It’s late 1943, during the Second World War: Yugoslavia is still occupied by Axis forces and their sympathizers, but with Italy now invaded, the end seems near. Local partisans find themselves infiltrated by collaborator spies; to find out who they are, they send Vera (Bojanic) into the house of the Bolner family, whose patriarch (Zappalorto) works for a bank and is believed to have a list of the spies. Her cover is basically playing dumb, for who would suspect illiterate servant girl Katica of being a partisan? However, it’s not as easy to play dumb as you might think, especially when one of the family’s daughters takes it upon herself to teach Katica how to read and write. Vera also has to handle unexpected visitors who recognize her, suspicious German officers and surprise searches, while communicating what she finds back to her handler. The list, however, remains elusive, until one night when an Allied bombing raid sends the family and their dinner-party guests to the cellar, perhaps giving Vera the chance to find what she has been seeking.
Set almost entirely inside the family’s house, the film is very good at generating a tense, paranoid atmosphere, where any knock at the door could signal the end of your life, during a time where the secret police had almost unlimited powers. The problem is, that”s just about all it does, and up until the final 10 minutes or so, there is an evenness of tone and approach which ends up being quite soporific. As should probably be expected from a movie produced during the Cold War, when Yugoslavia was ruled with an iron hand by Marshal Tito, it’s not exactly subtle on the characterization front, with the heroic Communist partisans being the good guys, while ze Germans and their (admittedly, very nasty) local collaborators, the Ustaše, villainous to a T. If not exactly caricatures, there’s not much attempt made to make them human About the only character with depth is Bolner, whom you sense is operating out of a sense of expediency, to protect his family, rather than any deeply-held belief in National Socialist principles. It does also rely on Bond villain acts, in particular Vera being shown the list, when there is absolutely no need to do so.
Bojanic does a decent enough job of portraying the heroine, striving to maintain her persona and be as unobtrusive as possible, while taking any chance to ferret through her boss’s possessions in search of that list. Unfortunately, this is a over-simplistic story, definitely in need of further fleshing out with plot twists and turns, if it was to have a decent chance of resonating with a modern audience. While my interest just about survived, there were some dicey moments.
Dir: Fadil Hadžić Star: Vesna Bojanic, Josip Zappalorto, Nada Kasapic, Tatjana Beljakova
This was originally titled Rebelle, perhaps a slightly better title than something that sounds as if it comes from a Norwegian death-metal album. Perhaps the change was to avoid confusion? A quick Google Images search for the original name shows you that was also the title for Brave in some territories. Safe to say, this is nothing like that. It’s the worthy, rather than anything else, tale of a young girl, Komona (Mwanza), who is kidnapped from her African village by anti-government forces at the age of 12, and forced to join their army. Her apparent supernatural ability to “see” government forces brings her to the attention of their leader, Great Tiger (Mwinga), who appoints her as his “war witch.” But on discovering the fate of the previous three appointees – a clue, they didn’t retire with full pensions – she deserts, along with an albino colleague, Magicien (Kanyinda). Their happiness is short-lived, as their commanding officer (Bastien) recaptures Komona and turns her into his concubine, right up until a nasty trick involving a piece of fruit and a razor-blade.
A few things stand out. Firstly, the casual approach to everyday violence, which seems to numb all those who perpetrate it, including Komona. But it can still be chilling, most notably Komona’s understated description of her uncle: “Every time he would cut the meat with his machete, it would remind him of what happened to his family… I will not tell you what happened to his family. Because, if I do, you won’t listen anymore.” Yikes. There’s also the way in which the supernatural permeates things, and no-one seems too bothered. As well as the whole “war witch” thing, which is as bizarre as Ronald Reagan using an astrologer, Komona sees the ghosts of her dead parents, and one of the reasons for deserting is so she can give them the proper burial and send them to rest. Magicien makes and carries “grigri”, talismans designed to protect him, and when he seeks a white rooster to offer as a dowry, the price of information on where to find it is one such amulet. Magic, it appears, is everywhere. As, apparently are albinos: I think there are more shown in this film than in every other movie I’ve ever seen, combined.
It’s very restrained on just about every level. In some ways that works, since it avoid the obvious histrionics you expect from the subject matter. But I have to say, I found Mwanza’s performance – or, rather, her non-performance – extremely flat and distancing. It’s hard to care about all the death on display, when it seems the central character is unbothered by it. Nguyen doesn’t explain some significant aspects either, such as the “coltan” which Great Tiger has his forces mine, is short for “columbite–tantalite”, an important ore used in electronics. Demand for this in the West is among the causes of conflict in the region. Would have been nice to find this out from the film, rather than Wikipedia. My over-riding reaction to the film was one of relief that I don’t live there, mixed with an appreciation for the the things we take for granted, like running water and a lack of roaming militia groups. This is a glimpse into another world; it’s just not one I have much interest in visiting again.
Dir: Kim Nguyen Star: Rachel Mwanza, Serge Kanyinda, Alain Lino Mic Eli Bastien, Mizinga Mwinga
Watching Atwell walking the streets of forties New York as British agent Eva Delectorskaya does little to dissuade you from the feeling that this could be a prequel to Agent Carter, telling about some of her wartime exploits, before she goes to work for the Strategic Scientific Reserve. There’s actually a good deal more going on: the two-part TV miniseries starts 30 years after the end of the war, when Sally Gilmartin (Rampling) reveals to her daugher, Ruth (Dockery), the truth about her identity as the former Miss Delectorskaya, recruited in pre-war Paris by British intelligence, after her brother is killed by fascists. After things kick off, she is sent first to Belgium, and then to New York where she works on efforts to get America into the war, and continues a relationship with her boss, Lucas Romer (Sewell). However, sent on what appears to be a simple courier mission to New Mexico, she finds evidence pointing to another agenda, and which suggests a traitor within the department. It’s this which leads to her going off-grid: but it appears her fake identity has been compromised back in the present day, with her home under surveillance, by person or persons unknown.
The vast spread of this, taking place over four decades or so, requires the use of two actresses to play the lead, and that can often be an issue. However, here it’s possible to imagine Atwell aging into someone like Rampling – if you look at pictures of the latter from the seventies, they are not entirely dissimilar. [It certainly works much better than the idea of Sewell becoming Michael Gambon, which is the other half of the equation] At three hours, this may be a bit over-stretched, particularly in the second half, where there seems to be a lot of going from one place to another without much purpose. Contrast this to the tenseness delivered by the first part, in particular when Eva and Lucas go to a Dutch border town, where a Gestapo officer is supposed to be defecting, only for the operation to go horribly wrong after a botched exchange of pass-phrases. But whose fault was that? I’d like to have seem more of these thriller aspects, as Hall (who has worked both on Spooks and Strike Back) seems to have a good handle on these.
The ending was a little bit of a damp squib as well: it became apparent early on who the traitor is, if only because all the other credible candidates get bumped off. From that point, you are more or less waiting for the inevitable face-off between the parties concerned, although the acting abilities of those involved certainly help. After a few years, in the acting wilderness, Rampling seems to be undergoing a bit of a late career renaissance, between roles like this, and in Dexter and Broadchurch. Maybe she’ll follow the footsteps of Helen Mirren and become an action heroine for the older generation: on the basis of this, she would probably do rather well.
Dir: Edward Hall Star: Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Dockery
There’s a lot going on in this World War I spy thriller: probably a little too much, though it’s still generally interesting. The titular character – I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a heroine, for reasons that will become obvious – is a nameless German spy, whom we first see coming ashore at the British naval base of Scapa Flow. Her two male associates are captured, with Meyer (Booth) being “turned” by British intelligence officer, Colonel Foreman (More). Meyer reveals the fraulein’s mission is to find out on what boat Lord Kitchener will be leaving the base, so it can be attacked. Despite More’s desperate efforts, the plan succeeds and Kitchener is killed. That’s not the first time she has caused problems: in a flashback, we see her seducing French scientist Dr. Saforet (Capucine), in order to steal the secret of a dreadful new chemical weapon. Meyer, now a double-agent, is sent back into Germany with the aim of killing her, and appears to succeed. However, that’s just a ruse, so the not-so-good doctor can complete her biggest mission: organizing a raid on Allied headquarters to steal their defense plans, in advance of a massive German push.
It’s refreshingly grey in terms of morality. Neither side comes off as occupying the high ground, and there’s very much a sense of grubby necessity. For instance, when the agent is being presented with a medal for her role in killing Kitchener, the presenting German officer refuses to shake her hand, because he considered Kitchener a fellow officer as well as a friend, and his death was “cheating”. But they are perfectly happy to use her talents: when the idea of sending a woman in is questioned, her commander replies, “Why not a woman? She has imagination, precision, courage beyond any man on any battlefield. She has only two weaknesses: traces of pity and grains of morphine.” The latter adds an extra wrinkle in her final undercover role, as a nurse on a Red Cross train, heading to the front, and she has no reluctance in using her body to achieve her goals – whether with men or women. Kendall gives a solid performance, and I was surprised to discover this was inspired by a real person, Elsbeth Schragmüller, whose identity as “Fraulein Doktor” was not revealed until almost 30 years after the end of WW1. Details of her actions are still sketchy, offering the makers a blank canvas on which to paint: no evidence she was a bi-sexual drug-addict, for instance!
As noted, there’s too much going on here. The mission to kill Kitchener could have been an entire movie in itself, as could the theft of the chemical weapon, but instead, these are galloped through at an over-anxious pace. The finale then seems to forget about its leading lady entirely, heading off in an completely different direction, depicting the German attack, both with conventional weapons and poison gas, and the effects on the Allied troops. Shown below, it is truly a nightmarish sequence of epic proportions, enhanced by Ennio Morricone’s discordant score: I believe the Yugoslav army supplied military extras, and that ups the ante considerably. It makes for a grim, rather than rousing finale, bringing home to the fraulein, the responsibility of what she has done. I can see why it was a commercial flop and has largely been forgotten, yet despite its flaws, it deserves a better fate than obscurity.
Dir: Alberto Lattuada Star: Suzy Kendall, Kenneth More, James Booth, Capucine
Firstly, a quick note on the title here, which is a little odd. The subtitles call it August ’08, which would make more sense, since it’s based on the spat that month between Russia and Georgia over the territory of South Ossetia, which had seceded from Georgia with Russian backing. Fortunately, you don’t need to know much about the murky geopolitical climate, though this is firmly entrenched on the side of the Russian “peacekeepers,” so probably should be be relied upon for accuracy [I note it was banned in the Ukraine]. The heroine is Kseniya (Ivanova), a single mom who packs her son Artyom (Fadeev) off to be with dad, so she can go on a trip with her new boyfriend. Unfortunately, father is a soldier stationed near the border; when things kick off down there, communications with the outside world are all but cut. Kseniya embarks on a perilous mission through the war-torn landscape to retrieve Artyom, with the aid of recon commander Lyoha (Matveev). Artyom, meanwhile, retreats into the fantasy world he has constructed to deal with the trauma, in which he is the hero, CosmoBoy, fighting with the aid of a giant robot against the evil Darklord.
Fairly epic in scale, this does a particularly good job at depicting the hellish nature of battle, in particular the urban kind, where snipers and other threats potentially lurk in every window. It’s also effective when portraying Kseniya’s devotion to Artyom, and her willingness to take any risk to reach him, albeit driven in part by guilt over the poor initial choice to ship him off. While the CGI initially seems a bit ropey, it makes more sense when you realize it’s a child’s imagination, and the production values are generally high-quality. The film’s weakest section is probably the middle, where Kseniya takes a back seat, literally hanging on to Lyoha’s belt and following him on a mission to rescue refugees trapped by the conflict (like I said, “peacekeepers”…), I’d rather have seen her continue as the courageous and self-dependent woman she is, both in the early going, and during the rousing finale, as she makes her way through what’s described as the most dangerous three miles in the world.
Still, even when the movie forgets its action heroine tendencies, it’s a solid piece of war cinema, that easily sustains its 132 minute running-time. Currently available on Netflix, this is the kind of unexpected find that makes having the service worthwhile. For I’d almost certainly have missed it otherwise, and that would have been a shame, since the performances and overall quality are generally more than up to Western standards.
“If a young Soviet woman patriot is burning to master the machine gun, we should give her the opportunity to realize her dream. If a young Soviet woman wants to become a sniper, we should not discourage her desires.”
— Pravda, 1942
Despite numerous steps towards equality in the past century, there remains only one military theater which has seen large numbers of female soldiers take part, in many areas on an equal footing with their male counterparts. This took place in World War II, on the front between the Nazis and Soviet forces in Eastern Europe, where it’s estimated that more than three-quarters of a million women served on the Russian side. Around 200,000 were decorated for their efforts, with 89 receiving the highest honour, being awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union. It was not so much a philosophical choice by those in charge, as much as one necessitated by expediency.
When the Germans first attacked in 1941, women who attempted to volunteer were turned down, but the Russian forces suffered such a hellacious level of losses that any such restrictions were soon loosened. This echoed a similar situation which had occurred in the later stages of the First World War. After the Russian Revolution got under way in early 1917, fifteen women’s formations were created, such as the charmingly-named “1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death”. During the Kerensky Offensive, they went over the top into enemy territory when their war-weary male counterparts were reluctant to do so, capturing at least temporarily, a swathe of enemy territory, and were praised for their courage. However, they faced increasing hostility from the men, and the battalions were dissolved after less than a year.
25 years later, women were in particular used as snipers and pilots, but served across virtually the entire range of military fields, including as machine gunners, tank drivers, medics, communication personnel, and on anti-aircraft batteries. There is an issue in terms of verifiable historical data: most of the evidence for and reports on these soldiers, comes solely from the Soviet side. It’s not cynical to think the stories may quite possibly have been exaggerated or fabricated, to varying extents, in the interests of wartime propaganda. However, for the purposes of the rest of this article, we won’t bother trying to separate the legend from the facts: after all, the former are likely to be far more entertaining! So let’s take a look at some of the most-renowned women soldiers to take up arms against the Third Reich on the Russian front.
Snipers
The Russians found women to be particularly suited to the job of sniper: the traits required Major General Morozov, “the father of the sniper movement”, was quoted as saying that “a woman’s hand is more sensitive than is a man’s. Therefore when a woman is shooting, her index finger pulls the trigger more smoothly and purposefully”. By 1943, there were over two thousand female snipers in the military, with more than 12,000 confirmed kills between them. The photo on the right, taken in Germany in May 945, shows a dozen members of the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front, who racked up 775 kills between them, led by Guard Lieutenant VI Artamonov – second row down, second from the right, who had 89. But that tally pales beside the queen of all Soviet sharpshooters.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko
“I wear my uniform with honor. It has the Order of Lenin on it. It has been covered with blood in battle. It is plain to see that with American women what is important is whether they wear silk underwear under their uniforms. What the uniform stands for, they have yet to learn.”
— Pavlichenko
Pavlichenko was credited with 309 confirmed kills. Let’s put that into perspective. In all of Kill Bill, the Bride killed only 70 people, less than one-quarter of those who fell victim to Pavlichenko. Even Chris Kyle, the hero of American Sniper, barely reached half her tally, using far more advanced weaponry. And her count may be low. A skeptical Red Army unit insist she proved her prowess, pointing her at two Romanians working with the Germans. When she took them down, she was accepted, but didn’t include them in her official tally, “because they were test shots.” But when she entered actual battle conditions, she froze, until the young soldier next to her was killed. The incident shocked her into action, and she took out two German scouts that same day.
A hundred of her subsequent victims were Nazi officers, and another 36 were snipers working for the other side, taken out in lengthy battles that could last as long as three days and required her to stay in one spot without moving for up to 20 hours. Wounded four times, she was eventually withdrawn from the front, becoming instead a trainer of other snipers and also going on morale-boosting and political trips. These included a 1942 sojourn to America and the United Kingdom, where she became the first Soviet citizen to be officially welcomed at the White House. Unlike many of her colleagues, she made it through the war alive, and after hostilities ended, finished her education and took up a position as a research assistant at the Soviet Navy’s headquarters. She died in 1974, at the age of 58.
Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song inspired by her: “In the mountains and canyons, quiet as the deer/Down in the forest knowing no fear/Lift up your sight, down comes a Hun/Three hundred Nazis fell by your gun.” And in February this year, a film inspired by Pavlichenko’s life was released. The Russian-Ukrainian co-production was called Battle for Sevastopol in Russia, and Indestructible in the Ukraine, and was filmed just before relations between the two countries went south. According to reports, “As played by Yulia Peresild, the film’s heroine is unsmiling and unremittingly tough. “War’s no place for cowards,” she says. She vows to “kill 100 enemies”, hugging her rifle, and upbraids a fellow sniper for firing a shot to finish off a Nazi dying in agony. “They don’t deserve an easy death,” she says.” Here’s the trailer; no subs, but it’s one for which we’ll certainly keep an eye out.
Nina Alexeyevna Lobkovskaya
Nina’s willingness to join the army became a burning desire after her father, a machine-gunner was killed fighting the Germans. She wrote in her memoirs, “Hatred for the enemy that was causing so much human suffering choked me. That hatred cemented my resolution to join the army.” Initially serving as a nurse, in October of 1942, the 17-year-old girl was accepted into the women’s sniper school, near Moscow, along with almost three hundred others. After nine months of training, she was sent to the Kalinin front, and was soon achieving renown for her skills, a regimental newspaper writing, “Nina Lobkovskaya has a sharp eye and steady hand. Her rifle never misses.” In 1944, Lobkovskaya was wounded, but ran away from hospital to rejoin her unit and continue fighting. She was still only 20 by the time the war had ended, but was credited with 89 kills.
Roza Yegorovna Shanina
If there was a pin-up girl for Soviet snipers, Shanina (shown atop this article) would probably be it. Though her tally – a “mere” 59 confirmed victims – was not among the highest, her character and heroic character have resonated through the subsequent decades. Her strong personality was apparent well before the war: at age 14, she walked 120 miles to study at college, against the wishes of her parents. After her brother was killed in action in December 1941,. she asked to join the military, but she was not accepted until June 1943. She graduated with honours, and joined the 184th Rifle Division the following April, being appointed commander of a female sniper group. Barely two weeks later, she was awarded her first military decoration, the Order of Glory 3rd Class, having taken out 13 members of the enemy while under fire.
Even after her platoon was disbanded and snipers were withdrawn, Roza persisted: when her request to be returned to the front was refused, she went anyway [she was reprimanded, but avoided formal sanction] Her renown even reached the West, including her photo in the Washingtom Times-Herald and an AP report in September 1944 describing her as “the unseen terror of East Prussia”, citing a Red Army report describing how she sniped five Nazis in a single incident. Shanina was wounded in the shoulder by enemy fire in December, but persisted in efforts to obtain official sanction for service at the front. She finally obtained it on January 8, 1945, but wouldn’t survive the month. While shielding an injured officer, Roza was hit by a shell fragment, and died the following day. She was about two months shy of turning 21.
However, Shanina had – in disregard of regulations – kept a diary over the last few months of her life. This record of her war, along with a large number of letters she had written to friends and relations, were published in the mid-sixties and rekindled interest in this Soviet heroine.
Pilots
The air was another field of war where women could take part on an almost equal footing with men, physical strength not being a major requirement. Indeed, even before war broke out, Russia had the likes of Marina Raskova, who had become a navigator in the Air Force as early as 1933, and was the first woman to teach at the Zhukovskii Air Academy. After the war started, Raskova convinced Joseph Stalin to form three combat groups for women – not just women pilots, but also with female ground support personnel. From 1942 through the war’s end, they flew over thirty thousand combat missions, with over thirty members becoming Heroes of the Soviet Union. That included Raskova herself, who commanded one of the units, the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, until her death in a plane crash.
The “Night Witches”
“We bombed, we killed; it was all a part of war. We had an enemy in front of us, and we had to prove that we were stronger and more prepared.”
— Nadezhda Popova
Nachthexen was the perjorative nickname given by the Germans to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. This was the result of their tactic of switching off their engines in order to glide up unheard and deliver their payload on the target, with the noise of the wind whistling in their wings supposedly like the sound of witches’ broomsticks! The group had to rely on stealth tactics, as their planes were slow and outdated Polikarpov Po-2’s, intended for us as training craft and crop-dusting. However, their very slowness gave them a tactical advantage, as they could fly at speeds of less than 100 mph, where enemy planes like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 would stall out and fall from the sky.
The main tactic used was to fly in groups of three: two would operate as decoys, drawing the fire of anti-aircraft guns, while the third made its bombing pass. It would then swap places with one of the decoys, until all the planes had delivered their lethal cargo. They were so accurate, the Germans spread rumours that the women pilots had been injected with drugs to give them cat-like night vision. But their stamina was equally tested: the limited capacity of the planes often forced them to fly fifteen or more sorties per night, often under heavy fire. Their craft had no radios, no radar, and the pilots didn’t bother with parachutes, because the low altitude at which they operated would have rendered them useless.
One such pilot was Nadezhda Popova, who was born in the Ukraine, and whose life was changed one day when a plane landed near her home. She said, “I had thought only gods could fly. It was amazing to me that a simple man could get in a plane and fly away.” Nadezhda secretly signed up at a gliding school as a 15-year-old, and made her first solo flight and parachute jump the following year. Popova joined up, having lost both her brother and the family home to the war and flew a total of 852 missions, including on one occasion, eighteen in a night. She was shot down multiple times, but always survived, and had numerous other close brushes with death. After one mission, she counted 42 bullet holes in her plane and told her navigator, “Katya, my dear – we will live long.” She wasn’t wrong: Popova made it through the war and for almost seven decades after, dying only a couple of years ago, at the age of 92.
There was, at one point, plans for an Anglo-Canadian-Russian co-production inspired by the squadron, starring Malcolm McDowell, Anna Friel and Sophie Marceau, to be directed by Alexander Siddig, but funding for that fell through. Below, is a documentary (in six parts) on the Night Witches, along with a special bonus, the 1981 Russian feature, В небе ночные ведьмы (Night Witches In The Sky). The former has subs; the latter, unfortunately, doesn’t but still shows you the kind of planes they were flying. It was directed by Evgenia Zhigulenko, one of the members of the 588th, who was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union decoration for her exploits, so one imagines it’s likely to be fairly accurate.
Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova
The term “ace” in regard to fighter pilots is not a vague term: it means someone who has achieved five or more confirmed takedowns of enemy planes. Litvyak and Budanova are the only female fighter aces in the history of flight. Litvyak had 12 solo kills (plus 2 or 4 shared, depending on the source), while Budanova had 11 air victories, six as an individual and five shared; for a while, they were comrades as part of the 586th Fighter Regiment. Litvyak, known as the “White Lily of Stalingrad”, allegedly after the flower painted on the side of her fuselage. When war broke out, she was already a flight instructor, but didn’t have the necessary experience to enlist and become a fighter pilot. So she cooked the books, adding 100 hours on to her logged time, and was accepted.
She shot down her first two victims on September 13, 1942. The second was a German ace himself, with 11 kills, Erwin Maier. After being captured, Maier asked to meet the pilot responsible: when introduced to Litvyak, he thought it was some kind of joke, until she described their dog-fight in detail. She always had a rebellious streak, and on returning from successful missions, would engage in aerobatics over the base, knowing that it irritated her commanding officer. But she had a feminine side as well, and seems to have been in a relationship with fellow ace Alexei Solomatin. When he was killed, she wrote to her mother, “He was not my type, but his insistence and his love for me convinced me to love him”. Litvyak’s fate remains uncertain: she’s generally regarded to have been shot down and killed during a vicious air-battle in August 1943, but some speculate she survived the landing, was captured by the Germans, and moved to Switzerland after the war. Presuming the former, she was posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.
There’s some suggestion that Budanova may have had more kills than Litvyak. She was a smart young woman, who was top of her class in elementary school, but had to give up her education and help support her family after her father died. A job as a carpenter in an aircraft factory awakened her interest in flying, and she got her pilot’s license at age 18, becoming an instructor three years later. After war with Germany broke out in the summer of 1941, she joined the military and was assigned to the 586th. After proving themselves in air battle, the top pilots from the squadron, including both Budanova and Litvyak, were re-assigned to the 437th IAP, on the banks of the Volga. By the end of 1942, Budanova had been further promoted, to the elite 9th Guards Fighter Regiment, consisting entirely of top pilots. But she would not survive the war: her mechanic, Inna Pasportnikova, gave this account of her final battle:
“She spotted three Messerschmitt going on the attack against a group of bombers. Katia attacked and diverted the enemy. A desperate fight developed in the air. Katia managed to pick up an enemy aircraft in her sight and riddle him with bullets. This was the fifth aircraft she killed personally. Katia’s fighter rapidly soared upward and swooped down on a second enemy aircraft. She “stitched” it with bullets, and the second Messer, streaming black smoke, escaped to the west. But Katia’s red starred fighter had been hit; tongues of flame were already licking at the wings.”
Tank commanders
Aleksandra Samusenko
Originally a private in the infantry, Samusenko won the Order of the Red Star in the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, for a fight where she and her T-34 tank defeated three German tiger tanks in an encounter lasting several hours. Later in the war, when her commanding officer was killed, she took over and led her group out of an ambush. She also fought alongside US Army Sergeant Joseph Beyrle, who had escaped from a German POW camp in January 1945, and encountered Samusenko’s group while on the run. Beyrle convinced Samusenko he was legitimate by demonstrating he knew demolitions work, and he became the only American to serve in World War 2 with both the US and Soviet Armies; he helped liberate the POW camp in which he had been held! Unfortunately, there was no such happy ending for Samusenko, who was reportedly crushed to death by another Soviet tank in March 1945. She had reached the rank of Captain.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya
“My husband was killed in action defending the motherland. I want revenge on the fascist dogs for his death and for the death of Soviet people tortured by the fascist barbarians. For this purpose I’ve deposited all my personal savings – 50,000 rubles – to the National Bank in order to build a tank. I kindly ask to name the tank ‘Fighting Girlfriend’ and to send me to the front-line as a driver of said tank.”
So wrote Oktyabrskaya to Stalin in 1943, and the State Defense Committee took her up on the offer, although it was initially seen as no more than a morale-boosting publicity stunt. However, Oktyabrskaya completed the five months training, and when she entered the fray in October that year, her courage and skill proved she was more than propaganda. She developed a fearless reputation, not least for leaping out to repair her tank (which indeed had “Fighting Girlfriend” painted on the side of the barrel, per her request!) after it had been hit and disabled by enemy fire. However, that proved to be her undoing, as during one such mechanical foray, during a January 1944 battle near Vitebsk, she was hit in the head by a shell fragment. While Mariya lingered on for two months, she never regained consciousness, and was posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union in August, at the age of 38.
They also served…
Orphaned at age 11, Nina Onilova was inspired in her chosen military field by seeing the 1934 film Chapaev, which included the character of a woman machine-gunner called Anka. She was originally in the army as a medic, but while tending to the wounded during a battle, she helped a machine-gun post fix their jammed weapon and took over handling it, mowing down the enemy. Recognizing a good thing when they saw it, the crew took her on as their permanent gunner. Shortly after, she was hurt in a mortar blast and spent two months in hospital, until the doctors got tired of her demands to be returned to the front, and released her. Back in action, she single-handedly took out a German tank – without a machine-gun, using Molotov cocktails – earning the Order of the Red Banner and the rank of Sergeant. She was killed during a night battle in February 1942, in which she had already taken out a pair of enemy machine-gun positions and was covering the withdrawal of her fellow soldiers.
A group mention goes to the women of the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment, who were part of the defenses around the city of Stalingrad, which witnessed among the most vicious fighting of the war as the Nazis mounted an effort to take over the city in August 1942. Made up almost entirely of young, local volunteers, barely out of high-school, they were left as the last line of defense against the advancing 16th Panzer Division. With little support, and mostly by dropping their anti-aircraft batteries to the horizontal, the regiment held off the Germans for two days. The official war records indicate they “destroyed or damaged 83 tanks and 15 other vehicles carrying infantry, destroyed or dispersed over three battalions of assault infantry, and shot down 14 aircraft” before eventually being over-run and wiped out.
Ekaterina Mikhailova-Demina was the only woman to perform front-line reconnaissance for the Soviet marines during World War II. Like Onilova, she lost her parents early [it appears any Russian remake of Annie would have some spectacularly bad-ass orphans!], and volunteered at age 15, lying about her age to get accepted. Also like Onilova, she initially served as a medic, but found work behind the lines boring, and applied to join the marines. In February 1943, she became part of the 369th Independent Naval Infantry Battalion. August the next year saw her receive her first Order of the Red Banner for an assault where she single-handedly assaulted a fortified German position, taking 14 prisoners. She received a second Red Banner in December, for a Croation mission where three-quarters of her platoon were wiped out. Let’s end on a happy note. Unlike many of the women profiled here, Ekaterina survived the war – and, indeed, is still apparently living today, at age 89. Judging by the picture on the right, taken in 2013, she looks like she would still be happy to kick your ass!
Full disclosure at the outset: the author, who’s a member of my Action Heroine Fans group on Goodreads, gifted me with a no-strings-attached free copy of this novel.
Most people who’ve read much at all about World War II are aware that Germany, as well as the U.S., had an active atom bomb development program. The information that Japan did too was only recently declassified. First novelist Lee draws on this new historical data to produce a riveting espionage-action thriller –and the adjective “high-octane,” for once, isn’t just hype!
After a blood-drenched prologue set in Tokyo in 1937, our story focuses on Mina Sakamoto, a Nisei (American-born offspring of Japanese immigrants to the U.S.), born and raised in Honolulu, who’s recently turned 14 at the time of Pearl Harbor. Largely Americanized and seeing herself as American, she’s the daughter of a medical doctor, who’s unofficially trained her to function as a practical nurse. She’s also good at languages (the Hawaii of that day was quite an ethnic melting-pot) and a bit of a tomboy, good at roller skating and rabbit hunting with a slingshot. This background is going to come in handy, because the events of Dec. 7, 1941 will propel her into becoming, before she’s 15, a full-fledged field agent of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the World War II-era forerunner of. the CIA. (“Coral Hare” is her coded radio call sign.) Out of 64 chapters, the last 50 focus on the spring and summer of 1945, when the now-17-year-old goes up against Japan’s A-bomb program.
The story arc is constructed well; the time devoted to Mina’s grueling OSS training provides the necessary believability for her transformation into a kick-butt warrior, and the intervening years between this and her climactic 1945 missions are handled very adeptly. Lee shows us some personal growth on Mina’s part, and her relationship with her mentor is nicely depicted. But I’d say that 80-90% of the book consists of either fighting action, in which absolutely no punches are pulled by the combatants or the author, or of horrific descriptions of the effects of bomb blasts, both conventional and atomic, on human beings. The mayhem is very graphic, gory and grisly; despite the teen protagonist, this is definitely not YA fiction (though some teens would like it). A lot of serious research to insure historical accuracy obviously went into this, and that’s a significant strong point of the novel; but Lee avoids the trap of shoe-horning all of his information into the tale via info-dumps. (He does use footnotes, which the reader can skip over or read. I found some of these quite educational; I wasn’t much interested in the military hardware specs, but serious World War II buffs might be.)
His prose style is clear and readable, with language and diction mostly handled capably, despite a few typos. (There are a few cases of incorrect sentence construction or misused words –a person can’t lie “prone on her back,” since “prone” means face-down, and Lee tends to confuse “flanking” with approaching from behind– and rare details that don’t ring true, such as Mina’s not being done with eating one hamburger when she’s been in a diner for two hours; but these aren’t big deals.) Several fascinating historical appendices make it clear how much real-life history (a LOT!) was incorporated into the narrative, as well as providing information on real-life Allied female spies in the war, and an honor roll of real Japanese-Americans who served in the OSS. Lee’s respect for the courage and sacrifice of the “Greatest Generation,” to whom the book is dedicated, is clearly evident, and commendable.
Even with a doctored birth certificate and some string-pulling, Mina’s age poses some credibility problems (the biggest one, which Lee mostly finesses, being parental consent for her going off in the first place). Despite this, Mina’s an unforgettable character, with an industrial-strength level of indomitable spirit and courage, and fighting prowess that’s second to none. Allowing for their differences in setting and weaponry, she actually has some similarities to Billy Wong’s epic-fantasy swordswoman protagonist Rose Agen in Iron Bloom: they’re both teens who’ve had to grow up quickly (but who yet retain some traces of the teen), both super-lethal fighters with massive kill counts, and both possessed of endurance and recuperative powers that amaze observers. But while Lee is by far the better stylist of the two, Wong has created a character who’s the more morally introspective. Rose is bothered by killing, even though she does a lot of it, and does so only to protect innocents from harm. Protection of the innocent plays into Mina’s motives, but she’s more driven by revenge, and if killing bothers her, she doesn’t show it; at times, she rather appears to enjoy inflicting mayhem. That makes her harder to like unreservedly –though I still did like her, and root for her.
For me, the main weakness of the novel was a sense of missed opportunity for moral reflection. True, Mina’s trying to stop WMD’s from being built and deployed, which is certainly a commendable goal. She also doesn’t harm any civilians herself. But she knows about the Manhattan Project, which is a mirror image of the Japanese effort, and is present for the firebombing of Tokyo (shown left, and in which more civilians died than in both atom bomb attacks combined). We’re not told what, if anything, she thinks about any of this; the silence can suggest that she pretty much endorses an “us against them” ethic in which whatever “our side” does is okay, because OUR cause is just. For the time and place, of course, that attitude is realistic (for both sides), and Mina at least doesn’t have the racism that fueled a lot of that attitude.
But I missed the kind of grappling with the ethical issues that could have raised this into a five-point rating instead of four. (True, the graphic descriptions of human suffering from both atom and conventional bombs might inspire some of that grappling in some readers.) I’d also argue that by the summer of 1945, the Japanese could not have won the war even if they’d produced an operational A-bomb; and despite Lee’s historical research, I doubt that the OSS ever used torture to interrogate prisoners. (We know that the Axis powers did, and probably the Soviets, too –they used it to extract “confessions” in the Stalinist purge trials a few years earlier– but besides the ethical issues, I think U.S. intelligence realized how unreliable it is as a source of honest information.)
For all that, this book does what it does very well; it’s an unabashedly pulpy, edge-of-the-seat thrill ride through hell and back, with a take-no-prisoners heroine who’s in a new mortal jeopardy every time you turn around. (And remember, this isn’t a series book; there’s no guarantee that our gal’s going to make it home!) If you’re an “action junkie,” you’ll get your fix here, and then some. This would have real possibilities for a movie adaptation (which would definitely be R-rated for violence), and if one is ever made, it’s going on my to-watch list!
Note: There is a notable amount of bad language here, mostly of the d, h, and s-word type, but also some profanity, and eight uses of the f-word. (That’s arguably realistic for the speech of U.S. soldiers; less so for the speech of Japanese-language speakers, before the U.S. Occupation.) However, there’s no sex (except for a rape scene, which isn’t graphically described). It’s noted in passing that Mina wants to marry and have kids someday; but right now, she has other priorities besides boys. (Like staying alive!)
Chinese woman Wong Siu-Wai (Yeung) is training in the secret arts of ninjitsu, and passes her final test, much to the chagrin of her master’s other star pupil. Immediately afterward, she gets news of her father’s death at the hands of evil collaborator and former fiance Lee Tong (Chen), who works with the Japanese occupying forces. Oh, yeah: did I forget to mention this takes place in World War 2? Because the movie did as well. Anyway, she returns to China and sets about recruiting other, similarly-skilled women, who will be able to help her take revenge. Only, her nemesis has his own minions, who aren’t short on martial arts abilities either, and it’s only through the mysterious help of a masked ally that she is able to avoid an early defeat. Of course, she perseveres, and along the way there are shocking revelations, gratuitous mud-wrestling and a few bars of music apparently lifted directly from Star Wars.
The film can’t decide whether it was to be empowering or exploitative. For every scene of the heroines standing up for themselves and making their own way in the world, there’s one where they are stripped down to their underwear for the flimsiest of reasons. This starts early on, when it appears one of Wong’s ninja skills is to transform from her standard red jump-suit (as shown on the right) into something which looks like a stripper version of Tinkerbell, resulting in all the men around her collapsing with lust. Or there’s the sequence where she fights Lee’s only female bodyguard, who evens the playing-field by emptying an industrial-sized vat of baby oil on it. Or that one of her recruits is a prostitute, whose sole skill is apparently turning men into drooling imbeciles, at the frequent drop of her dress. The virulent anti-Japanese/pro-Chinese tone also gets old, and is kinda odd, since this was a Taiwanese production, so I wouldn’t expect them to be quite so pro-mainland.
That said, the more traditional action is certainly copious and generally fairly well-staged: Yeung is doubled for the more acrobatic elements, but it’s not made hideously obvious, and is helped by the fact that she is doing the rest of the fighting herself, and decently too. The opponents provide an interesting selection, notably the Japanese guy (Robert Tai) with a scorpion tattooed on his head. The revelations mentioned above, do come out of nowhere, and things end so suddenly I had to rewind to try and figure out what the hell just happened: this resulted from the combination of crappy print quality, making the final fight look as if it takes place underground, and the final fight actually taking place underground. Incoherent, surreal and nonsensical? Guilty as charged, m’lud. I probably wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dir: Lee Tso Nam Star: Elsa Yeung, Kam Yin Fie, Peng Kong, and Chen Kuan-Tai
a.k.a Never Kiss a Ninja, Chinese Super Ninjas 2
“I’m a Barbie girl, in a Nazi world…” That’s an equally appropriate summary here, because the heroine in this flick, set in occupied Norway during World War II, was the lead singer of Aqua, famous (or notorious, if you prefer) for a certain catchy pop ditty. She plays – and I know you’ll find this a stretch – a singer, who works in a nightclub, which caters for high-ranking Nazi officers, while she simultaneously works with the local resistance and beds SS Major Kruger (Otto). The Allies are seeking plans of a local aluminium smelting plant, a key cog in the Third Reich’s war machine, so an airstrike can be called down on to it. Local businessman Tor Lindblom (Saheim) partners with Kruger to profit from the industrial operation, and play both sides, until their pet auditor is replaced by one rather less amenable to their embezzlement.
It’s a very shiny, upbeat approach to a thoroughly unpleasant situation, with little or no death for any significant characters until the final reel. The makers seem to want to say something important about Norwegian collaborators of the time – a final caption tells us that even the worst of them received only a light sentence (it doesn’t mention that puppet president Quisling, who is depicted, was executed by firing squad shortly after the end of the war). What exactly that ‘something important’ might be, is largely unclear: that’s in line with the rest of the plot, which could fairly be described as a muddled mess, with the loyalties of the participants apparently fluid and subject to the whims of the storyline.
Which would be tolerable if any of the other aspects were credible, but neither the performances, nor that script, succeed in capturing the interest of the viewer – Nystrom’s lack of acting experience is particularly notable, and she only really comes to life when on the stage at the club, belting out showtunes. There is a nice sense of period atmosphere, which could be described as “neo-Nazi Norwegian noir“, though much like the story, there’s far too much reliance on worn-out stereotypes in lieu of anything else. While slight tension is finally generated at the end, when Eva breaks for the Swedish border, it’s more the last twitch of a dead corpse than anything of significance.
It’s late 1943, during the Second World War: Yugoslavia is still occupied by Axis forces and their sympathizers, but with Italy now invaded, the end seems near. Local partisans find themselves infiltrated by collaborator spies; to find out who they are, they send Vera (Bojanic) into the house of the Bolner family, whose patriarch (Zappalorto) works for a bank and is believed to have a list of the spies. Her cover is basically playing dumb, for who would suspect illiterate servant girl Katica of being a partisan? However, it’s not as easy to play dumb as you might think, especially when one of the family’s daughters takes it upon herself to teach Katica how to read and write. Vera also has to handle unexpected visitors who recognize her, suspicious German officers and surprise searches, while communicating what she finds back to her handler. The list, however, remains elusive, until one night when an Allied bombing raid sends the family and their dinner-party guests to the cellar, perhaps giving Vera the chance to find what she has been seeking.
She shot down her first two victims on September 13, 1942. The second was a German ace himself, with 11 kills, Erwin Maier. After being captured, Maier asked to meet the pilot responsible: when introduced to Litvyak, he thought it was some kind of joke, until she described their dog-fight in detail. She always had a rebellious streak, and on returning from successful missions, would engage in aerobatics over the base, knowing that it irritated her commanding officer. But she had a feminine side as well, and seems to have been in a relationship with fellow ace Alexei Solomatin. When he was killed, she wrote to her mother, “He was not my type, but his insistence and his love for me convinced me to love him”. Litvyak’s fate remains uncertain: she’s generally regarded to have been shot down and killed during a vicious air-battle in August 1943, but some speculate she survived the landing, was captured by the Germans, and moved to Switzerland after the war. Presuming the former, she was posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.
Full disclosure at the outset: the author, who’s a member of my Action Heroine Fans group on Goodreads, gifted me with a no-strings-attached free copy of this novel.
For me, the main weakness of the novel was a sense of missed opportunity for moral reflection. True, Mina’s trying to stop WMD’s from being built and deployed, which is certainly a commendable goal. She also doesn’t harm any civilians herself. But she knows about the Manhattan Project, which is a mirror image of the Japanese effort, and is present for the firebombing of Tokyo (shown left, and in which more civilians died than in both atom bomb attacks combined). We’re not told what, if anything, she thinks about any of this; the silence can suggest that she pretty much endorses an “us against them” ethic in which whatever “our side” does is okay, because OUR cause is just. For the time and place, of course, that attitude is realistic (for both sides), and Mina at least doesn’t have the racism that fueled a lot of that attitude.
“I’m a Barbie girl, in a Nazi world…” That’s an equally appropriate summary here, because the heroine in this flick, set in occupied Norway during World War II, was the lead singer of Aqua, famous (or notorious, if you prefer) for a certain catchy pop ditty. She plays – and I know you’ll find this a stretch – a singer, who works in a nightclub, which caters for high-ranking Nazi officers, while she simultaneously works with the local resistance and beds SS Major Kruger (Otto). The Allies are seeking plans of a local aluminium smelting plant, a key cog in the Third Reich’s war machine, so an airstrike can be called down on to it. Local businessman Tor Lindblom (Saheim) partners with Kruger to profit from the industrial operation, and play both sides, until their pet auditor is replaced by one rather less amenable to their embezzlement.