18. Roza Shanina Shot Dead Dozens of Nazis
Roza Georgiyevna Shanina was born in a Russian village near the Arctic Circle in 1924, one of six children born to a milkmaid mother and a logger father. Determined to better herself, at age 14, against her parents’ wishes, she walked about 120 miles through the Taiga to the nearest rail station. There, she caught a train to the nearest city, Arkhangelsk, so she could attend college. She graduated in 1942, as the Soviet Union was reeling from the recent Nazi onslaught. She tried to enlist, but was repeatedly rejected, before the authorities finally relented in 1943, and allowed her to join a sniper school.
She was assigned to a sniper platoon in the spring of 1944, and early that April, she killed her first German. That first dead Nazi unnerved her, but before long, she was knocking off Germans with as much detachment as if they had been tin cans on a fence. During a five stretch, Roza shot dead 13 Germans while under near constant artillery and machinegun fire, for which she was decorated with the Order of Glory for bravery. By that summer, as her body count climbed, Roza Shanina had become a national heroine, with her photo featured on the front pages of Soviet newspapers. By the end of August, 1944, she had killed 42 Nazis. She was killed in East Prussia in January of 1945, while trying to shield a wounded comrade with her body. By then, she had been credited with 59 confirmed kills.
