In the Shadow of Men

The book deals with the issue of women in Czechoslovak military units in the USSR (1942-1945), who worked mainly in the medical service, in the Signal Corps, as administrative workers and anti-aircraft gunners. With four exceptions (two snipers and two women with Tommy guns), they did not carry out combat activities. The women soldiers served not only in the rear units but also in the front zone, where they too were threatened with death - more than fifty of them were wounded in the fighting and five women (three signal corps and two anti-aircraft gunners) were killed in the autumn of 1944 at Dukla. In total, nearly a thousand women served in Czechoslovak military units, most of them young women on the verge of adulthood. The majority of them were Czech, Transcarpathian Ruthenian/Ukrainian, Slovak, Jewish and Russian.