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The Night Witches and Other Warrior Women of World War II

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2019 31 min

Lyudmila Pavlichenko - World War II — WWII Red Army snipers. Pintrest

14. The Arctic Killer

In 1924, Roza Georgiyevna Shanina was born in a Russian village near the Arctic Circle, one of half a dozen children of a milkmaid mother and a logger father. She was determined to better herself, so at age fourteen, against her parents’ wishes, the teenaged Roza walked about 120 miles through the Taiga to the nearest rail station. From there, she caught a train to the nearest city, Arkhangelsk, so she could attend college.

Roza graduated from college in 1942, as the Soviet Union was reeling from the recent Nazi onslaught. She tried to enlist, but was repeatedly rejected. In 1943, the authorities finally relented, and allowed her to join a sniper school. That was bad news for the Nazis.

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.