My story about a woman - about Faina Borisenkova (Martynova). This Woman was a sniper (I do not write with a capital letter for nothing). In the war she with one shot "laid" enemies! I noticed this woman by accident. She lives near my gymnasium, where I study. Very often, after classes, passing by her house, I see her! She looks out the window, right into my eyes. Our eyes meet, and I feel her following me with her deep, sad eyes. I go and wonder who she is. This question bothered me. I was touched to the depths of my soul by this look, which was already so familiar and has seen a lot. The life path of Faina Borisenkova (Martynova) aroused my great interest. Honoring the memory of our countrymen who took part in the fighting of the Great Patriotic War, it is impossible not to remember those who are still alive and to whom you can turn for valuable information. It just so happens that all our visions of the war are associated with the image of a male soldier. This is understandable. They were mainly representatives of the stronger sex - men who fought. But for some reason, they usually forget to say about women, that they also did a lot to win. However, in the twentieth century, the participation of women in war, not only as medical personnel, but also with weapons in their hands, was becoming a reality. This phenomenon became especially widespread during the Grat Patriotic War. Women who stood up for their homeland made an invaluable contribution to the victory over fascism. In the article "On the Moral Character of Our People" M. Kalinin wrote: "...everything that has gone before pales in front of the great epic of the current war, in front of heroism and sacrifice of Soviet women who show civil valor, endurance in the loss of loved ones and enthusiasm in the fight with such strength and, I would say, majesty, which has never been observed in the past." Side by side with men they went along the terrible paths of war, froze in the trenches, swallowed the bitter dust of military roads, drenched in soldiers' sweat, won victory with them over the enemy. Women performed an immortal feat in the name of the Motherland in the rear of the country. They fought against the German invaders on the ground and in the air, while not inferior in courage to men. Overcoming the greatest difficulties of the war years, sparing no effort, they did everything to provide the front with what was needed to defeat the enemy. Women raised money for the country's Defense Fund, food and clothing for the population affected by the invaders, and became donors .Throughout the war, the women of the home front kept in touch with the Red Army and showed constant care for soldiers and their families. Sending gifts to soldiers, patriotic letters, making trips with delegations to the front, they exerted a moral influence on the defenders of the Motherland and inspired them to new military exploits. Women, as equal members of their homeland, were equal defenders of it during the Great Patriotic War. They were on the front line: medics, pilots, snipers, in air defense units, signal troops, scouts, drivers, topographers, reporters, even tankers, gunners and served in the infantry, flew fighters and bombers. They rammed and destroyed enemy planes and ground targets. For this, like men, they received military ranks, orders, medals, and titles of Heroes of the Soviet Union, sometimes posthumously... Actively participated in the underground fight, in the partisan movement. At that time, the female part of our multi-ethnic people, together with men, children and the elderly, bore all the hardships of the Great War on their shoulders. Women wrote many glorious pages in the annals of the war. Faina Borisenkova (Martynova). I had a conversation with Faina Martynova on February 2, 2015. She was born on May 22, 1924 in the village of Bychki, Novosokolnichesky District. She graduated from school and in 1940 went to Leningrad for further education. She entered technical school and worked for the Druzhnaya Gorka Glass Factory. She also joined the GTO at the plant. She honed her shooting skills and learned how to make glass syringes. The war began and in 1941 the plant was disbanded and evacuated to Tatarstan. And the young workers with the assigned financial worker from the plant were sent to defend Leningrad. They dug trenches and anti-tank ditches. They held the defense of the city, but when the German troops came close, they gathered everyone and took them to Leningrad.There was no such severe famine in the city yet. The financial officer helped to find a job for her. Faina gladly went to work as a nanny or a cleaner in a nursery. In these nurseries there were orphaned children, children without parents. Children of different ages, large and younger. There was often a restless situation when the air attacks started. At the signal, the children were collected and quickly evacuated to the bunker/basement. Some of them walked by themselves, while the very little ones were wrapped in blankets and had to be carried in arms. When shelling stopped, everyone went back upstairs to their rooms. What happened to these children is unknown, according to one version they were taken abroad, because no one visited them, their parents were not there. Children often got sick and were taken to the hospital, and no one picked them up from there. The choice of food was poor. Sometimes jelly, sometimes yeast soup. Sometimes yeast were deluted in water and eaten. But, even after washing the dishes, one could drink the remaining water. They mostly ate after the children. The time passed and the children disappeared. Everyone was assigned somewhere. While Faina worked in a nursery, she lived in a hostel. Six people lived in a small room, but only three survived. There was a high mortality rate and when people died, Faina herself sewed up their bodies in bags and put them in the next unheated room. It was cold there, and people were just skin and bones. There was nothing to decompose and there was no smell. Before leaving Leningrad, Faina and her friend decided to bury the corpses and took them to the cemetery. They hoped to bury these people in a human way, but alas, they had to accept what they were given. Several holes were dug and corpses were lying inside them. No one carefully put them in, they were just thrown into these pits. The only thought in Faina's head was if only she didn't fall into this pit herself. And then they buried them and put a flag that there was a mass grave here. At first, Ladoga Lake did not freeze for a long time. Faina received a boarding ticket for evacuation through Ladoga on February 2, 1942. On the road, they increased the amount of bread and gave then 250 grams a day. They took the train from Finlyandsky Railway Terminal to Ladoga. Then everyone had to provide a ticket and they were put in the truck. They did not take extra people, because it would have overloaded the truck, and it would have gone to the bottom of the lake. Everyone was skinny, people were sorry, but there was nothing else to do. Someone decided to cross Ladoga on foot, but on the way usualy froze and died. There was a strict distance between trucks, and everyone believed in their hearts that they would cross this huge lake. Ladoga was bombed, and the ice broke in some places, they had to go straight through the water.Faina and her partner kept in touch with the plant, so they were very well received when they arrived in Tatarstan. But the young girls had almost no strength. They were given a room for two and a person who looked after their health and took care of them. Faina was very ill, her body was covered with scabs and it took her six months to recover. She was put on allowance. For a day, two people were given a bucket of soup, which the girls of course ate. When Faina recovered, she went to work in her specialty, and joined the GTO again. Despite the fact that she was a blockader, the military enlistment office sent her summons to the front. She was an excellent shoter. She could ski and ride a horse, so she went to study at the Moscow Central Women's School of Sniper Training. Preparation took not 6-7 months, as expected, but 1 year and 2 months. Faina graduated from this school with honors. By this time, they reported that our area was liberated and Faina wr a letter to her parents, saying that she was alive and well and planning to go to the front. The father was disabled (so he could not fight), the mother had 4 children and the family was evacuated. She received a response from her parents quickly; they described events from their lives. And already everyone calmed down, Faina knew that the family was all right and the family knew that Faina was alive. War... Very clearly Faina remembers her first killed enemy. He was a German soldier. The girl remembers how much her hands and the whole body were shaking, this was not yet awareness of what was happening. As Faina says, she vomited after she made her first, inexperienced shot, which, oddly enough, reached the "aim". For many long nights, she shuddered at nightmarish dreams and the image of the German that was clearly etched in her memory.And then there were the second and third... ninth. ... At night, they snuck into the barn. “...The smell of hay stirred memories: my mother in a white handkerchief on the back of her head stands on a high cart, and she and her sisters and brothers fun tumbling in a fragrant hay. The gray autumn dawn crept through the bBoard slits." The memories were gone. Fania clung to the boards, feeling their cold on her cheek. One could see a small Lithuanian village, an enemy trench, as if separated from the whole world. Several minutes of tense silence passed. A fascist climbed out of the trench and stretched sleepily. Fania took aim at him. A shot rang out, but the bullet missed its target. The Nazis opened fire on the barn, and it flared up like a candle. Fania and her partner rushed to the field and under a curtain of smoke, crawled along the wet furrows and managed to get to safety. When they caught their breath from fatigue, her friend laughed: Fanya's hat was missing one earflap.Returning to the company, Fania was upset. The soldier she shot at out of the barn would be a tenth one. Wow, she missed. All the snipers of their company opened the score of the second ten, and Fania, when she was in sniper school, hit all the targets without a miss and received the best mark in shooting - five points, and here… Friends comforted Fania, and the commander said: "A soldier is not supposed to cry, you will have the tenth fascist." A few days later, intelligence reported that the enemy unit was preparing for defense and building a fortification. The commander called Fania Borisenkova and the second sniper-observer and gave the order to approach the enemy's front line. Under cover of night, disguised by branches, the girls went to there. Here Faina found her tenth!The fate of Faina Borisenkova, now an instructor of industrial training in the experimental workshop of the knitting factory, is one of thousands of women's destinies, on whose fragile shoulders the hardships of the war have fallen. Faina knew the sufferings of the Leningrad blockade and the difficult, dangerous front-line everyday life. Six battle medals, one of which says For the Capture of Konigsberg, remind us of these everyday life. Here the military unit in which the young patriot fought finished its victorious march.But fate was preparing a new test of her courage. This is told by yellowed sheets of gratitude from the command, which Faina keeps. One of the Acknowledgements says: "Together with your fellow soldiers, you participated in a heroic campaign through the arid deserts of Mongolia and the mountain passes of the Great Khingan and carried our banner across Manchuria to the sacred for the Russian heart city of Port Arthur. I Express my gratitude to you for your military service to the Motherland…»This is all that this unique woman has told me so far. Faina Borisenkova (Martynova) is still alive, and still follows me with her eyes on the way from school. And I go and think how happy we are that we live without a war, that my mother didn't have to go through all the horrors of war that these women went through. I bow to You Faina and all the women of the war!