October 21, 1943: The Avenging Angel With a Tank

October 21, 1943: Mariya Oktyabrskaya proves that Hell hath no fury like a woman whose husband was killed by the Nazis.

She was born on August 16, 1905 in Kiat, on the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine, in what was then the Russian Empire. In 1925, with her country now called the Soviet Union, she married Ilya Oktyabrsky, a Red Army officer. She became an Army nurse, and when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, her husband was sent west to fight them, and she was sent east to Tomsk, in Siberia, presumably for her own protection.

It did not take long for her husband to die in battle. Soviet being what it was, and World War II only made it worse, It did take long, 2 whole years, for the news to reach her in Tomsk. She wrote a letter to dictator Joseph Stalin, saying she was selling her possessions so that she could buy a tank, writing of her desire to command it. "My husband was killed in action defending the Motherland," she wrote. "I want revenge on the fascist dogs for his death." Not exactly a paragon of upholding people's feelings, but being very aware of how it would be good for propaganda purposes, Stalin gave his approval.

Mariya got her tank, a T-34. She named it "Боевая подруга" -- translating from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, Boevaia Podruga; from Russian to English, "Fighting Girlfriend." She was trained on how to drive it and fix it.

The avenging angel fought her first battle on October 21, 1943, driving the tank headlong in the thick of fighting and destroying Nazi machine-gun nests and artillery emplacements, killing dozens of German soldiers. Fighting Girlfriend was damaged, and she disobeyed an order to stay put, getting out to to repair it while under fire, and then got back to killing Nazi scum. After the battle, she was promoted to Sergeant.

She wrote a letter to her sister, saying, "Sometimes, I'm so angry, I can't even breathe." She continued to kill Nazis and grow her reputation as a tank commander. But her luck ran out on January 17, 1944, during the Leningrad-Novgorod Offensive. Once again, she unleashed enough firepower to do some damage to the Nazi cause; but also, once again, her tank was damaged, and, once again, she got out to make repairs, and did. This time, while climbing back in, she was struck in the head by a mortar fragment. She was taken to a hospital in Smolensk, and survived until March 15, dying at the age of 38. Mariya Oktyabrskaya was posthumously awarded her country's highest honor: "Hero of the Soviet Union."

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October 21, 1943 was a Thursday. Baseball season had ended 10 days earlier, with the New York Yankees defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season was 9 days away from starting.

There was 1 football game that day, and it was a major college rivalry: The University of South Carolina beat in-State rival Clemson, 33-6 at Carolina Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina. Built in 1934, it was renamed Williams-Brice Stadium in 1972.