Once she said: “I don’t know how to speak, but I can speak with the Nazis in the language of my machine gun” - and confirmed her words in practice, destroying hundreds of German invaders. Onilova Nina Andreevna became famous for having become an outstanding gunner from a machine gun. Sevastopol and Odessa - these two cities have become significant in its fate. Defending the Motherland, she died, but her exploits are still not forgotten by descendants ...
Difficult childhood
Onilova Nina Andreevna was born on April 10, 1921 in a small village Novonikolaevka (Ukraine). Already at the age of eleven, she lost her parents. The girl was brought up by an orphanage. Having grown up a bit, Nina asked to work at a knitting factory and at the same time began to attend classes at evening school. After some time, she joined the ranks of the Komsomol organization.
The girl began to show interest in military affairs, enrolling in a circle where they taught the art of machine gun shooting. She wanted to be like her idol - the legendary machine-gunner Anka, once watching a film about Chapaev. The girl showed diligence in her studies and soon learned not only to shoot accurately from weapons, but also to masterfully assemble and disassemble it.
Years of war
Soon the fascist set foot on Soviet territory, and Onilova Nina, whose biography contains a lot of remarkable and interesting, wants to go to defend her homeland. However, the military enlistment office did not accept her statement. Only a few months after persistent requests, the commanders allowed her to join the ranks of the Soviet Army. Paradoxical as it may seem, the unit where Nina Andreevna Onilova was appointed to command machine-gun crews soon joined the legendary Chapaev’s division, where Anka the machine gunner fought in the Civil.
Defense of native Odessa
The Chapaev division was ordered to fight southward and subsequently take up the defense of Odessa, where the Romanian army broke through.
The enemy forces exceeded the division, which was once commanded by Vasily Ivanovich, several times. Fierce battles began, but Odessa managed to defend. The 25th Rifle I. Petrov commanded. It was he who ordered the machine gunner to join the battle at night. Enemy mortars were heard, which then reached the center of the Soviet troops ...
“Why aren't you shooting?” - Nina Andreevna Onilova heard a question, which one of the fighters asked her. But the girl did not react at all, waiting for a convenient moment. A loud machine gun bursts do not stop. Suddenly in the dark there are silhouettes of fascists marching on the offensive. Now is the time! Onilova Nina Andreevna took aim and opened fire. Immediately I heard how the bodies of the fascists were falling to the ground as if mowed. The units manage to escape and escape from the battlefield. The soldiers of the calculation do not keep up with the girl. After some time, voices and gunfire subsided. Only Onilova’s machine gun scribbles and scribbles, and then he freezes.
In the morning the losses of the Germans were calculated: the bodies of more than forty soldiers rested in a hollow. The commander noted the impeccable work of the girl.
They began to talk about her exploit with enthusiasm in the battalion, saying that she was no worse than the legendary Anka.
Wound
But once during the fierce battles, Nina Andreevna Onilova was wounded from fragments of an exploding mine.
One hit the head and the other damaged the ear. The machine gunner was taken to the hospital, and only in the late autumn of 1941 she was able to rejoin the ranks of the soldiers. Now she had to defend the stronghold of the Black Sea Fleet - the city of Sevastopol. By the way, for the defense of Odessa, the girl has already won a high award - the Order of the Battle Red Banner. Many fighters then wanted to do something similar, which Onina Nina Andreevna did. The photo of the machine gunner became a real decoration for the newspapers of the Great Patriotic War. And now she had to fight for Sevastopol.
Heroic death
The Nazis pulled large troops to the port city. The enemy’s tank was not far from the trench in which the machine gunner was sitting.
She did not have a grenade. She threw Molotov cocktails into an armored vehicle and was able to destroy it. A curtain of smoke suddenly rose around. When she disappeared, the girl saw the walking Germans who were sure that they had killed her. Then the machine gunner opened fire. And suddenly a grenade exploded in front of the shield: Nina was shell-shocked, but she continued to shoot with inhuman efforts. The girl killed in this battle a huge number of Germans.
In February 1942, Nina Andreevna was able to eliminate the two machine gun points of the Nazis, which were located near the farm Makenzia, and in early spring she fought alone with the Germans and died in an unequal battle. She died on the night of March 8, 1942.
Onilova Nina Andreevna, Hero of the Soviet Union (the title was awarded to her posthumously, in the mid-60s), was buried in Sevastopol, at the Kommunarov cemetery.