For Battle Merit

A state award of the USSR, issued for skilled, proactive, and courageous actions involving life-threatening risk, contributed to the success of combat operations against the enemies of the Soviet state. The third most widely awarded Soviet military decoration: 5.200.000 medals were awarded. There are no inscriptions or images on the front. On the reverse, the award number is engraved horizontally near the bottom. The medal was made of 925 sterling silver.

Despite being named “For Battle Merit,” it was sometimes awarded for excellent non-combat service, like maintaining equipment, logistics work, or keeping communication lines running. Because of this, people joked that you could earn it for “keeping the samovar hot” in the rear.

Interesting facts

The medal had a controversial reputation and was sometimes the subject of inappropriate jokes. There was a partially justified prejudice that it was awarded to “field wives”. As a result, many women were embarrassed to wear this medal openly after the war.

Citations from the book “And the Dawns Here Are Loud: The Female Face of War” by Artem Drabkin (2012).

At the same time, women were constantly subjected to harassment, especially from commanders. Zoya Alexandrova remembers: “I ended up in the 251st Tank Regiment. But it wasn’t by chance — as it turned out, I was ‘assigned’ to the deputy commander for political affairs, Popukin. That’s when I started to hate political officers.” The harassment followed a typical pattern: a girl would be summoned to the commander’s dugout in the evening under the pretence of receiving orders. Knowing this, some girls replaced buttons on their pants with drawstrings — you could only get them off by cutting them. Of course, women always had a way out — getting pregnant. In such cases, they would be discharged from the army by the sixth month.

Aviation technician Nina Kunitzina recalls: “My dear mother wrote me: ‘Sweet daughter, your girlfriends have come home, having babies, but why are you still there? Come home, I won’t scold you for having a child.’ Some did just that, while others found themselves a ‘protector’ with big stars and became field wives.”

Tankman Vasily Bryukhov explains: “Imagine — 1200 men in our brigade. All young. All flirting. And just sixteen girls. One doesn’t like this one, and another turns down that one, but someone likes someone, and they start dating and then living together. The rest were just jealous. The envy of those who “didn’t get lucky” knew no bounds. They made up crude jokes: “Ivan gets a dick in the ass for an attack, Mashka gets the ‘Red Star’ for her pussy.” They nicknamed the Medal for Combat Merit, often awarded to officers’ girlfriends, as the “Medal for Sexual Effort.”

Zoya Alexandrova recalls: “My future husband, a reconnaissance platoon commander, sat me by a table in a bathhouse. He crossed his legs, cigarette in hand, very gentlemanly. He started asking who I was and where I was from. ‘Got any medals?’ — ‘Yes.’ — ‘Which one?’ — ‘For Combat Merit.’ — ‘Ahhhh…’ After the war, he told me: ‘At first, we thought you’d sinned a lot and came to us to repent.’”