I fought the Nazis when I was Irina's age... but I'm so proud of her and I want her to marry Cristiano Ronaldo

Posted Tuesday, May 10, 2011 by The Sun

From Russia with love ... Irina Shayk and Cristiano Ronaldo on holiday in the Maldives

She says: "I was training to be a teacher when I first asked to join up. My father was reported as missing in Leningrad - later we learned he had died - and at first they refused, saying I should study at the Air Force Academy.

"So I started studying and eventually joined the front in 1944."

Natalya Kodakova is the author of a book on wartime heroes which features Galina. She says: "This was no ordinary training - it was the military and aviation school of the intelligence services.

"When she graduated with honours in 1944 she was sent to the front as part of the intelligence department."

At the tail end of her teens Galina arrived in Romania as a spy whose task was to make maps from pictures taken by reconnaissance aircraft, pinpointing spots with Fascist troops and machines so they could be destroyed.

She recalls: "We drove along war-devastated roads in a special car equipped as a laboratory and were under frequent bombardment. There were three girls and a driver, though sometimes I drove the car.

"We developed and reconstructed the films, decrypted them, made maps and sent them to headquarters.

"Some days we were so busy we didn't leave our car at all."

The war took Galina through Bucharest, Budapest and on to Vienna.

Pointing to a portrait on her wall, close to a picture of Irina, she says: "This is a picture of me when I was 20. I'd already seen the horrors of war by then, travelling through these east European countries.

"Everybody feared they would die in the next minute or the next day. That's how it was. But I think Irina would cope with such a task if that was what was thrown at her - she's a courageous girl."

She pauses and chuckles before adding: "I wore a military shirt and a uniformed skirt or trousers. She wears other clothes. She has long hair but I had to have a short cut because of conditions in the war. It was easier to handle and we were doing everything on the go.

"Putting on make-up? No way. I was happy to be able to wash my face in an ice hole, in freezing water. But still, war or no war, we were girls and we tried to be beautiful."

Galina was in Vienna when she thought the end had come. She says: "I was woken one night by such intense gunfire that I felt the Germans had breached our lines. But it turned out it was our soldiers firing into the air and shouting ecstatically, 'Victory! Victory!' The war was over."