Manshuk Mametova – One-Woman Army

by | Apr 24, 2020 | Asia, Contemporary (1914 - today), Kazakhstan | 0 comments

This week I’m taking you to Soviet Kazakhstan, when World War II was just beginning, and one girl was determined to fight for her Motherland. Even though she was rejected at first and later only assigned clerk duty, she taught herself how to use a machine gun and eventually became Hero of the Soviet Union. That was not only the highest military honor, but she was the first Kazakh woman to receive it. Her name is Manshuk Mametova and I want to take you along on the wild ride that was her life. 

In 1922 in Zhaksus, a small village in the steppe of the Ural Region in Kazakhstan, a shoe maker and his wife welcomed their fifth child into the world, a daughter they named Mansia. Little Manshuk, as her mother affectionately called her, spent her childhood learning to ride before she could even walk and spending long nights around the yurt’s hearth, listening to stories about heroes and heroines, adventures and fairytales. Sometimes her aunt Amina would visit from Alma-Ata, and tell stories of a city built of stone. When she was around three or five years old, her parents sent her to live with her aunt as it was custom. (Well, it was custom to send the child to its grandparents, but they had died already, so she was sent to her aunt instead.) It seems that soon after her parents died, or maybe they died before and she was adopted then – sources are unclear. What is certain however, is that her aunt took her with her and she grew up in the capital. 

Her childhood in Alma-Ata seems to have been a very happy one, filled with the scent of apple trees growing all over the city. Her aunt was a strict but loving woman and every word of appreciation would make the little girl beam with joy. And when she was old enough to go to school, she soon felt like she had gained a second family. She loved to learn and the other girls loved her for her enthusiasm and kindness. In the picture you can see her on the top right with two of her classmates. As the years passed by, Manshuk learned more and more about her nation and learned to love its vast beauty. Especially Moscow stole her heart and she would dream of walking over the Red Square for years to come. 

After graduating, she entered a medical school program and later the Alma-Ata Medical Institute. At some point in her medical education, she took a job at the Secretariat of the Council of People’s Commissars, which aimed to fuse Kazakh culture with Soviet values. Life was good. She had a job she liked, friends and family she adored and soon, soon she would finally see Moscow! It was the Summer of 1941 and 18-year-old Manshuk was planning to go see a sports parade. But it was not meant to be. Nazi Germany had bombed Sevastopol, Odessa and Kiev and was now approaching Moscow. 

Even though the war was still far from Alma-Ata, Manshuk was one of the first to volunteer at the local recruitment office. Inspired not only by her love for the Soviet Union and her country, but also by the countless stories she grew up with, Manshuk wanted to take an active part in defending her homeland.

Even though the Red Army accepted women into their ranks, her request to go to the frontlines was rejected. But she persisted. It took one year until she was finally accepted into the Army – however only as a desk clerk instead of a warrior. It was a first step though and so Manshuk became a secretary and later a nurse as well. But still she dreamt of being a warrior. And so, between her administrative duties and her work in the local field hospital, she taught herself how to shoot a machine gun. Eventually she was asked to show her skills to her superior and she didn’t miss a single target. Impressed, her commander assigned her to the 100th Rifle Brigade and finally, in October 1942, she was on her way to the frontlines.

Her Regiment fought well and soon Manshuk had earned not only the rank of Senior Sergeant but also the respect and trust of her comrades. Never did she part with her beloved gun. But it wasn’t only battle that happened on the front lines but life as well. Manshuk made friends and shared stories of home with them. Sometimes she would get a letter or a parcel from home and it would remind her of the sunny days in an apple-scented city that she so passionately defended. However she did find something on the front that she didn’t back home: she fell in love. In a letter to her sister she wrote about fellow machine gunner Nurken Khusainov and how it was impossible now to act on her feelings. Apparently Nurken thought the same and so it remained unfulfilled. For their next assignment would mean death for both of them. 

On October 15, 1943, Manshuk and her regiment fought to liberate the city of Nevel on Russia’s western border – a difficult battle from the get-go, as the Germans occupied higher ground. The Soviets still weren’t able to advance after hours of battle, but continued to suffer heavy casualties, Nurken among them. To find a better spot to attack and to give the Germans another front to worry about, Manshuk and another machine gunner broke away from their unit. Soon they found what they were looking for: a small hill on the flank of the German army with a barricade for machine gunners on top. They quietly killed the enemy soldiers occupying the post and opened fire. The unexpected attack broke the German counter-offensive and finally the Soviets were able to advance.

Crawling between three different machine gun posts the two gunners relentlessly fired on the enemy, trying to avoid being hit themselves. At some point Manshuk was knocked out by a mortar shell, but regained consciousness and continued her assault. More than once her comrade asked her to retreat, but she refused. She knew that as soon as they stopped shooting they will be overrun and everyone else will die as well. The battle had waged for an hour when a grenade hit their post, immediately killing her comrade and mortally wounding her. Even so, Manshuk would not let go of her gun. With her last strength and nothing to lose, she occupied the best possible position and continued shooting until her last breath. It might have been her who finally turned the tides of the battle and without her the Red Army would not have been able to liberate Nevel.

Her body was recovered after the battle, her hands still clutching her gun, and buried in the city’s cemetery. For her bravery, she was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest honor in the USSR. There are also a bunch of statues, one in Nevel for example and one in Almaty (that’s what Alma-Ata is called now), and streets and schools are named after her (including her former High School) and there are songs about her! Even though she wasn’t able to return to her beloved hometown, I think Manshuk Mametova would have been proud to know she is remembered for making a difference. And maybe that she now has her own folk tales as well. 

image credits:

all images via http://top-antropos.com/history/20-century/item/1019-manshuk-mametova

1: Manshuk Mametova with Aunt Amina, 1935
2: Manshuk Mametova, 1937
3: Portrait of Manshuk Mametova (undated, ca. 1942/43)
4: Monument to sniper Aliya Moldagulova and Manshuk Mametova (r.) in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Susan La Flesche Picotte – Doctor Between Two Worlds

by | Apr 10, 2020 | Mid Modern Period (1750 - 1914), North America, USA | 0 comments

This week I want to pay tribute to the medical workers of the world with an article about a doctor whose work spanned two worlds. Determined to provide adequate medical care for her community, she became the first Native American woman to hold a medical degree. But she wasn’t only a doctor! She helped out with financial issues as well as family disputes. Her name is Susan La Flesche Picotte and here is her story. 

Born in 1865, Susan came into life already inbetween worlds. Her father Joseph became Chief of the Omaha Tribe little more than ten years earlier and had since been pushing for assimilation. In his opinion only adapting the traditional lifestyle to the changing world would save his people. By the time Susan was born, there was a schism in the tribe between the traditionalists and innovators. She and her three older sisters grew up in a log cabin instead of a teepee, but were still taught the traditional ways and the Omaha language, walking the fine line between cultures.

When Susan was eight years old, she witnessed the death of an elderly tribeswoman as the local, white doctor simply didn’t come to treat her. She would think back to that incident for the rest of her life and later remember it as the moment she decided to become a doctor. But first she needed to go to school. After attending school on the Reservation until she was 14, being homeschooled for a few years and studying in New Jersey for a while, she returned home to Nebraska at age 17 to teach at the local Quaker Mission School. It was there that she met Harvard anthropologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher who encouraged her to pursue a higher education and to fulfill her dream of becoming a physician. They would remain close friends and Alice would become somewhat of a mentor to our young heroine.

So Susan travelled East again. This time to Virginia, where she had enrolled at Hampton Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for non-white students in the US. There she met another woman to support her on her way, the resident physician Martha Waldron, who was a graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and urged her to apply to the school as well. With the help of Alice Fletcher, Susan was able to secure funds for a scholarship from the Office of Indian Affairs, likely making her the first person to receive aid for professional education in the US. The one catch was that she was forbidden from entering any kind of romantic relationship during her studies as well as a few years after to “allow her to fully focus on her practice.” It seems that she didn’t care that much though, or at least she never mentioned it, and so off she was, her dream within reach.

In 1889, after just two years instead of three, she graduated the WMCP with honors on top of her class and finally returned home to Nebraska to become the physician for the Omaha Agency, operated by the Office of Indian Affairs. Quickly people began flooding in. As you might have deducted from the incident with the old woman back when Susan was still a child, the medical care at the reservation was bad. Many tribespeople were sick with cholera and tuberculosis and many came to her for help in other matters as well. She became more than just their doctor, she was a lawyer as well as a priest and accountant to them. So many insisted to be treated by her, that her white partner quit, leaving her solely responsible for the medical care of over 1300 patients in a 450 square mile area. 

Susan wasn’t easily deterred though. While she was dreaming to build a proper hospital someday, for now she was making house calls on foot, often taking hours to reach just a single patient, risking her life in the process. Although she did eventually upgrade to a horse and later a buggy, things improved only slightly. She had always been suffering from chronic illness and already had to take a break in 1892 due to chronic pain and another one a year later after a fall from her horse left her injured. Since then her hearing worsened continuously. In addition to all that, some of her patients kept rejecting her diagnoses and questioning her knowledge. Again Susan didn’t even think about giving up though and kept advocating for changes in sanitary routines and against alcohol. She was quick to realize the damage that living in a white world did to her people and saw that changes had to be made in order to survive. And she was determined to bring about these changes. 

But first she fell in love. In 1894 she met Henry Picotte, a Sioux, and they married the same year. The couple settled in Bancroft on the Reservation and Susan opened her own little practice there, making no difference between the ethnicities of her patients. One or two years later their first son Caryl was born and two or three years later the second one, Pierre, arrived. After giving birth (and presumably resting for a little while) Susan continued to work, relying on her husband to take care of the family and household. We are in Victorian times, mind you, this was incredibly unusual! Shortly before her death she would even get to build the hospital she always dreamed of, but more on that later.

For more than 25 years Susan would work tirelessly for better medical care and illness prevention for her people, advocating for the use of screen doors to keep the flies out, for better sanitation and most of all against alcohol. She had recognized the growing numbers of people with tuberculosis which can be directly traced back to alcohol consumption. She also witnessed first- hand the white whiskey peddlers and how people pawned clothes and even land just to get more to drink. Even her husband slipped into alcoholism and would eventually die from tuberculosis in 1905. She saw her people suffering and she saw alcohol as the culprit – at least the culprit she could do something against. And she did. 

In the 1890s she ran a campaign to enforce prohibition on the reservation which failed, partly because many Omaha people were illiterate at the time and liquor dealers were handing them ballots against prohibition and/or bribed them with alcohol. Finally in 1897 a law was introduced that outlawed trading alcohol against land …however it proved impossible to enforce.

For the rest of her life, Susan would continue this fight but never truly get rid of the problem. But she did have some success in fighting for her people’s land after all! You see, the land of the Reservation was held in trust by the government at the time, so it didn’t truly belong to the Native Americans even though they had lived there for ages. Her first brush with bureaucracy was when her husband died and although he left the land to her and their children, there was no other adult man to legally take the land and it was all very complicated. But after a series of quite infuriated letters over the course of three years, she did get to inherit her land and sell some of it (which was a whole other can of worms because technically it still wasn’t her land – the trust-thing, you remember – but yeah, she managed.) Soon others came to her because they had similar problems and she quickly had established a side-gig in addition to her doctor’s work. And raising two kids. And campaigning against alcohol. In 1907 she moved her family to Walthill. Gosh, where did she take the time?!

Anyways, she helped people with their inheritances and land sales and at some point she realized there was a circle of men, both white and Omaha, who cheated minors out of their inheritances and thus out of Omaha land. After campaigning for her tribes right to their land for years she now suddenly wrote to the Office of Indian Affairs that the Omaha people needed the continued guardianship of the state. Yes, I was just as confused as you probably are, but it’s actually quite a smart plan. Susan accused the OIA of the lack of business skills of her people and held them accountable for minors under their guardianship losing their land to fraudsters and reminded them of their duty to protect the Native Americans. Simultaneously she chastised them for having treated her people like children since the beginning which was the whole reason for this mess. The plan kinda backfired though and in the end the Omaha became even more dependent on the OIA and lost even more land, if not to fraudsters. 

But even though many of her endeavors ultimately failed, she did make illness prevention and proper health care available to her people. And one more thing: Remember that hospital I talked about earlier? In 1913, two years before she died from bone cancer, her dream of opening a hospital for her community finally became reality – completely funded by the community through her tireless crowdsourcing (she did ask some rich people too.) Even though she was gone, the hospital remained operational well into the 1940s and the building still exists today!

image credits:

1: “Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.” – National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (54752), via the Changing the Face of Medicine Exhibition – Link
2: “Susan La Flesche Picotte”, 1889 – Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania Photograph Collection (ACC-AHC1) Item Number p0164a, via iDEA by Drexel University Libraries – Link
3: “Susan La Flesche, early 1900s, when she returned to the Omaha Reservation” – National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (54752), via the Changing the Face of Medicine Exhibition – Link
4: “Picotte, Dr. Susan, Memorial Hospital”, National Register of Historic Places Collection (88002762) via National Park Service Gallery – Link