Demina, Ekaterina Illarionovna

The early years

Born in the city of Leningrad . Russian. My father was a military man, my mother worked as a doctor. Having lost both parents at an early age, she was brought up in an orphanage ^[1] , after which she lived with her older sister, a doctor ^[2] , at Ulitsa on July 3 , house No. 43 ^[3] .

By the summer of 1941, she graduated from 9 classes and school courses for nurses ^{[2] of the} Russian Red Cross Society . During the summer school holidays, I went to my older brother in Brest , where he served as a pilot on the border. After spending several days in Moscow, on June 21, Mikhailova boarded a train bound for Brest. The next morning, after Smolensk, he fell under the bombing. Having returned on foot to Smolensk, she went to the military enlistment office and asked to send her to the front as a nurse. The military commissar refused, then she went to the local military hospital, where she began to work as a volunteer, and when the front approached and the bomb was bombed, she came to the rifle unit, which occupied the defense near Smolensk ^[2] .

During the Great Patriotic War

Member of World War II since 1941. In the Red Army since June 1941. Since documents proving her identity and age (such as a Komsomol ticket ) remained in the besieged Leningrad ^[2] , she added another two years to her 15-year-old age ^{[1] [4]} .

In battles near the city of Gzhatsk (from 1968 - Gagarin ) of the Smolensk region on September 13, 1941 ^[5] she was seriously wounded in the leg. Was evacuated to the rear. She was treated in hospitals in the Urals and in Baku . After recovery, Ekaterina Illarionovna, who had been dreaming of the sea since childhood, asked the military commissar of the Baku military commissariat to send her to the fleet. At this point, she already had new documents with a corrected age, so there were no comments ^[4] . Since January 1942 she served on the military medical vessel Krasnaya Moskva, transporting the wounded from Stalingrad , along the Volga through the Caspian Sea , to Krasnovodsk . There, she was awarded the title of chief foreman, and for the exemplary service she was awarded the badge " Excellence in the Navy " ^{[4] [6]} .

Nevertheless, the ambulance service weighed on Mikhailova and after the Battle of Stalingrad ended she submitted a request for admission by the sanitary instructor to the 369th Separate Marine Corps Battalion, which was formed in February 1943 from volunteers in Baku ^{[1] [4]} . The battalion commander initially refused categorically, then Mikhailova wrote a letter of admission to the battalion in the name of the Soviet government. A positive response came from Moscow, so Ekaterina Illarionovna became a naval paratrooper ^[4] . The battalion was part of the Azov and then Danube military flotillas. With this battalion, Mikhailova fought along the waters and shores of the Caucasus and Crimea , the Azov and Black Seas , the Dniester and the Danube , with a liberation mission - through the lands of Romania , Bulgaria , Hungary , Yugoslavia , Czechoslovakia and Austria . Together with the soldiers of the battalion, she entered the battle, fought off the enemy’s counterattacks, carried the wounded out of the battlefield, and rendered them first aid. She was wounded three times ^[1] . In the course of the first operations, the best fighting qualities of the girl appeared: endurance, fearlessness, dedication ^[7] .

For her actions during the Temryuk landing operation she was represented by the commander of the 369thMajor Sudarikov’s camp for the Order of the Red Star , but was awarded the medal “For Courage”: Chief Sergeant Mikhailov, being shell-shocked, provided medical assistance to 17 wounded soldiers and evacuated them to the rear with weapons under strong enemy fire ^[8] . At the end of January 1944, the senior officer took part in a landing in the port of Kerch , courageously showed herself in street battles, bandaged 85 wounded soldiers and officers, carried 13 seriously wounded from the battlefield, for which she was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 2nd degree ^[9] .

After the liberation of Crimea, the battalion was transferred to Odessa and included in the Danube military flotilla. The first combat operation of the new association was the liberation of Akkerman ^[10] at the end of August 1944.

On the night of August 21-22, 1944, the medical officer Mikhailova participated in crossing the Dniester estuary . As part of the landing 369th The UMF of the Danube Flotilla was one of the first to reach the shore, clinging to the roots and branches of coastal shrubs, climbed onto the five-meter ridge of the steep bank of the river, helped other paratroopers to climb up and a heavy machine gun. During the battle, she rendered first aid to seventeen seriously wounded Red Navy men (including rescuing a heavily wounded chief of staff of a detachment from the water), suppressed the fire of an easel machine gun , threw bunkers with grenades, destroyed two dozen enemy soldiers, and captured 9 Nazis. In the morning, Ackerman was taken. For displaying exceptional courage, she was presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but was awarded the Order of the Red Banner ^{[11] [12] [13]} .

A month later, the chief medical officer of the consolidated company of the Coastal unit for escorting the Danube military flotilla, the chief foreman Mikhailova took part in the landing operation to capture the port of Prakhovo ^[14] , and on December 4, 1944 again served as an example of heroism in the capture of the Ilok fortress in Yugoslavia. As part of preventive measures to prevent the transfer of enemy forces to the area of ​​the Budapest strategic offensive operation, it was intended to strike at the Danube settlements of Opatovac and Ilok ^[15] . Both cities had to be taken from land, tactical landing was given a distracting role. The paratroopers had a particularly difficult time in the battles for Ilok; the size of the reconnaissance group was 52 people, including Chief Sergeant Mikhailov ^[16] . On the night of the landing, it turned out that due to the spill of the river, the lowlands and a small island near the fortress, the place of landing of the marines, were flooded ^[12] . After the start of the battle, the Nazis, realizing that the forces of the Red Navy were small, made an attempt to drop them into the Danube. The landing party fought along the neck in icy water ^[17] . The attack of the 52nd Rifle Division on Ilok on land was delayed ^[15] and after two hours of battle, of the fifty or so paratroopers who took up a circular defense on the island, only 13 remained in service, and they were all wounded ^[18] . Being herself seriously injured, Mikhailova continued to provide medical assistance to drowning wounded soldiers and, saving their lives, tied them with lap belts to coastal half-flooded trees and reeds ^{[17] [19]} . And when enemy boats approached the island, she herself took up the machine gun and repulsed the attack ^[20] . Personally, she killed 5 enemy soldiers from a machine gun ^[17] . The sailors completed their mission, the enemy pulled large forces to suppress the landing and, when the attack of the Soviet-Yugoslav troops began, could not keep Ilok ^[18] . By the end of the battle, only seven warriors were combat-ready ^[20] . The injured, weakened by blood loss and pneumonia, was almost hopelessly transferred to the hospital. On December 9, the leadership of the Coastal escort detachment of the chief elder was re-introduced to the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union, the commander of the Danube Flotilla Vice Admiral Gorshkov agreed on this award, especially since the award list not only listed the circumstances of the battle for Ilok, but also noted the heroism of the girl in the battles for Prahovo and during the forcing of the Dniester estuary ^[17] . Nevertheless, the award department found the description of the feats implausible and returned the presentation to the award to the headquarters of the flotilla. As a result, Rear Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Kholostyakov was able to award Mikhailov only the second Order of the Red Banner ^{[21]. The} order was signed on March 8, 1945 ^[17] .

By this time, the chief of staff, barely recovering from illness and injury, fled from the rear hospital in Izmail to the front. She caught up with her battalion near Komarno ^[18] . It continued to take part in operations, the last of which was the landing on the Imperial Bridge in Vienna ^[22] . Here she celebrated the Victory on May 9, 1945 ^[1] .

Thus, to the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union, Chief Marshal Mikhailov appeared twice, in August ^[3] and December ^[17] 1944, but was awarded it only by decree of the President of the USSR of May 5, 1990, with the award of the Order of Lenin and the Golden Star medal ( No. 11 608).

Demobilized in November 1945 ^[1] .

Post-war time

In 1950 she graduated from the Mechnikov Leningrad Sanitary and Hygienic Institute . She worked as a doctor in the city of Elektrostal, Moscow Region , where she married and became, by the name of her husband, Demina. From 1976 until reaching her well-deserved vacation in 1986 she worked in Moscow ^[1] .

She lived in Moscow. She was a member of the Russian Committee of War Veterans , the All-Russian Council of Veterans of War and Labor ^[1] .

In 1964, the director Viktor Lisakovich directed the documentary film Katyusha about Yekaterina Illarionovna (scripted by Sergei Smirnov). The film was awarded the prize "Golden Dove of Peace" at the International Film Festival in Leipzig . In 2008, the documentary " Katyusha Big and Small " (authors of the film Tkachev and Firsova) was shot, restoring the events of 1964 when they shot the first documentary about Demina ^[1] .

From January 27, 2017, it remained the only living woman participating in the Great Patriotic War, awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union .

Passed away June 24, 2019 in Moscow in the family circle. She was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow (study 26)

• Moscow , Kulakova street , 27

• Hero of the Soviet Union , decree of the President of the USSR of 05/05/1990:
  • Order of Lenin (05/05/1990),
  • Gold Star medal (No. 11608);
• two orders of the Red Banner (09/27/1944 ^[23] , 03/08/1945 ^[24] );
• Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree (03/11/1985);
• Order of the Patriotic War , 2nd degree (02.15.1944) ^[25] ;
• medals, including:
• “For courage” (10/31/1943) ^[26] ;
• “For the defense of the Caucasus” ^[27] ;
• “For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” ;
• “For the capture of Budapest” ;
• “For the capture of Vienna” ;
• “For the Liberation of Belgrade” ;
• "Veteran of Labor" ;
  • Florence Nightingale Medal of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (1979) ^[28] .

• Zavaliy, Evdokia Nikolaevna
• Tsukanova, Maria Nikitichna

• Sverdlov A.V. The embodiment of design. - M .: Military Publishing House , 1987 .-- 160 p. - (War memoirs). - 30,000 copies.
• Smirnov CC Katyusha // Tales of Unknown Heroes . - M .: Soviet writer , 1985.
• Chkheidze A. A. Notes of the Danube intelligence officer. - 2. - M .: Young Guard , 1984. - 174 p. - (Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War). - 100,000 copies.
• Shirokorad A. B. Campaign to Vienna. - M .: Veche , 2005 .-- 416 p. - (Military parade of history). - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 5-9533-0973-2 .
• Khayrullin S. Guardian angel of the Caspian brothers // "Red Star". - 2019 .-- May 13. - C.1, 10.

• Dyomina Ekaterina Illarionovna (Russian) . Site " Heroes of the country ".
• The film "Katyusha big and small" (neopr.) . Rutube (April 26, 2010). Date of treatment July 23, 2016.
• A documentary from the series More Expensive than Gold, dedicated to Catherine Demina on YouTube .