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Soviet Nurses - Women, Who Helped Forge Great Victory

07:39 GMT, 9 May 2023
WWII took a great toll on the Soviet Union. There was no person among the Soviet people who was left out of the participation for the path to Victory. Women faced the daily terrors of war along with men, so today we want to highlight the special role of Soviet nurses.
Sputnik
Soviet doctors and medics walked shoulder to shoulder with Soviet troops from the terrible outbreak of war in 1941 until the victorious spring of 1945.
Nurses took the special burden, for it was they who faced the daily horrors of war, providing first aid to the soldiers, carrying them off the battlefield and even shielding them from bullets with their own bodies.
The nurses during the war often worked for more than several days without rest, struggling for the life of every soldier.
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Nurse Elena Kovalchuk retrieves a wounded soldier from the battlefield.

Elena Kovalchuk had once been a hairdresser, but when the war started she was shocked by Nazi atrocities and joined the Soviet Army as a nurse. According to some estimates, during her service she saved roughly 800 lives. She died in 1944 near Alytus, Lithuania and was awarded the Order of Lenin – the highest honor in the Soviet Union.

© Sputnik / Vladimir Minkevich
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Nurses provide first aid to victims of shelling in Leningrad on Socialist Street.

© Sputnik / Vsevolod Tarasevich
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The sister of a medical battalion on the 1st Baltic Front helps a wounded soldier write a letter to his relatives.

© Sputnik / Sergey Baranov
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Ekaterina Mikhailova (Demina) - A medical instructor and the only woman to serve in the Marine Corps, who was decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union. She joined the army at age of 15 (she told everyone she was 18) and served until the Victory over Nazis.

© Sputnik / G. Shierbakov
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Ekaterina Mikhailova (Demina) took part in numerous battles, including the Vienna Offensive Operation.

© Sputnik / G. Shierbakov
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Nurses provide medical aid to wounded soldiers near Kiev during the liberation of Soviet Ukraine from Nazis.

© Sputnik / Nikolai Vikhirev
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A nurse helps the wounded and covers him from fire.

© Sputnik / Yakov Ryumkin
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The atrocities of Nazis and their accomplices in the territories of the USSR. A nurse burned alive by Nazi punishers near the village of Spas-Demensk.

© Sputnik / Vyacheslav Sharovsky
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Treatment of soldiers in a field hospital.

© Sputnik / Nikolay Asnin
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Nurses at a blood transfusion station in Moscow, 1941.

There is no exact data on the number of blood transfusions during the war period, but there is great certainty that this procedure saved countless lives.

© Sputnik / Anatoliy Garanin
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A nurse with a partisan detachment bandages the wounded during a battle near Pinsk in modern-day Belarus.

© Sputnik / Evgenyi Koktyish
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Nurses assist the wounded after a Nazi air raid in the vicinity of Kishinev.

© Sputnik / Georgy Zelma
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A photo of nurses during WWII.

© Sputnik / Boris Kudoyarov
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Nurses bring flowers to wounded soldiers in Moscow, 1941.

© Sputnik / Anatoliy Garanin
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The Battle of Berlin is over. Nurses are ready to go home.

© Sputnik / Leonid Korobov
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