I Found a Picture of You - Part 2
'The powers that be,
That force us to live like we do,
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they've done to you.
But I'll die as I stand here today,
Knowing that deep in my heart,
They'll fall to ruin one day
For making us part.'
From 'Back on the Chain Gang' by The Pretenders 1984.
In accordance with my ethic of respecting the model, I became curious about the Russian female soldier whose face I had manipulated in my 'Berlin' picture. Her name is Roza Shanina. A former student and kindergarten teacher, following the death of her brother in the Siege of Leningrad in 1941, she volunteered to serve in the Red Army, training as a front line sniper and rising to the rank of Sergeant.
In September 1944, Roza's Division became the first Soviet unit to enter East Prussia. Decorated and wounded, Shanina's exploits were reported in the Soviet newspapers and the Western press, particularly in Canada, where she was called "The Unseen Terror of East Prussia". A modest person, she once wrote that she had been overrated. She is described as a person of unusual will with a genuine, bright nature, a straightforward character who values courage and the absence of egotism in people.
On 12 December 1944, an enemy sniper shot Roza in the right shoulder. She recovered, and on 15 January reached the East Prussian town of Eydtkuhnen (Chernyshevskoye), where she wore white snow camouflage. Due to the Red Army policy of preserving snipers from the heaviest engagements, she was ordered back from the front line. However, she felt compelled to continue killing her enemy, insisting, "I will return after the battle."
On 27 January 1945, Roza was severely wounded whilst shielding an injured artillery officer. Two soldiers found her disembowelled, obviously in extreme pain, with her chest torn open by a shell fragment. Despite the best attempts to save her life, Roza died the following day. She was twenty years old. Nurse Yekaterina Radkina remembered Roza telling her that she regretted having done so little. She had scored fifty-nine confirmed kills.
Roza's mother ultimately lost four of her children killed in action.
2,484 Soviet female snipers were deployed during the Great Patriotic War and their kills are estimated to be at least 11,280. More than twenty-six million Russian people died as a direct consequence of World War 2 (some sources say far more.) Over fifteen per cent of the population died for a country whose government treated them as expendable, repelling the invasion and pushing the Eastern Front back to Berlin. And for that they have my undying respect. Please therefore permit my indulgence in recognition of them all with these pictures.
Roza Shanina, 3 April 1924 - 28 January 1945
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