Maria Limanskaya

Mariya Filippovna Limanskaya (; 12 April 1924 – 26 November 2024) was a Soviet military traffic guard – a female member of Red Army traffic control units, serving for three years during World War II. She became known as one of the Russian women who directed traffic at the Brandenburg Gate in 1945 after the Battle of Berlin. She then became a symbol of the Allied victory over Germany.

Biography

Early life and military service

Born in 1924 as Mariya Limanskaya, she joined the Red Army in 1942, at the height of World War II. She was 18. At that time the Soviet Stavka ("high command") increasingly lacked trained reserves to reinforce the entire front, and as a result began to conscript underage boys and girls. Almost 800,000 women would eventually serve in the Red Army throughout the war. On several occasions she was nearly killed. At one point, she left a building a few seconds before it was leveled by a bomb attack. She also contracted malaria. During the war, Limanskaya regulated the movement of troops across the Don under enemy fire, and participated in the Battle of Stalingrad and the liberation of Belarus and Poland.

Later life and death After the war, Limanskaya returned to civilian life and got married. The marriage did not last and she was forced to bring up two daughters by herself. Limanskaya later remarried, this time to a fellow veteran named Viktor with whom she remained for 23 years, until his death. She worked as a nurse, and then a school librarian in Volgograd. Since 1994, she lived with her daughter in the village of Zvonaryovka, in the Saratov region. and died on 26 November of the same year.