Line #59 Webcomic/KatushaGirlSoldierOfTheGreatPatrioticWar


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3	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/katusha.jpg]]
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5	->''No one was safe. Innocence counted for nothing. The very young and the very old suffered as much, if not more, than the soldiers in the field. In this conflict, Soviet '''women''' fought--and sometimes died--beside their men. They served as fighter pilots and scouts. Some were machine gunners and communications experts. Others were medics and snipers......and some, like me, rode the weapon that, more than any other, won the war on the Eastern Front-- the '''tank.''' My name is Ekaterina Andreaevna Tymoshenko, and this is my story.''
6	-->-- '''Opening narration'''
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8	Written and drawn by Wayne Vansant, a veteran of ''The 'Nam'' and other realistic military comics, ''Katusha'' tells the story of a young Ukrainian girl and her family living in Kiev when Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union. After the Germans occupy Ukraine, she joins [[LaResistance a band of partisans]] led by her Uncle Taras, an escaped political prisoner, and eventually ends up as a tank commander in the [[RedsWithRockets Red Army]].
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10	As of 2019, ''Katusha'' is no longer a webcomic, but a 585-page print volume containing the entire series is available.
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12	----
13	!!This comic provides examples of:
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15	* AnyoneCanDie: it is the Russian Front in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, after all
16	** WouldNotShootACivilian: averted: the Germans are quite enthusiastic about the practice
17	** ...and so are the Soviets--even if it's their own civilians
18	* BeenThereShapedHistory:
19	** Katusha's brigade participates in Operation Uranus, the encirclement of Stalingrad, capturing the bridge at Kalach-na-Don.
20	** When the Germans launch the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk Kursk offensive]], Katusha's tank brigade is far away from the main action, held in reserve in a small town nobody's ever heard of called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Prokhorovka Prokhorovka]].
21	** The brigade later participates in the recapture of Kiev and the final drive on Berlin.
22	* BewareTheQuietOnes: Milla. She has a dark side, which the war brings out.
23	* ButtMonkey: Older sister Natasha. Her JerkAss husband the Party ''apparatchik'' looks down on her family, is carrying on an affair, and [[DomesticAbuse beats her up now and then]]. As the Germans are approaching Kiev, he [[DirtyCoward abandons her and their son]]. Then [[spoiler: her son is lost and believed dead after the Germans destroy her grandmother's village]] and she [[spoiler: loses an eye]], and then [[spoiler: is executed as a hostage in reprisal for the murder of a German soldier]].
24	%%* CharacterNarrator: Katusha
25	%%* TheCharmer: Uncle Taras
26	%%* ChildrenAreInnocent: true of the main characters at the beginning of the war, but very quickly subverted
27	* ChildSoldiers: Katusha, her sister Milla, younger brother Vadim, and best friend Zhenya.
28	** ChildrenForcedToKill: After Uncle Taras realizes that Katusha is shooting enthusiastically in combat but not hitting anyone, he goes to considerable lengths to [[GainingTheWillToKill condition her to fire at human targets accurately]]. This leads to BleedEmAndWeep after Katusha shoots a German infantryman in an ambush and Taras encourages her to loot the body.
29	--> '''Uncle Taras:''' Well, Katusha? He's yours. Anything of his you want, you had best get it now.
30	--> '''Katusha:''' I think I've taken all of his that I can.
31	* DarkAndTroubledPast:
32	** Uncle Taras, a Ukranian nationalist who [[WanderingTheEarth wandered the Earth]] after the Russian Civil War.
33	** Milla was a StreetUrchin adopted by the Tymoshenkos several years before the war, after Katusha's father found her in a railyard, looking for food. [[spoiler:The rest of her family died in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor the Holodomor]], "a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932 and 1933 that killed an estimated 2.5–7.5 million Ukrainians, with millions more counted in demographic estimates."]]
34	* DeathSeeker: Captain Kovchenko, [[spoiler:whose wife and daughters died in the siege of Leningrad]], has a touch of this during the battles near Kursk.
35	* DiggingYourselfDeeper: Katusha's attempts at complimenting Captain Kovchenko. Her first conversation past their meeting was finding out he was a pianist and asking if he would be able to play a concert, [[spoiler:only for him to reveal [[{{Fingore}} two missing fingers]] on his left hand.]] It happens again next chapter when Katusha learns he was married and says that their combat action would be something Kovchenko could write home about, [[spoiler:only for him reply that [[FromBadToWorse his family is dead.]]]]
36	* DressingAsTheEnemy: in order to capture the bridge at Kalach-na-Don by surprise, Katusha's brigade puts captured German tanks at the head of the column and drives up to it as if they were a German unit. [[TruthInTelevision This really happened]]: you can read about it [[http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=1678 here]].
37	* AFatherToHisMen:
38	** Colonel Nozdrin, the tank brigade commander
39	** Captain Kovchenko, commander of the infantry battalion that works closely with Nozdrin's brigade
40	* EarlyBirdCameo: Captain Nikolay Kovchenko was mentioned early on in Chapter 2, but made his first appearance in Chapter 7.
41	* FromBadToWorse: Having suffered opression under Soviet rule, many Ukranians (including nationalists like Taras) welcomed the invading Germans as liberators. That didn't last long.
42	* HistoricalPersonPunchline: Katusha and Milla get travel passes signed by a senior officer who owes their father a favor. They are amazed at how deferential the NKVD are to them at checkpoints. It's because the travel passes were signed by none other than [[spoiler: Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev]].
43	* InMediasRes: The first book starts in April of 1945, then [[{{Flashback}} flashes back]] to the day before the invasion.
44	* InSeriesNickname: "Katusha" is the diminutive of the character's given name, Ekaterina. (She's also occasionally referred to as "Katya.") Doubles as a MeaningfulName:
45	** "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha_%28song%29 Katusha]]" (sometimes spelled "Katyusha") was a popular song in the Soviet Union during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. As Website/TheOtherWiki relates, "It gained fame during World War II as an inspiration to defend one's land from the enemy."
46	** It was also the nickname of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyusha_rocket_launcher truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher]] used for [[MacrossMissileMassacre saturation barrages]].
47	* ItsPersonal: For pretty much all of the main characters. Katusha gets hit with it last though.
48	* LadyOfWar: Katusha becomes one over the course of the story
49	* LaResistance: The partisans that formed up against the German forces, some of whom continued fighting against the returning Soviets.
50	* TheNeidermeyer:
51	** Katusha's brother-in-law Sasha, a Communist party official who enjoys lording over everyone else. When the Germans close in on Kiev, [[DirtyCoward he leaves town, abandoning his wife and son]].
52	** Prikip Honshar, a schoolyard bully who becomes an enthusiastic member of the ''Sicha''--and [[DirtyCoward just as enthusiastically runs away]] when confronted with a real fight
53	* NoodleIncident: what was Uncle Taras doing for all those years during and after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI?
54	* PayEvilUntoEvil: What Zhenya does to Honshar after [[spoiler: he tortures and murders an old rabbi and his pregnant daughter]].
55	* SecretPolice: At the beginning of the story, Uncle Taras is a prisoner of the [=NKVD=].
56	* TankGoodness: The whole series rides itself on the tanks, mainly the Soviets' T-34.
57	* TooDumbToLive:
58	** The Russian officer who stands a little too close to the railroad bridge he's blowing up.
59	** The German reconnaissance trooper who dismounts from his halftrack to steal a basket of food from an old Russian civillian, thereby leading his squad into an ambush.
60	* TrainingThePeacefulVillagers: Uncle Taras, a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI veteran, does this for the partisans
61	* TruthInTelevision: The whole book is meticulously researched and accurately drawn. The battles and atrocities shown are (or are based upon) real events.
62	* VeteranInstructor: Captains Kovchenko and Raskov fill this role at the training area in Tankograd
63	%%* WarIsHell: It's a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII story after all.
64	* WrenchWench: Milla, who learned to drive a tractor at age 14 (or so) and has a real talent for vehicle maintenance.
65	* ZergRush: How the T-34s take on the Tigers at the battle of Prokhorovka. This is TruthInTelevision.

Context Webcomic / KatushaGirlSoldierOfTheGreatPatrioticWar