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LETTER HOME

p November 1942

p I’m getting on all right. Life in the army is grand. You feel you are a real human being and you change an awful lot.

p After the war I’ll carry on my peacetime job, but for the moment I’m a real soldier girl. You wouldn’t recognise me now. Soon I’ll send you a photo of me!

p Well, that’s all for now.

p I wish I could get just a couple of lines from you. Please write, dear Tanya, you know yourself what it’s like to get no news for nearly six months.

p Mummy, don’t you go worrying about all of us. You should be proud that the son and daughter you brought up are serving in the Red Army. You certainly know how much our country needs us!

p Keep calm, darling Mummy, when the time comes your children will never let you down, just as you taught us, just as the Y.C.L. taught us.

p And if we have to die, then we shall die like the hundreds and thousands of our glorious men at the front.

p After all, how many young girls and boys give their lives to save their country, how many wonderful, decent people fearlessly fight and bravely fall in battle, but never surrender!

p Isn’t that an inspiration to us all!

p And our duty, duty to all our people, is to learn to be good soldiers and become fully-fledged fighters for the Red Army.

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p Don’t be sad, Mummy! Not one of the beasts will remain on our soil!!! All for now.

p Please write, Tanyusha. Look after mum and little Vera. Lots of love to you all,

Yours loving,
Shura

NOTE

p If I die, please let my father know that I fulfilled his order as befits a Communist.

p 9.8.1943

Alexandra

When she entered her first year in the Tomsk Polytechnical College, Alexandra Postolskaya was full of happy dreams of the future But war came and sharply revised all her plans.

The last words of A.
Postolskaya’s letter

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Following in the footsteps of her father, Sergei Postolsky, and her brother Vladimir, the teenager volunteered for the army in the spring of 1942.

Alexandra Postolskaya

p News about her acceptance into the army came as a great thrill: "They trust me, I’m going to the front,” she wrote at the time. "I love my country, love life. . . . And I’ll help the army and the front. How marvellous!!!"

p It was not long before Shura was in the thick of the fighting with the 758th Rifle Regiment.

p In July 1943, things began . to hot up at the front as the nazis brought up fresh reinforcements. Her battalion had to fight desperately and without any let-up in order to shield some of the neighbouring units. In the vicinity of the village of Rybka, near Smolensk, the battalion made a counter-attack, several times engaging large enemy forces. On the night of August 9, 1943, the battalion soldiers found themselves ringed off. It was then that Shura wrote her last note in which she affirms she has done her duty as befits a Communist.

p After receiving instructions to pierce the enemy ring, Shura and a group of scouts searched for weak links in the enemy encirclement, and when a suitable place was found, she was the first to rush at the Germans with the battle cry: "Kill the beasts!" Behind her came the scouts and a platoon of submachine-gunners. The Germans wavered, then gave way. The soldiers tore through the breach and quickly rejoined their unit.

p On August 16, 1943, the German Command started a new offensive. New waves of enemy soldiers threw themselves against the battalion’s position. Again it was faced with the danger of being cut off. Alexandra Postolskaya, seeing that the enemy had almost broken through on the left flank, rushed across to lend a hand. Her submachine-gun fire flailed the frantic Germans. For a brief second she laid down her gun, picked up hand grenades, and hurled them into their midst. "Forward, comrades!" shouted the young girl as she led her companions into a fresh counter-attack.

The Rybka fighting lasted several hours and ended in victory. But the soldiers’ rejoicing was marred by Alexandra’s death.