In
the deep silence of the endless Russian pine forest, a small, lonesome
figure was walking. It was just a few years before the outbreak of the
second world war. She had set out alone, without the permission of her
parents, carrying only enough food to keep her on her feet for the long
march. She was used to walking. Every day for years she had walked eight
miles to and from her school in the little village closest to her home;
she knew she could do it. Her self-belief and determined spirit drove
her steadily on. She was fourteen years old.
This
was Roza Shanina. She walked one hundred and twenty miles all alone, at
last reaching a train station. From the station, she took the train to
the city of Arkhangelsk, where she enrolled in the city’s college.
Rosa Shanina, Russian Sniper, in 1944 {Wikipedia)
She
loved the city. The cinemas, the lights, the people and the bustle were
worlds away from the isolation of her early years. She was friendly,
quick, talkative and highly intelligent, and so she made many friends.
Often, she would return to her college dormitory after the doors had
been locked, entering with the help of a rope of tied bedsheets let down
by her friends inside.
When
tuition fees were introduced she had to find a job to support her
studies. The job was at a kindergarten in the city, where she was well
liked by the children, the parents, and the other staff. The job came
with a little apartment, and for the first time she had a place of her
own. She worked during the day and studied at night, and the days were
full and happy.
It was in 1943 that she enrolled in the military.
Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, launching the colossal
Operation Barbarossa. By 1943, Roza had lost two brothers to the war,
and she would lose a third before the war was over. The city where she
lived had suffered air raids. She joined the Central Female Sniper
Academy, where she excelled. In April of 1944, she was given command of
an all female sniper platoon and was deployed to the front.
Bundesarchiv picture of Soviet POWs during Barbarossa (Wikipedia)
In
the aftermath of the hard-won Soviet victory at the battle of
Stalingrad, the Russians launched a series of counter-attacks against
the German army. It was during these actions, in early April of 1944,
that Roza took a human life for the first time. She was shaken, but her
comrades congratulated her. As the months passed she became battle
hardened and cold. Seven months after that first kill, her wartime diary
recalls her feeling that she had found the true purpose of her life in
her actions in battle. She writes that, given the chance to go back, she
would not change a thing.
It
takes a steady hand and a resolute will to kill at range, and these
elite soldiers were indeed resolute. Roza Shanina’s unit screened the
advancing infantry. They hunted enemy snipers and picked off enemy
officers when committed to open battle.
The Soviet commanders were
of a mind to keep the sniper units, including the women of Roza’s
command, back from the perils of the front in a pitched battle. Despite
this policy, the women went where they were needed, and more than once
this meant going into action against direct orders. Roza Shanina was
sanctioned for disobeying orders, but her actions in combat and the
actions of her unit made the commanders relent from pursuing harsh
punishment.
Roza Shanina in 1944 Photo by A. N. Fridlyanski (Wikipedia)
The
women fought in battle after battle. In one action, their position was
stormed by the enemy, and they fought hand to hand with bayonets and
even shovels, killing many of the enemy and capturing the survivors. In
another action, Roza hunted an enemy sniper who was camouflaged in a
tree canopy.
When dusk fell, the sky behind his tree was lit by
the last light of the setting sun, and she was watching. His sniper’s
nest showed up clearly in silhouette against the wide sky. She fired her
trademark, two shots in very quick succession, and a body slid silently
from the tree and thudded to the ground.
By September of 1944,
the Soviet army had crossed into German-controlled East Prussia. The
German army, embattled though it was, resisted strongly, and fighting
intensified as winter deepened. The Soviets began their full-scale East
Prussian Offensive in January of 1945, and the women’s sniper platoon
was engaged in heavy fighting. The German army positions held out
fiercely against the huge Russian advance.
Soviet Troops during the East Prussian Offensive (Bundesarchiv. Wikipedia)
The
East Prussian Offensive involved more than two million soldiers. The
Russians advanced steadily toward the city of Königsberg, and in the
freezing winter of 1945 the Germans fought hard for every kilometer of
ground. Casualties on both sides were terrible, but always the Germans
were pushed back under the pressure from the Soviet army.
Everywhere
along the front heavy shelling preceded assaults by tanks, field
artillery, and infantry. One by one, the fortified positions still held
by the Wehrmacht fell. In villages and towns, ridges, valleys, forests
and open plains, vicious fighting took place, and always the Russians
crept forward.
The Snipers had been committed to the front of the
offensive, and it was at the end of January, after ten months of active
service, that the war finally claimed the life of Roza Shanina.
Under
heavy shelling and machine-gun fire, two Russian officers found her
broken body slumped over that of a wounded artillery officer. She had
been standing over him with her rifle in her hand and she still clutched
it with one hand when they found her. A shell had burst right next to
her, and she was mortally wounded. Though they tried to save her life,
there was little that could be done, and she died the next day, on
January 28th, 1945. She was 20 years old.
Roza Shanina was a
prolific writer, and her diaries – kept against army regulations – were
published many years after the war. They give a profound insight into
the determined mentality of this young woman. Before she died, she told a
nurse that her only regret was that she had not done more in the war
effort. Talented and utterly committed, she gave up everything she had
to resist the advance of Fascism against her people. Her story, just one
among the stories of the millions who died in the Second World War,
resonates to this day.
