In all she was sent against 36 enemy snipers and killed them all.īy the time she had killed 309 Germans Lyudmila had become a Lieutenant and fallen in love with Sergeant Major Leonid Kitsenko who was also a sniper the couple were married but Leonid was killed soon after. On one occasion Lyudmila had to lay still in her hiding place for 3 days without food or water waiting for the enemy sniper to reveal himself. This took great skill and perseverance as she had to sit still and wait until the enemy sniper revealed himself before taking her shot on average this took 15 – 20 hours. Lyudmila later took part in the battle of Sevastopol where she killed 70 more Germans (taking her total to 257) and she was assigned to become a counter-sniper – in other words to target and kill enemy snipers. It was at that point that her comrades began to call her ‘Lady Death’.
![lyudmila pavlichenko lyudmila pavlichenko](https://cdnmedia.baotintuc.vn/2013/08/07/07/40/xathu5.jpg)
Knowing that it was only a matter of time before they killed her Lyudmila deliberately fell out of the tree and played dead until nightfall when she slipped quietly away. On one occasion Germans had marked her position in a tree and were firing at it. The shock spurred Lyudmila to action as she had liked the ‘nice, happy boy’, and from that moment on there was no stopping her.ĭuring the Siege of Odessa which lasted from 8 th August until 16 th October 1941, Lyudmila killed 187 of the enemy saying that she was so successful because she hated the enemy too much to fear him. Then a young Russian soldier moved beside her but before he could settle in a shot rang out and he was killed. On her first day on the battlefield Lyudmila was frozen with fear and couldn’t bring herself to lift her gun and fire on the enemy. Lyudmila surprised everyone by killing both Germans with two very quick headshots and she was accepted in the ranks of the snipers. The young woman had been bullied at sniper school and the other snipers still did not accept her fully so they set her a test – to shoot two of the enemy standing in a field, if she couldnd’t do it she would be sent home. When she was sent to the front after her training Lyudmila was initially set to digging trenches, it wasn’t until a colleague was too wounded to continue and he handed her his gun that she had a weapon at last. The authorities felt that as a woman she should become a nurse but Lyudmila had other ideas and when she showed them her shooting medals she was allowed to join an all-male sniper school (a women’s sniper school was not set up until 1942). Lyudmila was 24 when she enlisted in the Russian Army, this was a year before women were conscripted but she didn’t want to wait.
![lyudmila pavlichenko lyudmila pavlichenko](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BTEC4B/lyudmila-pavlichenko-1967-BTEC4B.jpg)
The young Russian was planning to do a Master’s, but then the Nazi’s invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and her plans were put on hold after the death and destruction she witnessed during the battle of Kiev made her put aside her dreams of becoming a teacher in favour of killing Nazis. Lyudmila studied for a Bachelor’s degree in history at Kiev University with the aim of becoming a teacher. Lyudmila was not satisfied with working in the armament’s factory – she wanted an education and a career, unfortunately her insistence on this led to her and Alexei getting a divorce. The Russian idea was that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ so everyone helped to look after the children of the community which enabled the women to work.
![lyudmila pavlichenko lyudmila pavlichenko](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOLCe16U8AAMCh3.png)
Russian women were expected to marry young and start a family so this was not unusual it was also a matter of pride for women to work full-time and also look after their young family, not like the ‘stay-at-home-mums’ of other European countries. Lyudmila married a doctor, Alexei Pavlichenko, when she was 16 and they had a son called Rostislav. She had a natural talent and was soon winning medals at competitions.Īs a teenager Lyudmila worked at the Kiev arms factory as well as working so hard at her studies that she graduated from college a year earlier than other students of her age. When she was 14 the family moved to Kiev where one boy kept bragging that he could shoot better than anyone else, this annoyed Lyudmila who thought she could do anything that a boy could do so she joined a local shooting club. Lyudmila was a tomboy – preferring to play rough and tumble games with the boys rather than with girls.
![lyudmila pavlichenko lyudmila pavlichenko](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.443384732.5875/fposter,small,wall_texture,product,750x1000.u3.jpg)
Unfortunately, that meant that he had to move to a new town every year which in turn meant that Lyudmila had to start again each year at a new school with new friends. Her mother was a school teacher and her father a factory worker who worked his way up to a position of responsibility. Lyudmila Belova was born 12th July 1916 in Bila Tserkva in the Ukraine (near Kiev). “The only feeling I have is the great satisfaction a hunter feels who has killed a beast of prey,” Lyudmila Pavlichenko