Conclusion
Women and Men Sharing Violence, Authority, and Romance in Mechanized Warfare, 1942–45
Summary
“All of us serving as Women Airforce Service Pilots [WASPs] wondered how we would fare if we were called upon to fly combat. We talked about it in our barracks during our six months of flight training, training conducted in the same aircraft and with the same basic routine as the male cadets.”
– Anne Noggle, World War II service pilot, WASPsIn early 1944, Colonel Podzhidaev, commander of the 907th Infantry Regiment, signed a petition to posthumously award Valeriia Gnarovskaia, an infantry private and medical orderly, with the highest title of Soviet military distinction, Hero of the Soviet Union. As the petition traveled up the military ladder, from the regiment to division, army, and front headquarters, it acquired the signatures of various generals. By June 1944, the petition had worked its way through the military, Party, and state establishments and Gnarovskaia was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Preserved in Gnarovskaia's personal file at the Russian State Archive of Social Political History, the petition and accompanying materials present a typical young female volunteer, living out her identity of woman citizen-soldier. Seventeen years old in 1941, Gnarovskaia had just finished ten years of schooling when the war began. Upon turning eighteen, she volunteered to join the troops and earned her first medal, the Medal for Valor, in autumn 1943. The 1944 petition for the highest Soviet title of military distinction described Gnarovskaia's character and conduct in combat:
During her service in the regiment, medical orderly private V. O. Gnarovskaia has shown herself as a fearless soldier of the Red Army, a soldier infinitely devoted to her Motherland.[…]
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- Soviet Women in CombatA History of Violence on the Eastern Front, pp. 290 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010