There is such an expression: "War doesn't have a woman's face." It seems that it was born to be refuted without fail. This has been done many times by our Russian women. In all the harsh times, they stood shoulder to shoulder with men in a single battle formation to fight the enemy. Thousands of female medics, signalmen, intelligence officers, and pilots performed their feats in the war. This alone puts our mothers, wives, and sisters on a special pedestal - a pedestal of courage and holiness.

And yet, there were and still are such combat specialties, the specifics of which seem to reject a woman. How many examples do we know of women serving as tankers, submariners, and infantrymen during the Great Patriotic War? Few. Probably, it turned out this way because the psychological factor also worked. It is one thing when special units were formed, which included only women (medical battalions, sapper companies, anti-aircraft crews), and quite another - to fight a woman where there are only men nearby.

It is difficult in everyday life, and in moral terms.

However, the history of the country's military affairs also preserves the most exceptional cases when Russian women, when they went to war, fought in non - "female" troops in order to serve the state. Take at least the heroine of the Patriotic war of 1812, the cavalryman-the girl Nadezhda Durova, who later wrote a wonderful book. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin treated this amazing woman with respect and respect. Her image is inspired by the plot of the film "Hussar Ballad".

Cavalryman-maiden N1 received wide fame and fame. Nadezhda Durova until recently, in fact, was considered the only one of its kind. And she had followers. I know about one of them with absolute accuracy and I want to tell my readers.

Her fate has a lot in common with the legendary Nadezhda Durova, but with amendments to another era. The author of these lines has known Olga Yefimovna Leonova for many years.

Olga grew up as a bedova girl, led the boys, often went hiking with them, grazed horses. At the age of eight, an incident occurred to her that determined a lot in her life. Once, driving a herd across a small river, she stumbled and fell. Fifty horses galloped over her, and none of them, fortunately, hit the girl.

When the frightened groom came running and saw Olga standing up without a scratch, he just spread his hands and said in confusion::

- Well, Lyolka, you were born in a shirt, that is, in a dress...

Then Olga will remember these words many times. But this will happen in the war, in the cavalry corps of General Dovator. And then she was growing up, studying, and daydreaming about far-off fairy-tale Moscow, where, as it seemed to her, the most wonderful, most heroic deeds in the world were being done. And that was largely true. The thirties were not only years of brutal repression, but also years of enthusiasm and romance.

"I was incredibly lucky," Olga Yefimovna says about herself. - When I finished 8th grade, my aunt invited me to visit her in Moscow. I arrived, got a job at a military factory, and continued my training.

In production, she soon becomes a Komsomol leader. Rumor about a blonde girl who jumps with a parachute, controls an airplane, famously rides a horse and shoots accurately, has reached the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Soon Olga Leonova was invited to work there. It seemed that an interesting, rich life was waiting for her. But the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War changed not only the plans and fate of Olga, but also the fate of the whole country. Olga immediately asked to go to the front, writing a statement. She was refused. Firm in her decisions, she did not back down and every time combat commanders arrived at the Komsomol Central Committee from the front line, she turned to them with a request to take her into combat units. In the fall of 1941, a representative from Dovator's cavalry corps arrived. He recruited Komsomol workers, propagandists, agitators, and, of course, young men for the front. Olga asked:

"Take me...

A young officer, tall, broad-shouldered, in a Kuban tank top, with a saber at his side, in boots with spurs, well, like a cavalry knight, looked at the small girl, smiled condescendingly:

"What can you do, dear bird?"

- Shoot with a rifle and a revolver, fly on the U-2, jump with a parachute, clear mines, chop a vine with a saber...

Olga kept counting on her fingers. The smile began to fade from the brave cavalryman's face, and he was already looking at the Komsomol instructor with curiosity and respect.

"We have a combat team," Olga's workmates supported her.

- Yes, I see, - the veteran smiled at parting, firmly shook Leonova's hand, - I will try to help you.

So Olga got into the political department of the 17th cavalry division of the famous corps of General Dovator. She first worked as a secretary of the political department. She often traveled to the front line, where she met with Komsomol members, talked with them. The command could not help noticing what a great authority Leonova has among the fighters. Soon she was appointed Komsomol member of the Hissar cavalry regiment. It wasn't just trust, it was recognition. After all, it turned out that under her command were five hundred Komsomol guys.

Along with all the guards, Lieutenant Olga Leonova went to cavalry attacks, participated in combat raids on enemy rear lines, in multi-day marches. On her favorite horse, the Eagle, she seemed to be everywhere. And what a great role model when the girl is ahead! He forced the fighters to pull up, not relax, and encourage each other... Once, when the cavalry regiments were replenished with personnel after the battles near Moscow, a frozen fighter stood hunched over at one of the dugouts. It was cold, the first heavy march had passed, and there was still work to be done on equipping the positions. Apparently, the soldier lost his nerve. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he whispered:: "I can't, I can't do this anymore... I can't stand it."..

Sergeant Khabibulin, who was passing by, spoke to the soldier:

- Listen, dear, shame on you, this is just the beginning, it will be harder ahead.

The fighter didn't seem to hear him. And then Khabibulin, taking the novice by the shoulders and turning him in the direction where Olga was standing, talking with the cavalrymen, said::

"But she can?" This girl can? After all, our Olga does not get out of fights...

The soldier's eyes and posture changed instantly. Then Leonova herself came up.

After many years, Olga Yefimovna will receive a letter with the following lines:"...You probably don't even remember me, but when you came up there, in the frozen woods near Moscow, it was like an electric shock... I remember thinking with shame then: "A beautiful cavalryman girl, so small, lives in the war, fights, and I was crying..." I report to you, comrade Guard senior lieutenant, that later I never gave up, was wounded twice, received two orders..."

By the way, her small apartment, when she lived in Novosibirsk on a street with the military name Tankovaya, was always literally littered with letters. Many of them began with the words:

"Hello, dear Lyolka! That's what we used to call you lovingly at the front, even though in front of everyone we called you by the proper name - comrade of the Guard, senior lieutenant... "And, of course, in almost every message, the very words that say that the war never ended for them:" Do you remember?.."

In one of the letters, the regiment's favorite Alexey Sekretarev once again awakened his memory: "Do you remember, Olga Yefimovna, the day when Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin came to our division?..."

Why shouldn't she remember that? Kalinin then stopped in front of her, looked at her for a long time, as if thinking about something, then asked:

"Aren't you afraid here?" Olga was confused, embarrassed, but then the formation began to hum:

"She's doing great!"

- Combat Komsomol, what to look for...

"A true cavalryman... Kalinin stood for a moment near the formation and said quietly, as if confirming his thoughts even more, :

"We will win... We will definitely win.

It was December of the forty-first, and there were bloody battles near Moscow...

Emails from front-line friends. They're like living voices. Olga Efimovna takes a piece of paper out of the envelope, begins to read, and again she is on the Dnieper, then in Poland,then on the Desna... She often recalls her front-line youth, oddly enough for others, by the names of numerous rivers and rivulets. Maybe because there, at least for a short time, I could rest not only my soul, but also my body. I often asked her: "It must be difficult for a girl in the war in everyday terms? After all, there are thousands of men around..."

"It wasn't easy," she agreed, " because you had to do your own laundry and wash yourself. It was especially difficult in winter, and rivers and reservoirs helped out in summer. We used to stop at a halt, and my horse breeder Kadyr Klychmuratov, an elderly Ossetian who was just like my father, would come up and say:" Go there, Olga, there's no one there, and I'll watch... " But in general, our people were wonderful, they understood everything, they behaved with dignity.

...Behave with dignity. This was the principle she followed in everything. In battle, at a halt, on the march. One dark, rainy night, the squadrons left their horses in the coastal forest and waded through the Desna. It was deep autumn, and the Germans were constantly lighting up the river surface with rockets, firing cannons, mortars, and machine guns. Olga entered the river, holding a submachine gun in one hand and a bag of documents in the other. Water fountains rose here and there as mines exploded. Suddenly, she felt the bottom give out from under her feet, the current knocking her down. You can't swim, your hands are full. She began to go under the water, but then the soldiers picked her up and carried her to the shore. There was no time to dry, and the battle raged again. The fascists hit the cavalrymen from the flanks and cut them off. For three days we fought our way back to our own people. We made it through. But Olga was seriously ill with pneumonia, and she was sent to the rear for treatment. After the hospital, they gave her a short vacation, and she went to her beloved Moscow. Friends met with great joy, they had heard about her military affairs. Just before leaving for the front, Leonov was unexpectedly invited to the People's Commissariat of Defense and there was solemnly handed a saber with a silver hilt...

Senior Lieutenant Olga Leonova of the Guard returned to her soldiers, and it so happened that on the same day they had to join the battle. It happened on the outskirts of the town of Sedlec. The enemy threw tanks against the cavalrymen. The tactics of the battle in this case were well-developed for the horsemen. They dismounted, moved their horses to the rear, took up defensive positions, and fought like infantry. After losing two tanks, the Germans fell back. However, about forty minutes later they launched a counterattack. Through the roar of battle, Olga heard the wounded squad leader, Sergeant Khabibulin, cry out. Olga rushed to him, took up an anti-tank rifle and began to conduct targeted fire on the tanks. The counterattack was again repulsed, although it was hard for the Guards. They missed many of them after the battle. The regiment moved further west, and Olga soon had the Order of the Red Star on her tunic...

A lot of water will flow in the Russian and non-Russian rivers and rivulets where the fighters watered their horses, before the horses ' hooves clatter on the Berlin pavement in victory. There will be a meeting on the Elbe, crossing the Vistula, storming Warsaw, the battle for Berlin. It was almost captured by bandits Olga in Polesie, when she rode away literally naked after swimming in the river from the suddenly descended fascists. They will kill their beloved Orlik right below her, seriously injure their older friend, named father Kadyr Klychmuratov... Olga will experience love at the front, which she will never tell anyone about. And only many years after the war will he take out of the box five triangles - five letters from Nikolai, written by him at the front, and cry inconsolably...

"They say there's no time for love in war. And that's right. And it's wrong, - Olga Yefimovna recalled, - But if the feeling flared up? You can hide it, drown it out, but the age is young, the heart longs for feelings...

They didn't make any vows to each other. They just realized what they loved. But Olga immediately told Nikolai that no one should know about their relationship until the end of the war. Hundreds of male eyes studied her daily: who with jealousy, who with love, who with respect, and who, what is there to hide, with a completely understandable desire. She could not give rise to even the slightest gossip. For then suddenly there is no "loyal comrade Lelka", no Komsomol of the regiment, no guard of senior Lieutenant Leonova, but there is an ordinary PPZH- "marching field wife". Apparently, her feelings were only discovered when Nikolai was killed in battle, and she wept over him...

He was already buried, and Olga's parents in Primorye received a letter in which the girl wrote:: "I met an amazing person... Right now, we don't have the right to show our feelings. But the war will end soon..."

The war is over. Without it...

Throughout the post-war years, Olga Leonova lived in Novosibirsk. She worked for more than 35 years at an electric vacuum plant. Her family life hadn't worked out, and she'd been alone lately. For 15 years, she lived in a communal apartment, then was allocated a tiny one-room apartment on the fifth floor in a building without an elevator. With her chronic bronchitis (a consequence of "bathing" in the Gum) and a bad heart, Olga went home as if on the attack, climbing steep stairs. Life was stingy with joy. Only meetings with young people, letters from friends and photos of horses - favorite animals hung on the walls-inspired me. In one of the pictures, Olga herself stands next to the faithful Eagle in a long-skirted greatcoat in 1942.

Olga Efimovna often met with television workers who understood the uniqueness of her fate. As a result, several TV stories turned out to be a film directed by Ivan Nechay, a former prisoner of the Spandau concentration camp.

Olga was getting older, she was still lonely, she lacked participation and warmth. One day, her neighbors found her unconscious on the doorstep of her apartment. They began to worry about putting him in the hospital. They took her there, but practically did not treat her, there was no money for medicines. The moral deafness of the end of our century has fully affected this man. At one time, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, understanding the originality of the cavalryman-maiden Nadezhda Durova, supported her with warm letters. Do not forget the heroine of 1812 and power. But the Novosibirsk authorities had neither the desire nor the time to ease the suffering of the country's only female combat cavalryman during the Great Patriotic War...

When I came to Tankovaya Street in Novosibirsk for the last time, no one on the fifth floor answered my insistent calls. I thought of the worst. Thank God, the neighbors explained that their daughter was found and took Olga Efimovna in a serious condition to her home. I had difficulty finding my daughter's phone number and reached her. A familiar, but somewhat slow, husky voice answered me. Remembering who she was talking to, she burst into tears:

-"I forget everything... And I can't write anymore. As without letters... They're probably going there, at their old address... How will they know I'm here?

And the letters really continue to go, the new owners of the apartment on Tank Street during the holidays at first took out half the mailbox of messages for Olga Leonova, which began with the words: "Hello, Lelka, our combat friend, Komsomol..."

But she can't answer them now. And friends do not know where to write, so just in case we inform you: a retired senior lieutenant of the Guards, a Komsomol member of the cavalry Hissar regiment, the only female cavalryman of the Great Patriotic War, a knight of the Order of the Red Star, the Great Patriotic War of two degrees, lives in the village of Smolenskoye, Altai Territory. Lives in oblivion...

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