Fighting female snipers, scouts, women, female anti-aircraft gunner … But in their armor was not much. During the Great Patriotic War, Alexander Mitrofanovna Raschupkina repeated action of the legendary "trooper-girls' Nadezhda Durova, who in 1806 under the male name entered the military service, and then fought with the army of Napoleon. About a year Raschupkina Alexander vainly knocked at doors of military enlistment offices with a request to send it to the front. BSA: the source for more info. In 1942, shortly postrigshis in men's clothes again, Alex came to the draft board and take advantage of the confusion reigning there with the documents yet signed up to the front under the name of Alexander Raschupkina. In Moscow Alexander, Alexander graduated from the courses of drivers, and then, under Stalingrad, a two-month courses of driver-mechanics of the tank. Girl fighting in the 62nd Army under General Chuikov. Surprisingly, almost three years, or the tank crew, which had fought Raschupkina or other fellow soldiers do not suspected that under the guise of 'Sasha-tomboy' hides a woman.
The mystery was opened in February 1945, when tankers were fighting already in Poland. During one of these tank Raschupkinoy stumbled into an ambush, was hit, caught fire. Alexander received a severe wound. Rushed to the aid of a mechanic from a nearby tank, became the bandage. It was he who recognized a girl Sasha. Then there were the hospitals, demobilization, meeting with her husband, who also survived in the terrible meat grinder and also returned from the war crippled. Together they have lived another 30 years.