Nina Gnilitskaya

Nina Gnilitskaya (Нина Гнилицкая; 14 August 1916 – 10 December 1941) was a soldier and reconnaissance scout in the 465th Separate Motorized Rifle Reconnaissance Company of the 383rd Rifle Division in the 18th Army on the Southern Front during World War II. After fighting to death in a gunfight against German soldiers when they discovered her hiding place she became the only woman reconnaissance scout in the Red Army to be awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union after the Supreme Soviet posthumously awarded her the title on 31 March 1943.

Early life
Gnilitskaya was born in 1916 to a Russian peasant family in the rural village of Knyaginevka in the Russian Empire, located in what is now Ukraine. After graduating from a small secondary school in her hometown she began working in a mine at the age of 16 as a hauler an telephone operator. Before the German invasion of the Soviet Union she completed courses on anti-aircraft and chemical warfare.

World War II
Not long after Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941 she applied to join the Red Army but was denied because she was a woman. Not long afterward Gnilitskaya's hometown of Knyaginevka was fully taken over by Axis troops in November. On one occasion she provided shelter to a Red Army reconnaissance scout, providing him with civilian clothes before escorting him to the location his unit was stationed, stealing three horse-drawn carts from the Germans in the process; when German soldiers asked who he was she told them he was he husband. On 2 November she was accepted into the Red Army as a volunteer as part of the 465th Separate Motorized Rifle Reconnaissance Company due to her knowledge of the area under attack, having grown up in the strategically important village of Knyaginevka due to the town's coal and proximity to Krasny Luch. In addition to providing first aid to troops she also participated in direct combat with the use of small arms and grenades as well as working as a reconnaissance scout. In the defensive campaign of Donbass she participated in multiple reconnaissance missions which involved going behind enemy lines.

On a mission in November led her unit on a mission in which they collected information about the deployment of Axis troops to Knyaginevka, Andreevka, and Vesyoloye in addition to the locations of heavy concentrations of troops in Korennoe. The relay of such information led to Soviet troops being able to prevent the Germans from taking over the Stergres power plant. The next day she fought in a five-hour battle with the rest of the men in her unit against advancing enemy troops, during which she managed to bypass the axis line of control and open fire on enemy troops from the rear of their formation, bringing about panic among the enemy troops enough that Soviet scouts were able to organize a counterattack strong enough to force the enemy to retreat. During that battle Gnilitskaya personally killed 10 German soldiers and carried four wounded Red Army soldiers off the battlefield.

On a different mission in November the scouting unit entered German-controlled territory under the cover of darkness at night. After tossing two grenades into a house and killing 12 enemy soldiers the unit managed to get their hands on valuable military documents, weapons, and a prisoner as ordered by the military command. For he scouting work she was nominated for the Order of the Red Star by the commander of the 383rd Infantry division, but the Major-General of the 18th Army lowered the award nomination to the Medal for Courage.

Last mission and death
As part of a larger operation of the 18th Army to retake control of Knyaginevka and surrounding villages, the 465th Separate Motorized Rifle Reconnaissance Company was deployed on the night of 9 December to identify firing points and better estimate German troop locations, accompanied by a rifle battalion for cover. Under the command of the reconnaissance company's commissioner Spartak Zhelezny, the unit was instructed to conduct reconnaissance by fire as part of a larger effort of the 383rd Infantry division and portions of the 18th Army to expel German forces from the area. After the rifle unit accompanying the reconnaissance company failed to provide adequate cover for the scouts as they entered the Northern outskirts of the village, the group of 16 scouts found themselves surrounded by German troops and took shelter in a nearby house. German dogs detected their hiding place by approximately 01:40 and a firefight ensued. Gnilitskaya fought to the death until she ran out of ammunition but continued to refuse to surrender, even while mortally wounded. She tried to commit suicide to avoid torture upon capture but failed, and German soldiers bayoneted her nearly lifeless body before throwing her into a fire. Of the 16 scouts sent on the mission, only one managed to escape the house and provide an account of what happened after he was ordered by the commissioner to leave and report the situation. The mutilated remains of the fifteen scouts killed on the mission were discovered on 4 March 1942 by Soviet troops. Both Gnilitskaya and the commissioner of the reconnaissance company were posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 31 March 1943.

Memorials
A statue in her likeness was placed in Krasny Luch in the hero's alley to commemorate her actions in the war. Streets in Donetsk and Krasny Luch were renamed in her honor. The house where the fifteen scouts fought to the death contains a memorial plaque to the soldiers killed in the fight.