Origins, part 1

June 25th, 1941
Medical Officer Osipenko, personal journal

My team and I have been sent into the rural kolkhoz to begin project "Svantevit" since the fighting erupted. A few days ago on the 22nd, the German army invaded. Roughly three million Wehrmacht troops marched into our homeland with their bombers and panzer tanks in front. A hell of our own making, the pact we had made with those fascist devils lasted no more than two years. Already they have conquered Lithuania and crossed the River Neman, within striking distance to Leningrad. They have pushed more than fifty miles into the Motherland and met with little to no resistance I am told. Our air force was completely ineffective to stop them and our armor divisions, lacking fuel, ammunition and coordination, have been crippled. To make matters worse, our own people have begun to turn on us and join with the fascists. Traitors! Every one of them should be shot in the back of the head when we finally drive the Germans out. A counter-offensive from Moscow is bound to occur any day now that will stagger these Hun dogs! My blood boils at their betrayal! I wish that I were at the front lines, helping to drive them back and bring them to heel. Instead I find myself in this miserable farmland, far from the combat and the bloodshed, surrounded by buzzing flies and the smell of dung. I am told that the actions my team and I are doing is vital to the war effort in some way but this is little solace. If this is true then I have not been able to guess exactly how.

This collective farming community is like any of the other three we have visited in the last few days and nights. Peasants living in wooden huts and tilling the village fields. This particular one was home to about 225 people in all, with a few draught animals. The primary crops being onions and potatoes. I have seen enough of these places to last a lifetime. The others are setting up the tables and chairs for the first round of injections. Everything is to be meticulously recorded for Moscow. So many records. So much paperwork. Every name, every age, every gender, every reaction no matter how small or trivial...everything goes into the records. These farmers and peasants have been told that they are receiving a vitamin shot to protect them from the onset of typhus. To be honest, I have no idea what it is that we are injecting them with. Something the scientists in Moscow have provided for us that is apparently top secret. So much so that the medical teams administering it are not on a need to know basis. I cannot even tell you what kind of reaction they are looking for. In all the seven-hundred or so injections we have given thus far, there has not been a single instance of anything unusual. The peasants are obviously wary, if not afraid but no one has given us any resistance. The soldiers that are with us all but ensure that. We have been ordered to shoot anyone who refuses or becomes disorderly and the villagers seem to respect if not fear our authority on this. Ours is the will of the Party and General Secretary Stalin.

I have taken a moment to smoke a cigarette and admire the countryside. I must candidly admit that it is beautiful here, especially in the springtime. It is almost enough to make me forget that even now my fellow countrymen are falling and dying in combat with Hitler's forces. I am admiring a rather beautiful young farmhand as she moves past me. Her skin is smooth and does not yet have that weathered look from working the land under the hot sun for long hours on end. In a few years I am sure she will look a decade older in this life and be quite indistinguishable from all peasant women. Unusually her hair is quite black, and cut short...probably as to not interfere with her duties or to avoid unnecessary and unwanted attention from the men-folk. If the latter it has failed, almost having a strangely alluring quality. She is struggling to carry two heavy buckets of water from the well up the road and when she sees me she is quite confused. I step off the road to let her pass. As she walks by me she asks me what is going on and why are all these soldiers and doctors up ahead. I give her the well-rehearsed story of typhus and that she too has to line up to receive her vitamin booster. The girl nods and continues up the road, still confused, but she places her buckets off to the side of the road and moves to get in line all the same.

I ask her what is her name and she turns and tells me it is Olga. I smile and nod, watching her take her place in line with the other peasants. I chuckle quietly at some irony.

The name Olga means "blessed".

I fear none of us will be in the days to come.


To be continued...

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First in a series of fantastic renders created by my partner telling the origin of the Soviet Superwoman from the eyes of Medical Officer Georgi Osipenko. Look how young she is...and having trouble carrying buckets of water! Magnificent work my friend, thank you again!

The future Soviet Superwoman, Georgi Osipenko and the text are all my creations and property.

Though technically not material, I hope since it is an origin story it can slide in so those following the Group can read and see it.