Defender of the Small Land Maria Gladun is preparing to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the Victory.

In Vladivostok, the 74th anniversary of Victory is preparing to meet a participant in the fighting for Novorossiysk. For the heroic defense of Malaya Zemlya, which lasted 225 days, Maria Gladun received the medal "For military service", which in the Great Patriotic war was awarded only to a few Soviet women.

Photos and newspaper articles related to the combat past of Maria Alekseevna a little, because so carefully keep them in the family of the veteran. Here is she - 18-year-old radio operator - alongside fellow soldiers, and here guard corporal Grigorieva already 21. He remembers how the war caught him by surprise when he was on vacation, near Sochi. The Germans all broke through to the North Caucasus, and the young Maria has sought to beat the enemy!

Maria Gladun, a veteran of the great Patriotic war: "At the age of 18, we were all romantics, dreaming of heroism. But no matter how many feats are committed in history, they all pass through the understanding of a great civic duty. And it made us forget about ourselves, go to battle, to death in the name of the liberation of our great homeland."

In September 1943 Novorossiysk was one huge fortress. The black sea port occupied by Germans, Hitler protected as the artery supplying the Caucasian group of troops. In the thick of it, Maria gets right after school for radio operators, in February 1943. He remembers how the outskirts of Novorossiysk were approached by fishing Seiners and jumped into the icy water near the shore. Soldiers and sailors died under enemy heavy fire, and her, apparently, God pardoned... And the radio that held over his head.

Maria Gladun, a veteran of the great Patriotic war: "We landed in very difficult conditions, we were warned that we are all suicide bombers. We had 250 Marines…»

Because of the storm and the lack of coordination of the first assault of Novorossiysk Soviet paratroopers failed.

Maria Gladun, a veteran of the great Patriotic war: "The storm broke and our operation fell. Thus we seven and a half months were on the Small Earth in an environment of Germans where there were fierce fights".

The heroic defense of Malaya Zemlya lasted for 32 long weeks. And until the release of Novorossiysk, Maria Grigorieva took from the mainland cryptogram, sent the opposite message. And right in the trenches, from the hands of the commander of artillery of the army Arkady Sobenin, received his most expensive award "For military merit."

新闻来源: http://vestiprim.ru/news/ptrnews/76296-zaschitnica-maloj-zemli-marija-gladun-gotovitsja-otmetit-74-uju-godovschinu-pobedy.html