Lyudmila Mykhailvna Pavlichenko was born in 1916 in Balaya Tserkov, a Ukranian town just outside of Kiev. Her father was a St. Petersburg factory worker father, and her mother was a teacher. Pavlichenko described herself as a tomboy who was “unruly in the class room” but athletically competitive, and who would not allow herself to be outdone by boys “in anything.”
“When a neighbor’s boy boasted of his exploits at a shooting range,” she told the crowds, “I set out to show that a girl could do as well. So I practiced a lot.” After taking a job in an arms plant, she continued to practice her marksmanship, then enrolled at Kiev University in 1937, intent on becoming a scholar and teacher. There, she competed on the track team as a sprinter and pole vaulter, and, she said, “to perfect myself in shooting, I took courses at a sniper’s school.”
She was in Odessa when the war broke out and Romanians and Germans invaded. “They wouldn’t take girls in the army, so I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to get in,” Pavlichenko recalled, noting that officials tried to steer her toward becoming a nurse. To prove that she was as skilled with a rifle as she claimed, a Red Army unit held an impromptu audition at a hill they were defending, handing her a rifle and pointing her toward a pair of Romanians who were working with the Germans. “When I picked off the two, I was accepted,” Pavlichenko said, noting that she did not count the Romanians in her tally of kills “because they were test shots.”
Lyudmila was exceptional. She was definitely located on the far-right tail of the female bell-curve.
The two females who just “graduated” from Ranger School are probably also on the far-right tail; though, not as far-right as Lyudmila was.
The problem is that the supporters of “Women-in-Conbat” are comparing far-right-tail women to middle-of-the-bell-curve men.
Let’s compare the two new Ranger grads to the best of the male Ranger grads. Then what? No comparison?
Let’s also compare women from the middle of the female bell-curve to men from the middle of the male bell-curve. The middle of the male bell-curve being the location of most of the draftees in WWII and Vietnam.
Again, no comparison.
How far will the hierarchy go in terms of resources, time and the surreptitious loosening of standards to create the first female Navy Seal, or the first female Marine Raider?
And what will they prove?
Did she ever marry? Did she ever have any children? She sounds a lot like a Rosie O'Donnell-type.