A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 18

This is the 15th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story idea: “Mariya Oktyabrskaya: The Fighting Girlfriend.”

The United States got into World War II relatively late, but when it did, it was all hands on deck. Large numbers of young men shipped off to the European and Pacific theaters to fight, leaving a labor vacuum at home. Traditional gender roles in the workforce made way for necessity, and women often picked up the mantle typically carried by men at the time, taking factory jobs and giving rise to the “Rosie the Riveter” ideal.

In Eurasia, however, things were decidedly more f*cked up. With the Eastern Front bringing Hitler’s army to the Russki motherland, Russian women and kids sometimes had to fill the shoes of their dead fathers, brothers, and husbands. That could mean laboring to support the war machine, but it could also mean sniping SS officers and whipping molotov cocktails at half-tracks.

When Mariya Oktyabrskaya lost her husband at the hands of the Germans, she didn’t join the war effort by swinging a hammer or sickle, and her rage was too big for small arms like the Mosin-Nagant rifle. Mariya instead sold all her stuff, donated her life savings to the Red Army, and wrote a letter to Stalin asking for two things in return: a tank, and orders to drive that tank to the front lines. Uncle Joe said, “Da.”

There’s the 1995 movie called Tank Girl.

Well, Mariya Oktyabrskaya is a REAL Tank Girl. Here’s a letter she sent to Joseph Stalin:

“My husband was killed in action defending the motherland. I want revenge on the fascist dogs for his death and for the death of Soviet people tortured by the fascist barbarians. For this purpose, I’ve deposited all my personal savings — 50,000 rubles — to the National Bank in order to build a tank. I kindly ask to name the tank ‘Fighting Girlfriend’ and to send me to the frontline as a driver of said tank.”

And here’s just a bit of what she accomplished at the controls of her tank.

Mariya and her Fighting Girlfriend T-34 busted out, killing German soldiers and destroying anti-tank guns and machine gun nests. But there’s a reason tanks are generally considered to be death traps — they’re big targets. Sure enough, Fighting Girlfriend took a hit. Mariya was ordered to stay inside the tank, but she was just so mad at everything in the g*ddamn world that she climbed out of the tank, fixed it (remember: she was also a mechanic), got back in, and kept fighting.

Having disobeyed orders, killed a bunch of people, and put herself in grave danger, Mariya had finally won the respect of her male comrades. Her new nickname: “Mother.” Freudian stuff. More important than getting the boys to respect her was the rank up: Mariya made sergeant.

A month later, she gave an encore performance at Novoye Selo in Vitebsk: she used her tank to attack German defensive positions until it was disabled by enemy fire (this time, an artillery shell), hopped out, fixed the damage, then kept the fight going.

Enough said. This has everything you need for a kick-ass movie.

There’s my 18th story idea this month.

Previous articles in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17

Here are links to previous series:

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2018)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2019)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2020)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2021)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2022)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2023)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2024)

Note: The articles from 2010–2016 have corrupted URLs. I am in the process of cleaning those up.

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.