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it was called Lyudmila Pavlichenko, although today some know her as ‘Lady Muerte’: a nickname perhaps exaggerated, but one that responds to the terror she provoked in the Nazis during World War II. Dark-haired, with a rough complexion and a sharp nose, historians generally accept that this Ukrainian marksman ended the lives of three hundred Germans during the great patriotic war, as the Russians call it. Although her life is surrounded by more enigmas than certainties – some authors affirm that her legend was magnified by Joseph Stalin– what is clear is that his skills have nothing to envy to those of the soldier who, this Friday, ended the life of General Mogamed Tusháyev.
uncertain beginnings
The author Henry Sakaida states in ‘Heroines of the Soviet Union’ (Osprey, 2003) that our protagonist came into the world with the name of Lyudmila Mikhailovna on July 12, 1916 in the town of Belaya Tserkov, located in Kiev (Ukraine).
“Stubborn and independent, the gifted student finished the ninth grade at her city school,” reveals the expert. At the age of 15, her life changed, as she had a son named Rostilav who destroyed her marriage with the student Aleksei Pavlichenko. This is confirmed by the historian Lyuba Vinogradova in ‘Avenging Angels’ (Past and Present, 2017). As a result of the scandal, his family had to move to the capital from the modest city of Bélaia Tsérkov.
Later, and according to the most widespread version, he combined his studies with a job as a polisher in a factory thanks to the fact that a relative took charge of raising his little one. But… Where did she learn to shoot? How did she manage to acquire that aim that, years later, would make her one of the most famous snipers in the history of the USSR and World War II? As she explained in her memoirs, she became an outstanding shooter in the Osoaviajim quasi-military sports association. In 1941, when Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, Pavlinchenko was 24 years old and studying history at Kiev State University. Once again, his existence was going to be transformed.
At that time Stalin had not yet called women into combat. However, she decided to report to a recruiting office to confront the German invader. The situation astonished the military, who offered her several jobs that they believed were more appropriate for a woman. “She had other ideas. She had received basic military training at a school in Kiev and had won the Voroshilov Marksman Badge in regional tournaments », explains popularizer Charles Stronge in ‘Sniper in Action: History, Equipment, Techniques’ (Amber Books, 2010). The Ukrainian was so determined to fight that the recruiter gave her a marksmanship test.
The future heroine of the Soviet Union passed the exam without problems. All in all, that situation remained etched in her memory, as she demonstrated in her memoirs: «I entered the Army when women were not yet accepted […] I had the option to become a nurse, but I turned it down.” From then on, her story begins to struggle between reality and falsehood. An example of this is that most authors usually make a leap and place our protagonist as a sniper in the battle of Odessa, a region located south of present-day Ukraine. A conflict in which Romanian forces, then on the Nazi side, besieged the aforementioned region for more than two months.
The enigmas around him are counted by dozens. One of them, the moment she arrived in Odessa and if she, by then, was an elite shooter. The author of ‘Sniper in Action: History, Equipment, Techniques’ is in favor of the fact that her abilities were recognized at full speed and, by then, she had already been promoted. Sakaida is more specific, stating in her work that she saw combat with the 25th Infantry Division (VI Chapayev) “near Odessa in August 1941”; although she already as an elite shooter.
nazi terror
Pavlichenko claimed his first two casualties near the town of Belyayevka (located 50 kilometers from Odessa) when his unit was ordered to defend a hill. From then on, and in Sakai’s words, the number of fascists he killed rose at lightning speed to 187. All this, in just ten weeks and after suffering two concussions and a minor injury. The sniper used to use the classic Soviet rifle at that time Mosin-Nagant Equipped with a 4x telescopic sight. However, he soon decided to use the Tokarev SVT-40 semi automatic. Weapon of which thousands were manufactured at the beginning of WWII, but which caused many problems for being difficult to maintain on the battlefield.
Sakai does not refer to Pavlichenko’s first weapon, though he does explain that he preferred the Tokarev because it didn’t have to be cocked after each shot. The expert is right, because in a good part of the images of the woman that have survived the passage of time, she can be seen with said weapon.
After the fall of Odessa, the Independent Maritime Army – in which Pavlichenko was framed – was transferred to Sevastopol, where the sniper fought until exhaustion. She was in this position for eight months. More than hard weeks in which she demonstrated her skill and her resistance by enduring low temperatures and eating insects. It was during her stay in Sevastopol that she began to gain a foothold among the Red Army’s best marksmen. According to her biography, it was in this city that she had dozens of duels with Nazi snipers sent to finish her off.
“In one of those confrontations, she had to lie in the same position for 24 hours while stalking a cautious enemy. When, at dawn on the second day, she finally managed to get him in her sights and shoot him down, she took from his corpse not only the rifle but also his casualty log, which informed her that he had begun serving as a sniper at Dunkirk and that […] I had already finished with 500 soldiers and officers, ”explains Vinogradova.
But this was not his only duel against German snipers. The most famous was one narrated in a Soviet magazine. According to the aforementioned report, with which Pavlichenko rose to fame, he once ran into an expert German observer who had hidden in some bushes. Without hesitation, he began to stalk him to finish him off. It was not easy for him, because the Nazi used against them all the tricks he knew. The first was to place a helmet on a stick and raise it so that the young woman could make a fire and reveal her position. She did not fall into the trap.
Still according to the article, the sniper then made a cat and a dog run around him to distract the girl. “Such a thing is unusual, and any inexperienced sniper could have been distracted and allowed the enemy observer to do his job in the meantime,” the text explained. The last trick of the Nazi sniper was the one that cost him his life. Desperate to find out where the hell his enemy was located, he fashioned a fake doll dressed in the gear of a German soldier and hoisted it over the bushes. That took him to the grave. “Thus he revealed the position of the German and let him know that he would soon become visible,” explains Vinogradova in his work. In the end, the woman fired her when she saw the flash of binoculars…and she finished off the soldier.
All these casualties made Pavlichenko famous among the Nazi commanders. Legend has it that, from then on, it was not uncommon to hear the Germans in the middle of the battlefield asking him to change sides in exchange for all kinds of luxuries. In turn, the elite shooter also pointed out that, after being promoted to lieutenant, she received the order to select and train a sniper unit from the mouth of the general himself. Ivan Petrov. The legend that he generated around him had no limits. Not surprisingly, Pavlichenko herself used to reiterate that she aroused genuine fear in the Nazis. Something logical then, there for June 1942, he had already killed 309 enemies. Among them, a hundred officers and between 33 and 36 German snipers (according to the sources).
However, neither duels nor casualties were enough to avoid bad luck. In June 1942 a mortar shot caused such severe injuries to her face that she had to be evacuated from the front by submarine. A measure never seen before. Around that time, and according to her words, the Germans had already threatened to assassinate her and dismember her body into 309 pieces as revenge for her fallen comrades. They would never get it since, after an arduous recovery of her, the USSR decided that she was too valuable an icon and forbade her to return to the battlefields.
You can read the full story of Lyudmila Pavlichenko by clicking here.