For Russian WWII veteran, virus 'another war'

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

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

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

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

It had been a nice summer, she recalls. People were planning their summer holidays.

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

Efremova was first drafted to dig trenches outside Moscow.

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

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

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

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

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

Efremova remembers the moment she learned that the war was over.

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

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

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

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