For Russian WWII veteran, virus 'another war'

For Valentina Efremova, a 96-year-old Russian veteran of World War II, coronavirus pandemic is like going through war all over again.

"(It's) ar war, this time a biological one," she said in an interview ahe of this week's 75th anniversary of end of WWII in Europe.

Efremova served as a nurse in field hospitals throughout war and w lives with her daughter in Siberian city of Yakutsk.

She was a 17 year old high school student when Nazis suddenly attacked Soviet Union in June 1941.

It h been a nice summer, she recalls. People were planning ir summer holidays.

"And n, like a bombshell, came anuncement from Molotov ( USSR's foreign minister): on June 22, at 4am, war started. Hitler attacked us."

Efremova was first drafted to dig trenches outside Moscow.

After several weeks, she volunteered to help out army medics and started working in field hospitals on frontline.

"At first it was really hard to get used to - after all, I was just a girl," Efremova says.

"I'd never h anything to do with medicine, t to mention horror of seeing mutilated men - both young and old."

She worked as a military nurse for next four years, moving around country with her division.

She suffered three war wounds, one of which gave her a permanent limp.

Efremova remembers moment she learned that war was over.

She and her fellow nurses were having lunch near Konigsberg (currently Kaliningr) in Western Russia on May 9, 1945, when y heard gun shots.

Her first thought was that battalion was once again being attacked by Germans, but it was Russian officers who were firing shots into air to celebrate victory.

75 years on, Efremova is acutely aware of importance of this year's Victory Day commemoration - for many veterans it could be ir last one.

"We're last remaining veterans," she points out. "We won't be able to celebrate 80th anniversary."