Soviet Air Force officers Soviet Air Force officers Rufina Gasheva (848 night combat missions) and Nataly Meklin (980 night combat missions) decorated as Heroes of the Soviet Union for their service with the famed Night Witches unit during World War II. (980 night combat missions) decorated as Heroes of the Soviet Union for their service with the famed Night Witches unit during World War II.

Rufina Gasheva and Nataly Meklin

Khalkhin Gol 1939 -  Red Army pilots and Khorloogiin Choibalsan, general chief commander of the Mongolian armed forces

Khalkhin Gol

Many people thought that this young and frail-looking woman was unfit to enlist in the Army. But she would not give up. It was impossible to turn her down. She went through the war as a private scout-submachine gunner in a Komsomol battalion.

She gave a vivid description of the division’s war record and the exploits of her comrades-in-arms in her book.

In one of her letters she wrote: “We were assigned various missions: reconnaissance in force, capture of identification prisoners, night search patrol, etc. We infiltrated behind enemy lines and sometimes helped the local partisans.”

Here is an account of just one episode from the combat routine of Sofia Avericheva as described by Mikhail Smirnov.

The division’s command decided to verify the information given by an enemy defector. We sent a scout platoon to the village of Vydra, on the flank of an adjacent division. Its mission was to capture a prisoner for interrogation. The mission was a total success. In a surprise raid on the village’s enemy garrison our scouts killed more than 20 enemy soldiers, taking another eight prisoner. Avericheva distinguished herself in the raid. She killed several enemy soldiers and took one prisoner. At one point she nearly got killed herself. It was a close shave. She wanted to take her Nazi alive and grappled with him, but he proved too strong for her. But for the timely help of her fellow scouts who stabbed him to death, she would not have escaped with her life. The Nazi was dead and Sofia tearfully cursed her bad luck. She calmed down only when she had captured another later.19

Sofia has been awarded eighteen government decorations for her distinguished service. She was twice wounded. The best account of her war-time record appears in her book A Scout’s Diary.
