." Only Lyubshin, holding out his hands to his PPS and trying to calm her down, muttered: "Vera, stop, Vera, stop ...")

Some of the mores that prevailed at the front are evidenced by an event that took place with the participation of Vera and Vsevolod on one of the nights of the second half of March 1945.

During this period, we were preparing for the assault on Koenigsberg, scheduled for early April. The regiment was stationed in the forest, and we lived in well-equipped dugouts.

About a month before the event that I want to talk about, a new regiment commander arrived (the thirteenth in a row, starting from Tuymazy). It was a tall, under 190 cm, black-haired high-bones Mordvin Lieutenant Colonel Kuptsov. A day or two after his appearance, idle tongues began to tell that the lieutenant colonel had not arrived alone: ​​a very well-fed young female creature lives hopelessly in his dugout (no one has seen her face). There was always a machine gunner at the entrance to the dugout, so the regiment did not know any details about Kuptsov's girlfriend. (This, by the way, is another variant of the female share at the front - a recluse PZH.)

Getting acquainted in turn with the units of the regiment, Kuptsov also visited the sergeant. There he could not help noticing the attractive Penkina, who, in her capacity as senior doctor, with a friendly smile, introduced the entire medical staff to an important visitor and answered questions competently. Judging by what happened later, Vera Mikhailovna made a strong impression on the regiment commander. The next day, around midnight, Kuptsov from his headquarters dugout called the sanrote and gave the order: the captain of the medical service, Penkina, should immediately arrive at the headquarters, she would be accompanied by the regiment commander's liaison officer. Vera Mikhailovna, of course, spent the night at Seva's, so that, not finding her in the sergeant, the messenger wandered through the forest for a long time until he found where the mortarmen were stationed. Having finally reached Lyubshin's dugout and waking up its owner, the messenger repeated several times to the bewildered battery commander who and where they were calling. About ten minutes later Seva and Vera came out of the dugout and followed the messenger.

At the entrance to Kuptsov's headquarters dugout, which was guarded by a submachine gunner, the messenger asked them to wait, he himself entered and returned a minute later with the words "Only the captain of the guard was ordered to enter." Vera went to the dugout, and Vsevolod lit a cigarette and, nervously, began to pace back and forth, not moving more than ten meters away from the machine gunner. Throwing away the cigarette butt of the Belomor, he began to light a second cigarette, but at that moment a cry was heard from the dugout: “Seva!” Lyubshin instantly unbuttoned his holster and took out a pistol, pushed the machine gunner away with his shoulder and burst into the dugout.

Pointing the gun at Kuptsov, he took the disheveled Vera by the hand and left the lair of the failed rapist with her. (Lyubshin told me about the details of what happened thirty years later, during the anniversary meeting of the veterans of the division in Sevastopol. At the same time, he recalled that Kuptsov did not forgive him for his defeat, but began to take revenge when the war had already ended.)

The “military field romance” of Lyubshin and Penkina ended three weeks before the end of the war. Secretly from Vsevolod, Vera Mikhailovna filled out the documents for dismissal to the reserve and, when everything was ready, she told him: “Sevushka, thank you, dear, for everything that you have given me in these years, thank you for your love, for your caresses! But, dear, you must understand that you and I are not a couple for life in a “civilian”. You will find your happiness and I will find mine. Farewell, Sevushka, and be happy!” Many, including myself, were stunned by the unexpected ending, considered her act almost a betrayal. And, perhaps, she was right.

Lyubshin served in the army for several more years, got married, moved from Kazakhstan to the Crimea in the mid-80s, and later became a widower. Now he is close to ninety, lives in Uralsk. Vera Mikhailovna left Moscow in 1948, such information was given to me by the Moscow City Spravka when I tried to find my fellow soldier.

Anya

A hard fate went to the nurse of the sanrote, Anya Kornakova. Back in Tuymaz, she was introduced to us as a representative of the sanrote assigned to the battery. She really visited us often. I found out about the affairs of the heart of this twenty-year-old short, but well-cut girl six months later, when she was in love with the recently arrived head of artillery of the regiment, the handsome captain Karpov. Whether it was Anya's first, I don't know. Soon, a pretty Kiev typist Maya arrived in the regiment, and Karpov stopped paying attention to Anya. The bitterness of defeat and resentment at the loved one, who had so resolutely set her aside, gradually passed, especially since there were plenty of possible deputies.

At first, Anya’s “friend” was the commander of a rifle company (I don’t remember his last name), but he was wounded a month later, and then she got along for a long time with the commander of another company, Remizov, an ordinary martinet, whose main advantages were a loud voice and the ability to drink a lot without getting drunk. Anya's bad luck continued: in the summer of 1944 she fell ill with typhus. (This was surprising. After all, lice, the main peddler of typhus, which literally swarmed with us until the spring of 1943, had already begun to decline.) Anya returned from the hospital with a shaved head, it was a pity to look at her. But as soon as the hairs on her head grew a little, something else became noticeable: Anya was pregnant. And now she is already leaving the front, going to her mother to give birth. (Everything happened in full accordance with the then current anecdote from the series “Armenian Radio Answers to Radio Listeners’ Questions.” Here is its original text: “They ask us what is the difference between an aerial bomb and a front-line soldier? We answer: an aerial bomb is stuffed in the rear and sent to the front, and a front-line soldier is stuffed at the front and sent to the rear.")

Anina's main suffering began from the moment she arrived in her native village in the Kalinin region. (I received her letter of confession in 1968, when I accidentally found out the address of a fellow soldier and wrote her a short letter of greeting.) In the very first minute of the meeting, the mother handed her daughter a letter recently received from Remizov. Informing about the imminent return of Anya, the author of the letter resolutely rejected possible paternity, citing the fact that “she had dozens of people like me, but I had nothing to do with her for a very long time.” Anya was shocked by the meanness of her recent roommate, but nature continued to act according to its schedule, and soon a third person appeared in the Kornakov family - Anya's son.

When the child was three years old and he asked Anya several times about her father, she collected her things and with the last money she went with her son to the village where he lived with the new Remizov family and where she had previously sent letters that remained unanswered. As was to be expected, they were not even let in on the threshold of Remizov's house. Anya did not dare to return to her mother and settled in Kalinin, worked as a nurse in hospitals, and by old age - as a health worker in a kindergarten. She got married in 1950, seemed to find happiness, but her husband died three years later. Anya's son, it seems, went to his father ...

Two Zhenya

In two cases, the front-line love of my brother-soldiers ended in the formation of prosperous families. The senior clerk of the combat unit, Grisha Demchenko, married Zhenya Domnikova, perhaps the most beautiful of the women in our ranks. After the war they lived in Kaluga.

The second marriage had a background. A young, rather interesting, by front-line standards - a refined intellectual, the doctor of the regimental medical officer Dudnikov was not indifferent to the Kharkov nurse Zhenya Lifner and she was close to reciprocating. However, unfortunately for Dudnikov, Captain Kazinsky, mentioned above, liked Zhenya, whose wife died in the occupation, and he decided to get rid of his competitor. Taking advantage of his opportunities, Kazinsky ensured that Dudnikov was transferred to a higher position in the medical battalion of the division. Now it remained to win Zhenya's heart. It took several months. After the war Kazinsky lived in Chernivtsi. Stanislav headed a department in the regional executive committee, then moved to work in the system of industrial cooperation. Zhenya worked as a head nurse at a local hospital until her retirement. Kazinsky died in 1980.

* * *

There is another topic related to our "fighting girlfriends". We had a case when, due to the presence of women at the front (but not through their fault!) there was a disaster.

Let us recall the description of the protracted night march before the battle at the Cherry farm. There were the words: “That night, the column of the regiment often stopped, at each intersection of roads, the sleepy authorities figured out for a long time which path to follow.” I apologize to the reader - this is true, but not all. Long, sometimes up to half an hour, stops occurred due to the fact that the mentioned authorities were lying under a tarpaulin in wagons with their PPG, and the lower ranks, who did not really know the route, did not dare to interrupt the love joys of the chiefs at the wrong moment. Forced to stand in a column for a long time and guessing the reasons for these stops, the soldiers grumbled. I absolutely clearly remember what Tetyukov said then: “Remember, lads, my words are that Russia will not see victory as long as there are women in the army.” Russia saw the Victory, but Tetyukov did not have to, he died a few hours later. And maybe really because of the "women". After all, if we had arrived at Cherry before dawn, the infantry would have had time to dig in, we would not have to take a mortal risk, and the brave artilleryman could have survived ...

* * *

For the sake of justice, I note that most of my regimental commanders (and there were more than ten of them in less than three years) did not forget about a sense of duty for the sake of love pleasures.

* * *

I would not like to give the reader the impression that in our regiment women were occupied only with love, or, as they say now, with sex. No, almost all of them, especially doctors, nurses, medical instructors, neglecting the danger and not considering either fatigue or time, conscientiously, and sometimes heroically, performed their difficult duties.

But our fighting girlfriends (whatever nicknames, from condescending and affectionate to offensive and insulting, their fellow soldiers did not endow them!) Had to endure such hardships that men did not know. In addition to special inconveniences during certain periods of the life of the female body, for our front-line soldiers, who were almost always surrounded by hundreds of men, there was an everyday problem “to go before the wind”, especially when we were in an open field.

In general, with rare exceptions, women at the front had an incredibly hard time. So now, when I meet an elderly participant in the war, I mentally bow to her not only for her personal (unknown to me) contribution to our victory, but also for the hardships that she obviously experienced at the front. And it doesn’t matter to me at all what amorous adventures happened to her in those distant years of her youth.

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