They refused to believe in her exploits

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The only woman is a scout of the Soviet marines - Ekaterina Demina. Twice in 1944 she was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and both times the documents were returned with the note "the description of the exploits is implausible."

Even the seasoned commanders from the People's Commissariat of Defense could not believe that this ordinary girl, who began to fight at the age of fifteen, had managed to do so many things! The golden star of the Hero of the Soviet Union came half a century late; in 1990, the presentation of the commander Demina was taken out of the archive and approved.

What is even more pleasant, Ekaterina Illarionovna, unlike many fighters who died early, received the award herself. Until now, Ekaterina Illarionovna patronizes schoolchildren, writes articles about the best human qualities, about a difficult and heroic time.

Catherine lost her parents early, was brought up in an orphanage. Then there was a nine-year and a nursing course at the Red Cross.

The ninth-grader was in the Army from the very beginning of the war, from June 1941. When she signed up for the service, there were no documents with her, they burned down in besieged Leningrad. The girl added three years to herself and became a medical instructor in the army.

Pulling the fighters from the battlefield, she was seriously wounded, she herself ended up in the hospital. When the wounds healed, she asked to be sent to the hottest place - near Stalingrad.

In 1943, she wrote a report with a request to enroll her in the marines to liberate the Crimea from the Nazis. The girl has nothing to do there, they refused. Then Demina writes a letter addressed to Comrade Stalin himself. The stubborn girl had to be enrolled in the Marines.

Wounded three times in battles. During the Kerch landing, she pulled eight dozen wounded soldiers from the battlefield. It is not surprising that the People's Commissariat simply could not believe this!

When crossing the Dniester estuary in 1944, a simple medical instructor Demina was one of the first to climb the steep bank from the water. She shot the machine-gun nest of the Nazis.

Crawled up to the German bunker and threw a grenade into a narrow slot! She put almost two dozen fascists out of the machine, and drove nine captured defenders of the bunker as prisoners to the marines who had pulled up from the water.

Again the report of the commander with the introduction to the rank of Hero and again the refusal. Well, there are no such medical instructors! Tell that to the fascists destroyed by the girl!

In December 1944, Demina fought in the landing at the capture of the Yugoslav fortress Ilok. Fifty Soviet soldiers made their way to an islet filled with icy water in a river bend. And all night they held out against a many times larger number of Germans, diverting fire on themselves from the main assault.

By morning, only seven of the fifty Marines were left alive. All seriously wounded, but not surrendering. From the icy water and wounds, the girl developed severe pneumonia. But this disease could not break the desperate foreman of the sanitary service!

After the war, the brave girl graduated from the medical institute and worked as a doctor all her life. She helped people as always. Nothing unusual, a simple Soviet Heroine, no matter with or without an order.