It is not only the women soldiers/pilots of the Soviet Union who deserve a mntion, but also the nurses, operating in battle conditions, and risking their lives, often beyond the call of duty, in order to save the lives of the Red Army soldiers. This is the little I have discovered (you really have to search for some of it!)
From an article in TIME magazine, Oct 5th 1942: written by Author Konstantin Simonov, published in Moscow's Krasnaya Zvezda and cabled to TIME by its Moscow Correspondent Walter Graebner.
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On the east bank of the Volga we see the supply system in operation. The sky above us is rose-colored. Our ferryboat is overloaded with five trucks full of munitions, a company of Red Army men and a number of nurses. Bombs are whistling all around. Next to me sits a doctor's assistant, a young Ukrainian woman named Victoria Tshepnya. This is her fifth crossing. Doctors' assistants and nurses gathered the wounded themselves. They took them all the way across the city and loaded them on ferryboats which crossed the river. It was impossible to operate hospitals in the city.
Victoria and another Ukrainian reminisce about their native city of Dniepro-petrovsk. Both feel that the city is not really in German hands. To them it is still Russian.
As the ferryboat approached the landing stage, Victoria confessed: "You know me, always a little frightened to get out. I've already been wounded twice, once very seriously. But I don't believe I'll die yet because I haven't begun to live."
It must be frightful to have been wounded twice, to have fought for 15 months, and now to make a fifth trip to a flaming city. In 15 minutes she will pass through burning buildings, and somewhere under the rain of shrapnel and bombs will pick up a wounded man and bring him back to the ferryboat. Then she will make her sixth trip.
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From The Voice of Russia:
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Soviet medical personnel displayed courage and staunchness rescuing injured men and officers. Prior to the beginning of the Stalingrad Battle 75,000 women of the Stalingrad region were trained to act as nurses at the battlefields. When fierce battles for Stalingrad began 500 volunteer young women and professional nurses daily attended to the injured. Some 100 teams of young women helped to unload trains with the injured men and officers. All women of the fighting Stalingrad were ready to give their help to the injured.
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The women who volunteered as nurses were often very young, with no medical experience. What they learned, they did so in the midst of carnage, and very often showed no fear in rescuing the wounded from the battlefield, or the derelict terrain of Stalingrad:
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In the battles for Stalingrad medical personnel displayed heroism, and these were mostly young women. Among them were many students of medical institutes and courses who could give only first aid. Zinaida Gavrilova took the post of the commander of a medical service unit at the age of 18. Her subordinates were only a bit older as a rule. Overcoming fear they moved under the enemy's fire taking out the injured from the battlefields. Then they carried them to the location of their medical unit. What was required for this was not only physical strength but also strong will and courage. To the present day the former nurse cannot forget eyes of the injured - pleading, full of fear and pain.
"We lost consciousness among those blood and moaning. Later on we got used to this. We took out shrapnel, stitched wounds and amputated. We did not leave a surgery room for days. There was, no doubt, a shortage of surgeons since the number of the injured was so great. We cried over the dead. We could never get used to death".
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Sometimes, the nurses joined the soldiers in fighting on the front line:
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Nurses and auxiliaries fought against the enemies alongside with soldiers. Gulya Korolyova, a 20-year-old beauty from the capital's well-known family with literary background left her child behind and volunteered for the front. She joined the 214th Rifle Division on the Stalingrad Front's northern flank. She rescued over a hundred injured men and officers and killed 15 Nazis in the battles. Natalia Kashnevskaya, a nurse of the Guards Rifle Regiment and a former student of the Moscow theatre school, rescued from the battlefield 20 injured soldiers within a day and later took part in a battle showing Nazis with grenades.
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Once rescused, there was no guarantee of survival, as conditions in field hospitals, although marginally better than the Wehrmacht field hospitals, was often dire, with limited food, medicines and resources. Medical procedures often took place in dugouts along the banks of the Volga, where "on some days water in the River Volga was red with blood". Field hopitals were often hit by mortar fire, but in one case, the surgeon continued operating under an up-turned boat.
All in all, "Medical personnel made a great contribution to the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. Millions of injured men and officers recieved medical aid at battlefields, in field medical points, field and evacuation hospitals. 18 million cured men and officers, that is, over 150 divisions returned to the army and continued to fight against Nazis."
Incidentally, the Wehrmacht wounded had it worse as the battle progressed; injuries were compounded by frost bite, inadequate winter clothing, lice, typhus and starvation to name a few. The memoirs of Dr. Hans Dibold, describe working in the underground Timoshenko Bunker as incomprehensible:
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Often working in complete darkness in narrow corridors crammed full of injured soldiers, Dibold again was in a position of being able to offer little in comfort. The lice were atrocious, Dibold talks of scooping them from injured abdomen, the stench unfathomable, and the black tarry walls dripping with stench from the condensation of steam coming from wounds. Tyhpus was rampant.
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Sources:
Amazon.com: Doctor at Stalingrad: Hans Dibold: Books FROM STALINGRAD'S RUINS - TIME The Voice of Russia (The Stalingrad battle - 60 years) Some photos attached below.