Valentina Aleksandrovna Dmitrievskaya | Валентина Александровна Дмитриевская

Born on November 8, 1922, in the Kaluga Oblast region of Russia—then the Soviet Union—Valentina, or Valya, signed up as a volunteer to go to the front of the first world war in October 1941. She trained for 3 months as a nurse and joined Infantry Division in December 1941. She was wounded in the leg in 1942 and went back to the army in 1944. She met her husband, Fedor Chernusskih, during the war and they had 2 children together, Valentina Makkaveeva and Elena Chernusskih. After the war they separated and she lived in Moscow with her daughters. She worked in Mosgorgeotrest, a civil engineering firm, and finished the Moscow Institute of Civil Engineering in the 1960s—around the same time as her younger daughter.