I was quite young when both of my parents died. I used to live with my elder brother and his wife, and I didn't get on particularly well with her. So when the war broke out I told them that I would go to the front. Quite timely I should say, as they were enlisting young girls of my age then. One of the officers wasn't quite sure about me as there was nothing in particular that I could do. But I pleaded with them and told them that I was a nurse. There was a great turmoil in the beginning of the war, so they didn't go into detail and got me enlisted. They got us all packed into wagons, which had been earlier used for cattle. A political instructor got inside as well, and when the train was already in motion we started to give the oath. It wasn't long before someone opened fire on us, and we were lucky to get through.
Our destination was the 189th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion in western Ukraine, and when we finally came there they gave us our first assignment which was to dig trenches. I was 15 then, and I spent two years on the frontline. The Germans used to shell us from Messerschmitts and Henschels 111. When the bombing became too heavy, we would move to a different location. Sometimes we changed our positions as often as three or four times during the day. In fact, we moved quite a bit around the country. Almost the whole western Ukraine, Bila Tserkva, and even as far as Rostov. I can't remember now the exact locations. Once we were lodged in some village and I remember a woman, the mistress of the house where I stayed, who was very kind to me and treated me to some homemade crackers.
In fact, I had several jobs during the war: a combat medic, an instrument technician on the anti-aircraft artillery unit and a telephone operator. As an instrument technician, my task was to watch the gauge of some huge device and tell this information to our gunmen. You know, the bearing angle, the altitude and the distance of the plane. This is how we managed to shoot down a lot of planes from the ground. There were 90 girls in my squad, and whenever a girl at the machine gun got killed, I would take her position. The device itself was tricky enough as you had to watch it all the time almost without blinking in order not to miss a plane.
Once the telephone line got torn, and the commander ordered me to fix it. I remember going out there all by myself, finding the damaged place, fixing it and coming back. And there was another case when they sent me to the command post with an important message to deliver. I can't say that I was very scared. But it was already getting dark in the forest, and the birds stopped singing. I was walking through the quiet of the forest, thinking of my chances of being shot, and repeating the name of the Lord quietly to myself, for it was the only prayer I knew. Somehow I managed to get to the command post and delivered the message. "Well done!" they said, and asked me if I was afraid to return back to my location alone. Afraid? Who said anything of being afraid? Nothing like that!
My commander would always tell me to go straight to the shelter in case of shooting or an air raid. But how could I? When I saw so many wounded people I couldn't do anything else but go out there and drag the wounded back to the trenches. The commander would curse me for that. I remember one wounded soldier with his guts falling out. He was pleading for help, and I tried my best to save him.
There were people among us who used to encourage others to desert from the frontline. They spread all kinds of demoralizing rumors saying that the war was as good as lost. I should say that I was pretty good at identifying this sort of people. I would watch them closely and share this information with a special unit. Some people were even tried by a military tribunal. And I received an award for that.
Once there was an air raid with plenty of Henschel planes. They started dropping the bombs, and I got buried under the ruins of our shelter. When they dug me out, I was shell-shocked. I guess it happened somewhere near Bila Tserkva. I was sent to a hospital straight away. When I came around, I found myself stammering badly. I even asked my doctor - the one who had a funny beard just like biologist Michurin - to give me some medicine that would make me fall asleep and never wake up again. "Darling," he told me, "how could you ask me for such a thing? You're so beautiful. Just wait and see. You will get over it! You are in for getting married yet. I am your doctor and I promise that you'll be fine. You are a nurse yourself, so don't you worry!" And he gave me some medicine that was so bitter it almost made my eyes pop out! Later, in September, they sent me to Ryazhsk, in Moscow region, where I fully recovered.
The war ended and I decided to train as a nurse. I read in a newspaper about a medical college in Makhachkala, Dagestan. So I got enrolled in that college and studied there for a year. I was a good student and I think I would have continued my studies there but for one accident. The thing was that I rented a room with one Armenian family. Once my landlady wrote a letter to her son Borya, who lived in Baku, and told him that she had found a fiancee for him. I was out dancing the evening he came. I used to have a good dancing partner, a very handsome young man, who would always pick me up and see me home after the dancing. So Borya came to the dancing club and made a great fight there scaring away a lot of people. It was 11 pm when he finally came home, threatening us with a knife and shouting at his mother blaming her of failing to prepare Ania - that is me - for his arrival. We couldn't sleep that night. In the morning I came to college only to find the principal, who asked me to leave the city and stay somewhere for a while. So I returned to Ryazhsk and found a job as a nurse there. I never told this story to anyone.
There in Ryazhsk, I had a job in a military college that trained officers. I worked in the college canteen, checking the quality of food and tasting the meals. I looked lovely indeed in my snow-white uniform and with a nice headpiece in my hair. No wonder I had a lot of suitors! Some of them were really handsome. There was a pilot among them - a top-class navigator, to be more precise. He proved to be the most persistent of all. He would follow me wherever I went. But I didn't like him very much and I didn't want to marry him. However, I could see that he really loved me a lot. I remember once I saved up some money for a pair of new shoes and went to the shop. And guess what? I was about to pay for the shoes when he appeared as if out of nowhere and paid for the shoes himself! My landlord - I used to rent a room then - kept praising him. "You are so dear to him! No other man will take better care of you," he would always tell me. But the fact was I didn't love him! However, sometime later our military division was to be transferred to Sakhalin, and I had a difficult choice to make. So finally I gave up and agreed to marry him.
On our way to Sakhalin we spent nine days on board a ship. We all felt so sick that we could hardly move. Everybody, except my husband. He was very healthy, so he took care of us all, bringing the food and taking away the waste. Besides, he did know a lot about planes. It wasn't a big deal for him to approach a top general or an admiral and ask them all sorts of questions about planes. And those generals would ask our commander to quiet the insolent Potap. They used to call him this because of his surname: Potapov.
We spent six years at Sakhalin, altogether. When we first arrived there, it was barely habitable. There was nowhere to live, and everything was extremely expensive. Besides, there was deep snow everywhere, which made life even more difficult. At first, we stayed in some basement with a group of soldiers, having nothing to eat but canned pork. There was no running water, so my husband made an ice hole in the river and used to bring water in a small mug so that we could cook something to eat. I caught a bad cold then, with a terrible fever, which was even more dangerous as I was pregnant at that time. Soon they gave us a separate room to live. When we first came there, it was all entangled with all sorts of cables and wires, for our neighbor used to keep chickens there. Finally, six years later, my husband got discharged, and started wondering where to go. Some clever people advised us to go to Ukraine. It was believed that one had more opportunities there. So we decided to take this advice.
When we arrived here, we were completely broke and with no place to live. My husband found a job at the Malyshev plant and worked tirelessly. He was a very good worker indeed and stood a good chance to get a nice flat. And he did. In fact, this is the same flat where I live now. As for me, I had an eventful social life then: dressmaking classes, volleyball, all sorts of things. I was the captain of the volleyball team. We had a lot of amateur clubs, a very good choir, dancing classes.
In the evenings, we used to leave our husbands at home babysitting the children and went dancing. It was a beautiful life regardless of all the difficulties. Food was very expensive then. Milk, meat, apples, everything was expensive. However, we were young and full of energy, so nothing seemed too hard or too frightful.
Much time has passed. We are still at the same apartment. I have to take full care of my husband; he is almost disabled after having two strokes. Sometimes I think what would have happened with me if I didn't marry the man I never loved.
