When her husband was killed by the Nazis in World War II, Mariya Oktyabrskaya bought herself a new T-34 tank to avenge her husband’s death. She was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union.
A video shared by UnknownHistory – Bitmap Axis on Youtube tells the story of Mariya Oktyabrskaya:
Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya was born on 16th of August 1905. She is one of the children of a poor Ukrainian family on the Crimean Peninsula. At the age of 20, she married a Soviet army officer named Ilya Oktyabrsky where she started to acquire an interest in military matters. She became a member of ‘Military Wives Council’ and trained as a nurse in the army. She also learned to shoot using different weapons. She said,
“Marry a serviceman, and you serve in the army: an officer’s wife is not only a proud woman, but also a responsible title”
When Operation Barbarossa began in 1941, Mariya was evacuated to Tomsk in Siberia while her husband went to fight on Eastern Front. He was killed in Kyiv, Ukraine, in August 1941 but the news of his death reached his wife only two years later.
The news devastated her and she swore revenge on her husband’s death. She sold everything she had and paid to build a T-34 tank. She requested to the State Defense Committee that the tank be named “Fighting Girlfriend” and that she was allowed to drive it. Her wish was granted and after intense training of five months, she became a tank driver.
She was assigned as a driver and tank mechanic. At first, the other commanders were very skeptical and saw her as a publicity stunt. But that was before she proved them wrong. During her first battle, Mariya’s tank caused havoc and when it was hit, Mariya jumped out to fix it. Eventually, she was promoted to the rank of sergeant.
The tank battalion commander set her as a good example for the others by saying:
“Fight as the tankers of the Fighting girlfriend fight.”
In 1944, during a night attack where her tank was hit and totally immobilized. Despite the order to stay in the tank, Mariya climbed out to fix the tank and succeeded before she was hit by shell fragments that penetrated into her brain. She fell into a coma and died two months later on 15 March 1944.
Sources: Youtube, Medium, History of Yesterday