Decorated Red Army medic Valentina Shulgina has handed away on the age of 101
Valentina Shulgina, the final surviving lady who fought on the Battle of Stalingrad, handed away on Sunday on the age of 101.
She left for the frontlines of the Second World War on the age of 19, taking command as lieutenant of a medical platoon of 21 folks, having simply completed medical faculty within the metropolis of Tomsk as a paramedic and obstetrician. In August 1942, her platoon was despatched to ahead positions on the Battle of Stalingrad, thought-about the best battle of the battle, a bloody city conflict that floor the Nazi German offensive to a halt. There, she suffered a traumatic mind damage.
“The Germans threw themselves into battle 14-15 times a day. I carried 120 wounded out of combat in one day, and the orders were to evacuate their weapons, too” the veteran instructed Sputnik in February of this yr, the 80-year anniversary of the battle. “Telegraph poles burned, surrounded by unending screams and moans of people, and this continued for 200 days.”
After the liberation of Stalingrad, she was despatched to Kursk, scene of the most important and bloodiest tank battle in historical past. Her platoon, initially with 21 folks however now all the way down to just some, was reconstituted after Stalingrad however misplaced 19 ladies at Kursk, in response to Shulgina. She earned her medal ‘For Courage’ there.
She noticed war-torn Belarus, Poland, Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad), and at last Berlin. She wrote a message on the partitions of the Reichstag with the Red Army forces that took the Nazi capital.
From there, now a five-times-decorated officer, she was despatched on to Japan and Port Arthur, the place the battle within the East was nonetheless ongoing. There, she met her husband there and the couple was demobilized in 1953 and moved to Abkhazia a yr later. She completed college in Moscow, and went on to work as an accountant in Abkhazia within the years following.
She was deeply damage by how memorials to the troopers of the Red Army have been handled outdoors of Russia in recent times. “Shameless! When they welcomed us back then (in 1945), they hung on our tanks and embraced us. And now, when the question is raised – they remove the War memorials. Shameless! They have no more conscience” she instructed RIA final yr on Victory Day.
On the 80-year anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, she obtained a congratulatory telegram and flowers from President Vladimir Putin thanking her for her service and wishing her good well being.