Lyudmila Mykhailivna Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Mykhailvna Pavlichenko is regarded as the greatest female sniper in history. With 309 confirmed kills, no other female sniper comes close to her count and very few men can surpass it. She was born in Bila Tserkva on July 12, 1916. When she was a teenager, she joined a shooting club and became an amateur sharpshooter. In June of 1941, Pavlichenko was one of the first people to volunteer at her local recruiting office.
At the time, women were not being actively recruited to join the Red Army and Pavlichenko was offered a position as a nurse. She refused and insisted on joining infantry. She joined the 25th Rifle Division and was one of 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army. Only 1 in 4 of them returned home.
In two and a half months, she recorded 187 kills near Odessa. Once the Romanians got control of Odesa she was sent to the Crimean Peninsula. By May 1942 her kill count was up to 257 as cited by the Southern Army Council. Her skill and her constantly rising kill count earned her the name of “Lady Death.” She was wounded in June 1942 and was withdrawn from the battlefield. She recovered quickly but by then her kill count of 309 had earned her so much fame that the Soviets never allowed her to return to the front. Instead, she was sent to Allied countries for publicity.
Pavlichenko was the first Soviet citizen to be received by a United States President when Franklin Delano Roosevelt welcomed her at the White House. She also visited Canada and the UK to continue gathering support for Allied countries, and even raised money for the Red Army. After the war, she returned home and finished her education in order to become a historian.