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The ‘Lethal Lady Death’ and Other Dangerous Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan July 10, 2021 34 min

Lady Death in a trench in 1942. Wikimedia

Dmitry Ovcharenko’s skill with an ax came in handy during WWII. Free Pik

15. A Guy Who Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly

The son of a carpenter, Dmitry Ovcharenko was born in 1919 in the small village of Ovcharovo in Ukraine’s Lugansk District. He grew into a mild-mannered young man. In light of his lethal wartime exploits, it is ironic that acquaintances described him as somebody without a vicious bone in his body, and the type of person who would not hurt a fly. He quit school in fifth grade to earn his way in the village’s collective farm, where he cared for cattle, cut and stored hay, and tried to learn the craft of carpentry from his father.

Everyday life in his village required handiness with an ax – a skill that came in quite handy and served him quite well. When he turned twenty-one, Ovcharenko was drafted into the Red Army. He was not gung ho about the military, and all he wanted was to serve his term, return to his village, get married, and raise a family. Then the Nazis invaded in June, 1941, and Ovcharenko’s plans went up in smoke. It did not take him long to make the invaders pay.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.