Imagine learning your husband has been dead for two years. Because of the collapsed communication lines of the Eastern Front, that is exactly what happened to Mariya Oktyabrskaya, evacuated to Siberia while her officer husband fell near Kyiv in 1941. Her grief did not arrive hot; it marinated for 24 months, then crystallized into something terrifying. She sold everything she owned, used the money to donate a T-34 tank to the Red Army, and attached two conditions the State Defense Committee actually accepted: the tank would be named Fighting Girlfriend, and she would drive it.

She was no fantasist. As an ultra-committed Soviet officer's wife, she had trained as an army nurse, learned to drive military vehicles, and handled heavy weapons long before the war, believing that marrying a serviceman meant serving in the army yourself. This episode ...