Ian Welsh

Soviet War Propaganda showing gratitude for the allies. I own about a dozen WWII Soviet posters.

This post is for a Russian friend of mine. Руфина Сергеевна Гашева, Rufina Sergeyevna Gasheva was born 14 October 1921. Ruffik, as she asked me to call her–was proud to have a young American friend. I have a stack of letters to prove it.

I met Ruffik back in 2002. I was in Moscow with my soon to be wife and her best friend, Nastya (diminutive of Anastasia). Nastya dearly wanted to see her babushka, which was the last thing I wanted to do. Hear stories from some old lady? Good grief. But I went to keep my wife-to-be happy. One of the best decisions I ever made. After meeting Cpl. Ed Neidermeir of the 42 Division (aka: Rainbow Division) who saw his first action on 16 June 1918, meeting Ruffik and hearing her stories–I made it a point to visit her the next time I was in Moscow to hear more–was the single most serendipitous event of my life.

95 of the 12,777 recipients were women.

Ruffik was an educator her entire life and appreciated my historical knowledge. That’s probably why we hit it off. An hour or so after we had tea and had listened more eagerly after each anecdote she hobbled out of the room, down the hall and dug into a closet. She brought back a box and asked me to open it.

I gasped. I held in my hands a Герой Советского Союза (Geroi Sovietskovo Sayuza – Hero of the Soviet Union) the literal equivalent of a Congressional Medal of Honor. Speechless, I pulled a very heavy gold star on a red ribbon from the box. The Diameter of the star was 30 mm, and it weighed 33.04 grams.

So what did this affable and garralous octogenarian do to win such an incredible honor. First, she volunteered in September of 1941. She very quickly mastered the Po-2 Kukuruznik (the mule); an all weather, Soviet multi-role biplane. Its first flight was 24 June 1927, a year later the first hundred of an estimated 30,000 Po-2 entered service. In 1941 some wiseacre decided it would make an excellent light night bomber. It was fitted with a machine gun for the navigator and each wing was fitted with either two 50kg bomb carriers or one 100kg bomb carrier.  The renamed U2-vs Войсковая серия – (voyskovaya seriya) was born just in time for Ruffik’s graduation in February 1942.

Her first posting was in Engels, on the Volga River, with the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. Her baptism by fire was in May 1942 in the Battle of the Kavkaz (the Caucasus). She went on to fight in every major battle on the Eastern Front, all with the 588th, which as an all female regiment was soon called the Night Witches by the Nazis.

Wikipedia explains the 588th’s effects on the enemy quite well:

The material effects of these missions may be regarded as minor, but the psychological effect on German troops was noticeable. They typically attacked by surprise in the middle of the night, denying German troops sleep and keeping them on their guard, contributing to the already high stress of combat on the Eastern front. The usual tactic involved flying only a few meters above the ground, climbing for the final approach, throttling back the engine and making a gliding bombing run, leaving the targeted troops with only the eerie whistling of the wind in the wings’ bracing-wires as an indication of the impending attack. Luftwaffe fighters found it extremely hard to shoot down the Kukuruznik because of two main factors: the pilots flew at treetop level where they were hard to see or engage and the stall speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was similar to the U-2s maximum speed, making it difficult for the fighters to keep a Po-2 in weapons range for an adequate period of time.

An unexpected weapon.

By the end of the war she flew an insane 848 combat missions. It was in December of 1944 after her 823rd sortie that she was nominated for the Hero of the Soviet Union. She recieved it on 23 February, 1945. Ruffik lived a long, happy life, she was 91 years old on May 1, 2012, the day she died.

I bring Ruffik, this remarkable woman, to your attention because of Trump’s most recent utterly disrespectful and ignorant comments about the United States of America’s role in World Wars One and Two. Trump said about both wars: “nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance” in both world wars, and that “we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result in World War II.”

Two rebuttals. First, give this eloquent young woman a listen. She knows of what she speaks.

If I’ve given anyone the idea we were sitting in therapy circles farting  The White Album a few facts are in order: it is indisputable that the United States built and gave away (most to the Soviet Union) an enormous amount of trucks and other non-lethal industrial goods, including food. We also beat the snot out of the Japanese in the Pacific single-handedly. The Chinese and Japanese slugged it out with a level of brutality that was only superceded by our nuking of them. Simultaneously we rebuilt Britain’s Atlantic destroyer fleet–necessary to hunt submarines. We also fed Britain to a large degree and did what we could for France until it fell. Anyone stupid enough laugh at and poke fun at the French for their performance in World War Two doesn’t understand fuck all about the losses France endured in World War One. On a per capita basis they lost more to war and disease than the Soviets did during World War Two. Moreover, we liberated Algeria, Tunis, Libya, Sicily, Italy and France at the cost of 407,316 dead.

But . . .

First, let’s discuss Soviet fighting and German deaths for a moment. In 1942 during El Alamein, Montgomery faced 4 1/2 divisions of the Wehrmacht (76,000 soldiers). At the same time 190 German divisions (3,230,000 soldiers) were slugging it out with the Soviets across the entire Western face of the Soviet Union. From Leningrad to Stalingrad and right up to the Caucasus Mountains Übermensch transcended traditional Western morality and killed untermenschen for sport. (Too bad they shot back!)

Second, when we landed on Normandy on 6 June 1944, 93% of ALL German casualties were on the Eastern Front.

Finally, by the time we got to the Rhine 2/3’s of all German soldiers had been felled by the Red Army. We may have been the arsenal but as John Mearsheimer describes it better than any other commentator I’ve ever heard: The Soviets paid the blood price.

All 27,000,000 of them.

PS–Ask me to explain France and World War One sometime, then you will understand what happened in World War Two.