Lyudmila Kravets

Lyudmila Stepanovna Kravets (Людмила Степановна Кравец, Людмила Степанівна Кравець; 7 February 1923 – 23 May 2015) was a Senior Sergeant in the 63rd Guards Rifle Regiment in the 23rd Guards Rifle Division of the 3rd Shock Army on the 1st Belorussian Front during World War II. For her actions in the war, she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 31 May 1945, and was the only woman in her regiment to be awarded the title.

Civilian life
Kravets was born on 7 February 1923 in the village of Kushuhum, Ukraine to a working family. After graduating from secondary school she completed a two-year nursing course in Zaporozhye, graduating in 1941.

Military career
Kravets joined the Red Army in July 1941 after the start of the Second World War, initially working in military hospitals. In 1942 her regiment fought on the Northwestern Front, in which she sustained a serious injury but returned to fighting after recovering.

She was awarded the Medal "For Courage" after a night combat mission in 1943 in which she read out an order to surrender in German while in close proximity to enemy territory; 29 German soldiers surrendered the next morning.

During the Battle of Berlin on 17 April 1945 while on the outskirts of the city she took over the duties of the company commander and participated in direct combat in the battle, and later in the battle she evacuated injured soldiers from the area under enemy fire. For her actions in battle, she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union 31 May 1945 with an Order of Lenin and was demobilized from the military in 1946.

She lived the cities of Zaporizhia and Kiev after the war, where she was involved with patriotic campaigns. She passed away in Kiev on 23 May 2015 at the age of 92.

Soviet

 * Hero of the Soviet Union
 * Order of Lenin
 * Order of the Patriotic War in the 1st class
 * Three Orders of the Red Star
 * Medal "For Courage"
 * various jubilee and campaign medals

Ukrainian

 * Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky
 * Defender of the Motherland Medal
 * "70 Years of Clearing of Ukraine from Fascist Aggressors" Medal