‘Lady Death’ sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko made 309 kills after young comrade shot

UKRAINIAN Lyudmila Pavlichenko was credited with 309 sniper kills against German invaders, but US journalists criticised the war heroine for looking overweight in her uniform, and not wearing make-up.

Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, circa 1942, made her name by killing 187 Germans in her first 75 days at war.

AS Lyudmila Pavlichenko took aim in damp forests around the Black Sea, she had no idea of the Jewish massacre under way in the town of her birth.

Nor did Americans who met the Ukrainian “Lady Death” during her US tour with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1942.

Although Pavlichenko was credited with 309 confirmed sniper kills against German invaders around Odessa and Sevastopol, US journalists criticised the war heroine for looking overweight in her uniform, and not wearing make-up.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper, the Ukrainian “Lady Death”.

Yuliya Peresild as Lyudmila Pavlichenko in the 2015 movie Battle for Sevastopol.

Asked by Americans how she felt about killing, Pavlichenko explained: “Every German who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks. Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a German, I am saving lives.”

Celebrated by US songwriter Woody Guthrie and in a biographical Russian/Ukraine movie Battle for Sevastopol in 2015, Pavlichenko was born a century ago, on July 12, 1916 in Bila Tserkva, near Kiev in the Ukraine.

Her family moved to Kiev in 1930, where she worked as a metal grinder in a munitions factory. She also joined Osoaviakhim, a paramilitary youth sport group that taught weapons skills and etiquette. After a neighbour’s son boasted of his shooting ability, Pavlichenko “set out to show a girl could do as well. So I practised a lot.”

She enrolled to study history at Kiev University in 1937, also competing as a sprinter and pole vaulter, and training at a sniper’s school.

Pavlichenko was in Odessa when Hitler broke ties with Joseph Stalin to send German troops and Romanian allies into the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. As an early Red Army volunteer, she was intent on becoming a sniper. Although she praised Soviet gender equality to US audiences, Pavlichenko also admitted, “They wouldn’t take girls in the army, so I had to resort to all kinds of efforts to get in.”

Urged to instead enlist as a nurse, she proved her rifle skills at an impromptu Red Army unit “audition” at a hill it was defending at Belyayevka, near Odessa. Handed a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle with a P.E. 4-power scope, she was pointed to two Romanians who were collaborating with Germans.

“When I picked off the two, I was accepted,” she said, although the deaths were not counted in her kill tally “because they were test shots.” Signed with the 25th Chapayev Rifle Division, she was one of 2000 female snipers in the Red Army, of whom about 500 survived the war. But on her first day on the battlefield, Pavlichenko was briefly paralysed by fear, unable to raise her weapon until a young Russian soldier beside her was shot dead.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was an early Red Army volunteer, but was intent on becoming a sniper.

“He was such a nice, happy boy,” she recalled. “And he was killed just next to me. After that, nothing could stop me.”

As Pavlichenko made her name by killing 187 Germans in her first 75 days at war around Odessa and Moldova in July and August 1941, at her home town Bila Tserkva, Nazi 6th Army General Walther von Reichenau had ordered his men to aid Nazi death squads with killing Jews. By August 19, only 90 children and a few women survived, held in a school to be executed three days later.

As Germans advanced across the Odessa region, Pavlichenko’s division withdrew to Sevastopol in the Crimea by October, where she was given increasingly dangerous assignments, including countersniping duels.

One duel lasted three days: “That was one of the tensest experiences of my life,” she said, recalling the willpower and endurance required to maintain positions for 15 or 20 hours at a stretch.

Her Nazi pursuer eventually “made one move too many”, becoming one of 36 enemy snipers Pavlichenko claimed. Wounded four times, she was removed from battle when shrapnel from a German bomb hit her face. Desperate to stem her kill count, Germans had also blared radio messages asking “Lyudmila Pavlichenko, come over to us. We will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a German officer.” Then they vowed to tear her into 309 pieces, pleasing Pavlichenko as “they knew my score”.

Pavlichenko was transferred to training new snipers, but two months later was sent to the US to enlist support for a “second front” in Europe, to divide German forces and relieve pressure on Soviet troops.

Visiting President Franklin Roosevelt, Pavlichenko was the first Soviet citizen welcomed at the White House. After, Eleanor invited her on a tour to tell Americans of her experiences as a woman in combat.

Newspapers noted she “wore no lip rouge, or makeup of any kind,” and that “there isn’t much style to her olive-green uniform”, which one reporter criticised as too long, implying it made her look fat.

Also asked if Russian women could wear make-up at the front, Pavlichenko replied: “There is no rule against it, but who has time to think of her shiny nose when a battle is going on?”

Pavlichenko died in Moscow in 1974.

Originally published as ‘Lady Death’ sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko made 309 kills after young comrade shot