Tatyana Kostyrina

Tatyana Kostyrina (Татьяна Костырина, 1924 – 22 November 1943) was a Junior Sergeant in the 691st Rifle Regiment of the 383rd Infantry Division during World War II. She was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 16 May 1944.

Civilian life
Kostyrina was born in 1924 to a Russian peasant family in Kropotkin, Krasnodar. Not much else is known about her life before she joined the Red Army other than that she graduated from eight classes of secondary school before she joined the military.

Military career
Kostyrina joined the Red Army in August 1942 and graduated from sniper courses. She fought as a sniper in the 691st Rifle Regiment of the 383rd Infantry Division, Separate Maritime Army in battles for Kuban, Kerch, and Crimea. She died in the battle for Adzhimushka, in which she killed 15 enemies after taking over the duties of the battalion commander, leading her battalion into the flight and remaining on the battlefield even after she was wounded in hand-to-hand combat. In a fight in the trenches a German soldier rushed at her but Kostyrina shot him first only to be killed by a stray enemy bullet. In total throughout her military career she killed 120 enemy combats, for which she was recommended for the title Hero of the Soviet Union the day she died in battle by Major-General Gorbachev, which was posthumously awarded in 1944 with an Order of Lenin.

She was buried in a mass grave in Adzhimushka but later reburied in a military cemetery in Kerch. A statue honoring her remains in Crimea as well as several streets named in her honor.