When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a 24-year-old history student at Kyiv University. She walked into a recruiting office and asked to join the infantry. The recruiter tried to hand her a nurse's uniform. She showed him her marksmanship certificate from a civilian shooting club. She was assigned to the 25th Chapayev Rifle Division as a sniper.

309 Confirmed Kills

Over the next year, Pavlichenko fought in Odessa and then in the brutal siege of Sevastopol. She recorded 309 confirmed kills, including 36 enemy snipers. Her most famous duel lasted three days against a German sniper in Sevastopol — she found evidence in his log book that he had killed over 400 people. She killed him on the third day.

She was wounded four times. After a mortar blast left her with shrapnel wounds to her face, she was evacuated from Sevastopol by submarine in June 1942 — one of the last people to leave the doomed fortress.

America and Eleanor Roosevelt

The Soviet government, recognizing her propaganda value, sent Pavlichenko on a tour of the United States and Canada to advocate for a second front in Europe. She became the first Soviet citizen received at the White House, where she was hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt.

The American press was more interested in her appearance than her combat record. Reporters asked about her makeup — "Don't you use lipstick?" — and whether she could wear a shorter skirt. She was bewildered and then furious. At a press conference in Chicago, she finally snapped: "Gentlemen, I am 25 years old, and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don't you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?"

The quote made front pages across America. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about her. Eleanor Roosevelt took her on a tour of the country and the two became genuine friends.

After the war, Pavlichenko completed her degree and became a historian at the Soviet Navy headquarters. She struggled with what we would now call PTSD. She died in 1974 at the age of 58. Eleanor Roosevelt visited her in Moscow in 1957 — their friendship had endured the Cold War.