Yevdokiya Zavaliy was 15 year old Soviet nurse during WWII. When she was mistaken for a man on the field.

  Yevdokiya Zavaliy was 15 year old Soviet nurse during WWII. When she was mistaken for a man on the field.

she decided to go along with the mistake so she could fight on the front lines. 

Yevdokiya Zavaliy was born in a small village located in the Nikolayev Region, Ukraine. Before the war, she worked on a farm and that’s how the war began for her.

“It was the 25th of July," Zavaliy recalled. "I suddenly saw four black spots in the sky over our village and understood that these were enemy planes. 

After a terrible roar, the enemy started bombing our village. I heard someone moaning and under an old apple tree there was a young border guard lying in a pool of blood.

 Then I saw another wounded soldier, then another. When our last military unit left our village, I persuaded the commander to take me with him. He didn’t refuse."

The unit which Zavaliy joined at the age of 15 was a cavalry regiment. In order to be taken to the front lines, she added three years to her real age. 

She served as a nurse in the regiment and also learned to shoot a rifle, a pistol and a machine gun. 

During a retreat near Khortytsya island, she was wounded in the abdomen.

 The doctor wanted to give her an early discharge but she insisted on staying. After leaving the hospital she was sent to a reserve regiment and was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

“One day the commanders came to take men to the front lines," said Zavaliy. "One of them approached me and said that I had fifteen minutes to pack my things. 

He didn’t even notice that I was a woman. At that time I really looked like a man, wearing the same soldier’s blouse, riding breeches and a crew cut on my head. 

I had to shave off my hair at the hospital to get rid of lice.

 I was given ammunition, a uniform and then sent to the bathhouse. 

While naked men were passing me one by one, I was thinking of what to do.

 This small lie could easily turn into my execution. So I decided to smash my face in order to go to the doctor and avoid the revelation in the bathhouse.”

Zavaliy became "Senior Sergeant Yevdokim Zavaliy" and took part in a battle near the village of Goryachy Kluch as a member of the 6th airborne brigade.

After capturing a German officer, Zavaliy was appointed the commander of a reconnaissance squad. 

During a battle in the Kuban region, she was seriously wounded and her true gender was revealed. Zavaliy was afraid that she would become a nurse again. 

However, given her military achievements, in October of 1943 - at the age of 17 - she was appointed the commander of a platoon of submachine gunners.

 She was wounded four times. 

One of the wounds required an emergency blood transfusion and her soldiers, without any hesitation, donated the blood that saved her life.

In 1947, Zavaliy was discharged and went to live in Kiev where she met her future husband and got married.

 She had 2 children, 4 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. 

She worked as the manager of a grocery store and died in Kiev on May 5, 2010.