Posts by Shelly Sanders
Natalya Kovshova and Mariya Polivanova: Female Snipers Loyal to the End
My dearest Mama! Please don’t be angry that I didn’t write to you about being wounded. But I didn’t want to worry you for no reason, since nothing serious happened… –letter from Sniper Natasha Kovshova to her mother, July 7, 1942 On a hot, sultry mid-August afternoon, Private Natasha (Natalya) Koshova, a pretty 22-year-old sniper…
Read More80 Years Ago, The First Female Snipers in Combat Were Erased From History. On the Cusp of VE Day & Mother’s Day, it’s time to amend the historical record.
Nina Petrova, a 48 year-old grandmother-sniper, proved that age is an attitude not a barrier. It’s less than a week until the 80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day), when Germany officially surrendered after the Red Army stormed into Berlin. Although WWII’s western front has been well documented, there is a lesser-known yet…
Read MoreBrave Ukrainian female snipers are following in the legendary footsteps of ‘Lady Death’.
With the intersection of Women’s History Month and the US government’s shocking decision to stop funding Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia, it’s time we remember legendary WWII female Ukrainian sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and celebrate today’s female snipers fighting for Ukraine. I came across Lyudmila while researching female snipers for my upcoming novel, The Night Sparrow;…
Read MoreKlavdiya Kalugina: The Youngest Female Sniper in the Red Army
Klavdiya Kalugina was not only the youngest female sniper in the Red Army during WWII, she also had more difficulty shooting than the other cadets. Just fifteen years old when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, she joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) with an eye to leaving her job as a munitions factory worker and…
Read MoreAliya Moldagulova: An Unlikely Sniper Heroine
By the time Aliya Moldagulova was eight years old, in 1933, she was practically an orphan. Her mother and brother had died, and her father was a prisoner of the Soviet regime where he was being persecuted for being the son of a nobleman. For a year, Aliya wandered her small, impoverished village on the…
Read MoreSara (Shura) Erenshtein: A Tribute to a Latvian Jewish Sniper from her daughter, Fira Erenshtein
When the Germans invaded Latvia in 1941, few Jews left Riga—their news had been censored for years so they didn’t know how the Nazis were treating Jews elsewhere in Europe. Sara Erenshtein, however, fled Riga for Uzbekistan on the last available train with her parents, four siblings, and three nieces and nephews. Her mother, one…
Read MoreLIDA BAKIEVA: LOYAL UNTIL THE END
Lida Bakieva’s loyalty, raw determination, quick thinking and sense of humor made her a sniper to fear and admire. This dark-featured young woman from Kazakhstan was just seventeen when she married nineteen-year-old Satai Bakiev a few months before the war. Satai was conscripted as soon as the Germans invaded Russia. Lida, a Young Communist League…
Read MoreROZA SHANINA: Unseen Terror of East Prussia
Oh, this army life, they all think we’re a bunch of prostitutes, and it’s so offensive for a modest girl to see all this. -Roza Shanina, November 18, 1944 Of all the female snipers I came across while working on The Night Sparrow, Roza Shanina has resonated most with her remarkable fortitude and with the…
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