14214. Our Zhenya
We had a young girl in our battalion – a medical orderly named
Zhenya. Her surname I cannot recall, after so many years. All the
men called her ‘Our Zhenya’ and that is how she has gone down in
my memory.
I can see her as if she were here today, in her big kirza boots, her
riding breeches of vast dimensions, her huge overcoat which was
far too big for her, and her forage cap, which kept slipping off her
shaggy head of hair. Zhenya back then was no more than sixteen
years old. How and whence she had ended up in the battalion,
nobody knew for certain. There were a lot of Young Communist
League girls at the front, who had arrived as volunteers to defend
their home city of Leningrad. She had turned up and that was all
there was to it.
In order to appear older than her sixteen years, Zhenya strove
to carry on like a seasoned soldier: she smoked shag tobacco,
having learned how to ‘roll her own’, talked in a rough bass tone,
and was not particular about the expressions she used ...
While there was peace and quiet all around, nobody paid any
special attention to Zhenya – just an ordinary girl, a bit cheeky, but
so be it. However, they knew that in battle, whatever the situation,
our Zhenya would be there where she was expected, wherever she