Марьяша Игдалова (Igdalova)

https://www.molodguard.ru/heroes2520.htm Maria Mikhailovna Igdalova (maiden Kulmas) was born on March 23, 1920 in Opochka, Russia. Graduating in Leningrad, she worked as a draftsman. Immediately after the start of war Igdalova and her Komsomol brigade were assigned to work at the Gorky Tank Factory. The war scattered and destroyed a large and happy family. Maria's parents were shot in Opochka, three brothers went to the front and did not return. In June 1941, Maria, as part of a group of design specialists, was sent to Gorky for a tank plant named after Stalin. It was a government responsible task, the Komsomol members were sent on a business trip. Having completed the government task, with great difficulty they returned to Leningrad. The stations and trains were already crowded with evacuated children. They drove from Gorky in freight cars along with horses. 

The plant "Progress", where Mary worked, was evacuated at the very beginning of the war. She was enrolled in the pyrotechnic laboratory, which was located on the Vyborg side. At work went on foot - the path is not close, as Mary lived in the center of the city - on the corner of Nevsky and Fontanka.

Maria Mikhaylovna with excitement told a terrible story, the witness of which was she personally. Passing once again along Pestel Street, she saw the big woods with the naked dead bodies piled on them. She was numb with horror, when she saw that corpses were carved out parts of the body. Long stood at the wagon without strength, froze with horror and fear. And when she came to work, she was not recognized - she turned gray. A few days after what she saw, she stayed at work, did not go home to spend the night, and then walked around Pestel Street, afraid to meet again with a terrible cart.

In the spring of 1942, they increased the ration of bread, and also gave the first rate of butter. "Only butter tried," says Maria Mikhailovna, "a hungry faint happened, lost consciousness. The sisters could not bring me to life. Deciding that I was dead, wrapped in oilcloth, carried to the kitchen. " Maria saved the apartment owner. The relative with whom Maria lived, Ts. I. Kopylova, worked as a sister-hostess in the Military Medical Academy. She unfolded an oilcloth bag, felt her pulse, realizing that Maria was still alive, warmed the water, put the patient in a trough with warm water. The chief doctor of the clinic allowed, and she brought a spoonful of rice and a bacteriophage from the clinic. After the measures taken, Maria regained consciousness. I recovered a long time, I learned to walk again.

In April 1942 the military enlistment office sent Maria together with other designers to the school of junior aviation specialists. On May 1, after short-term courses, the group was at the airbase of the 13th Air Army of the Leningrad Front, which was located at the Commandant's Airfield.

"Now in the territory of the Commandant's airfield there is a large residential microdistrict, there is a museum-museum of our army in school No. 66," the junior sergeant of the 1st Red Banner Air Base of the 13th Air Army of the Leningrad Front, Maria Mikhailovna Igdalova, says with pride.

At the repair base, planes that were downed by the fascists were being repaired. A defective statement was made. Every detail, every sector of the broken plane was prepared for repair by draftsmen and designers. The planes re-painted, smoked, and prepared new numbers. Worked for twenty, and sometimes, and thirty hours, tired. Served in the army, Maria Mikhailovna was until July 1945.

The war M. Kalvas-Igdalova finished disabled. After the end of the war, it was difficult to get a job, interfering with the illnesses acquired in the blockade. Between 1948 and 1953, the hospital lay in every two to three months. I endured a lot, suffered. But she, having lost her parents, three brothers during the war, having buried her husband, brother and sister after her war, lost her health, gave her youth to the struggle for the freedom of her country, did not lose strong-willed qualities, self-control, and most importantly - did not become stony. She knows how to find a kind word and cheer up a smile, she is always ready to help people

Maria Mihailovna is an activist of the Society for the Disabled of the Petrogradsky District, has the letters of encouragement from the Society for Conservation of Nature, the Council of Veterans. These are all the awards received in peacetime, there are many of them. She's a veteran of work. When she made out her pension, it turned out that, despite her illness, she had worked for about fifty years!

At parting, Maria Mikhailovna still got courage and put on her jacket with the awards of the Great Patriotic War. Order of the Patriotic War II degree, the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad", "For the victory over Germany". "For valor and courage", Zhukov medal, "Frontier" sign, and the sign "Defender of the Leningrad sky". Very rewards go to her pretty face!