• gift_of_gab@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    I want to include how she died, as it showed just how courageous she really was:

    Two months later, on 17 January 1944, Oktyabrskaya fought in another night attack. The battle would prove to be her last. The attack took place at the village of Krynki near Vitebsk. During the battle, she drove her T-34 about the German defenses, and destroyed resistance in trenches and machine-gun nests. The tank crew also destroyed a German self-propelled gun. Subsequently, the tank was hit by a German anti-tank shell, again in the tracks, and was immobilized. Oktyabrskaya immediately got out of the tank and began to repair the track, amid fierce small arms and artillery fire. She managed to repair the track, but she was hit in the head by shell fragments and lost consciousness. After the battle, she was transported to a Soviet military field hospital at Fastiv, near Kiev, and then to a military hospital in Smolensk, Russia. She remained in a coma for two months before finally dying on 15 March. She was buried with military honors at the Heroes Remembrance Gardens in Smolensk.

    As well as this gem:

    In 2014 US National Public Radio featured a cartoon of Oktyabrskaya to headline a story about “rejected princesses” that Disney and other storytellers had hitherto ignored.

      • gift_of_gab@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        That’s fantastic, and this book is amazing!

        Meet Osh-Tisch, whose name translates to “Finds Them and Kills Them” in Crow. Osh-Tisch was an assigned-male-at-birth woman and was one of the last of the Crow Nation baté (Two Spirit spiritual leaders [what’s a Two Spirit?])—oh, and you can be sure, she earned her name.

        Thank you so much for sharing this, it seems there are three books and I’m going to buy all of them!