Zinaida Tusnolobova-Marchenko

Tusnolobova-Marchenko was born on 23 November 1920 to a Russian family of farmers on the Shevtsovo farm in Polotsk, located in present-day Belarus. After graduating from secondary school she worked as a chemist in Leninskugol; she joined the military after the start of the war and became a member of the Communist party in 1942.[2]

Tusnolobova-Marchenko joined the Red Army in April 1942 after the start of the Second World War and after graduating from nursing courses was assigned to the 849th Rifle Regiment.[1]

During her first eight months of military service, she evacuated 123 wounded Soviet soldiers from the battlefield. On 2 February 1943 while trying to rescue a wounded platoon commander she was seriously injured, with both of her legs broken. As German soldiers ran across the battlefield she pretended to be dead, but one soldier noticed she was alive and began viciously beating her, nearly to death. A night reconnaissance platoon noticed she was still alive and managed to get her to a field hospital three days later. Having suffered from severe frostbite doctors had to perform eight surgeries to save her life, amputating her left hand, entire right arm, left foot and right leg up to the knee. During the remainder of the war while she was recovering she wrote an open letter to the 1st Baltic Front asking them to take revenge for the suffering inflicted in her and others. In her letter she opened by stating she had been stuck in a hospital bed for 15 months because of the Axis, referring to the Axis only as "the fascists", briefly mentioned her life before the war but went straight to describing her anger at the Axis for how she had to write with a pencil tied to the stub of her elbow, how her brother lost his hand and her husband died in the war, putting it bluntly as "The fascists did it" before ending the letter asking them not to spare a single German soldier to take revenge for the Russian people. The letter resulted in over 3,000 letters and replies from the troops, promising revenge in her name. Numerous Soviet tanks and aircraft bore the text of saying things like "This is for Zinaida" and "For Zinaida Tusnolobova" (Russian: За Зину Туснолобову!), a practice so popular that another Hero of the Soviet Union, Pyotr Andreev, had it written on his plane.[3][2]

After the war she married a fellow veteran of the war, lieutenant Joseph Petrovich Marchenko who worked as an engineer after the war. One of her children, Vladimir Marchenko, served in the military for two years. In 1957, well after the end of the war, she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union by decree of the Supreme Soviet for her courage in the war and was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1965 by the International Red Cross. She passed away from pneumonia in 1980 at the age of 59. Schools and streets in Belarus were named in her honor and a commemorative envelope bearing her portrait was issued by Belarus in 1992.[2][4]

1992 Belarus envelope featuring Tusnolobova-Marchenko

• Hero of the Soviet Union (6 December 1957)
• Order of Lenin (6 December 1957)
• Order of the Red Banner (14 April 1945)
• Order of the Red Star (6 November 1942)
• Florence Nightingale Medal (12 May 1965)
• campaign and jubilee medals

[5]

• List of female Heroes of the Soviet Union
• Lyudmila Kravets
• Vera Kashcheyeva