On the Road to Stalingrad: Memoirs of a Woman Machine Gunner

On the Road to Stalingrad: Memoirs of a Woman Machine Gunner by Smirnova-Medvedeva, Zoya Matveyevna. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780968270202.

This is a book about a young girl who volunteered to serve in the famous 25th Chapayev Division and became a machine gunner. She was inspired by another girl machine gunner to keep a diary and tell the story of her comrades-in-arms. This book, which mainly describes the war in the trenches on the Eastern Front, is being used as a textbook in American universities and colleges. The editor/translator of this book has taught Russian History at the University of Ottawa and worked for the Canadian Department of National Defense. She is a recipient of the 1999 Mary Zirin Prize awarded by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies).