In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

56 Help Me, Sister! Little by little I began to get better. All sorts of traitors and provocateurs began frequenting my cell. One day a high-ranking SS officer who spoke Russian came to see me. "So, we're rotting nicely, are we?" he asked with an arrogant sneer. I silently turned toward the wall. He rapped me on the shoulder with the rubber handle of his lash. "Don't worry, Girl. I'm not angry! We respect strength," he said, after a pause adding, "A single word from you, and tomorrow you'll be in the best hospital in Berlin. The day after tomorrow, all the newspapers of the Reich will trumpet your name. So?" "You beasts'" Yulia's voice rang out. "She's on the verge of death, and you only have one thing on your mind!" "Shut up, Russian swine!" the officer erupted. "You are the swine! German swine!" "You'll rot next!" tl1e Hitlerite screamed and rushed out of the cell. When Georgi Fyodorovich visited us later, I told him about our visit from the SS. "Do you not grasp the situation?" he pled with Yulia. "You're being foolish! You've got to outsmart these people. "I won't lie to you," he added. "This does not bode well for you." "My Party card and medals are hidden in my boots," I told Sinyakov. "Please take them. If you make it to the motherland, would you get them to my people?" Sinyakov agreed and left us. We sat quietly for a long while, anxiously listening to every sound, every rustle, lost in our private thoughts. Finally, I broke the silence. I asked Yulia how she found herself at the front. "It's simple," she began. ''!'d just finished the seventh grade in my village school in Novo-Chervonnoye, in the Lugansk Region, when the war broke out. My four brothers left for the front. Hitlerites occupied our village. What a horrible time! They chased Mama and me out of our hut, and we lived in a shed for a long time. "When our troops came back through, I ran first thing to the commander with the 'Ready for Medical Defense Work' badge I'd earned at school and asked to be sent to the front." "How old were you then?" "Seventeen." 192 RED SKY, BLACK DEATH And that's how a seventeen-year-old Ukrainian student named Yulia Krashchenko became a soldier-medical instructor. Who can forget his first taste of combat? Yulia rushed about the battlefield , answering every moan, every call: "Sister, help me!" The tiny girl wasn't strong enough to carry a heavy man off the field. She was terrified of wounds and of men's furtive tears. "You'll destroy yourself. You won't be able to handle it," a wounded soldier wheezed, watching her. "Don't you worry about a thing, Uncle. Everything's going to be OK," the words poured out, as Yulia summoned her reserves. "I've hauled out fellows heavier than you." Never mind that he was the first wounded man she'd ever carried, and this, her very first battlefield. But the lie soothed him. One step, two, ten- to safety! Then another call: "Sister, help me!" The cries kept coming. Yulia was with the soldiers the night they forced the Vistula and seized the Magnuszew Bridgehead on the opposite bank. German artillery ceaselessly shelled their position, but they held on. They had vowed to retain the bridgehead at any cost. Columns of German tanks advanced toward the Vistula, while I flew my unlucky sortie above them, and right over my dear Yulia. The Fascist tanks rolled over the trench where Yulia was dressing the men's wounds, trapping her in the enemy's rear. Later that night, after our argument with the SS officer, two huge Germans burst in and, pointing at Yulia, said, "Kommen. Schnell, schnell." I asked the Hitlerites where they were taking the girl, and why. One of them pressed his finger to his temple, emitted the sounds, 'Tiff! Paff!" and left. I was locked in, alone. Silence. How unbearable silence can be! ...

Share