![]() But even in 1941, with a dire shortage of able-bodied men in Britain and women being recruited to help man anti-aircraft batteries, there were still combat restrictions. From the outbreak of the war, women had been serving in a myriad of critical auxiliary capacities with duties that included ferrying planes from factories to airfields, driving ambulances, providing medical care, and assuming positions in factories, trades, and agriculture. Yet on the Western Front, where my novel is set, there were no female snipers or tank gunners or fighter pilots. Sergeant Mariya Oktyabrskaya was awarded the Soviet Union’s highest award for bravery during combat at the helm of her tank, and Stalin’s female air force pilots would fly over thirty-thousand combat sorties during the course of the war and produce the world’s only two female fighter aces, Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova. ![]() ![]() When I started my research into the women who served their countries for my upcoming novel, The Paris Apartment, I was introduced early to the biographies and memoirs of women in combat on the Eastern European front, where the war had come to the cities and towns with unspeakable savagery and a shocking number of casualties for both civilians and soldiers.įrom this horror emerged lethal snipers such as Klavdiya Kalugina, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and Roza Shanina. The historical roles of women in combat during the Second World War have always interested me.
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