: The Soviet schoolgirl "took the heights": learned to ride a horse, successfully passed exams, became a Komsomol member. When the war began, she took her last height: sacrificing herself, raised the soldiers to attack.

The division of the retelling into chapters is conditional.

First height. Astride a horse

The real name of Guli Koroleva is Marionella. They called the girl a ghoul when she was not even a year old for the fact that the little girl spent all day publishing something like a "guttural dove coo." Gradually, this nickname replaced her name.

Gulya grew mobile, active and brave. Her mother Zoya Mikhailovna worked at Mosfilm. The directors who came to visit liked Gulina "sharp fun", and gradually the girl began to act in films.

At the age of six, Gulya was already able to read, but Zoya Mikhailovna decided that it was too early to send her to school, and arranged her daughter in a group with an old French teacher. By the end of winter, Gulya learned to read and write in French. To read poems in a foreign language, Gulya considered it too childish, so in the spring she went to school herself and enrolled in first grade.

At the end of the first school year, Gulya was ill with scarlet fever, and then Zoya Mikhailovna was sent on a business trip to Armenia, and she took her daughter with her. Soon, all the boys who lived on the street where Gulya settled down, respected the girl for taming the big and vicious watchdog that everyone was afraid of. In Armenia, Gulya often recalled Eric.

A year later, Zoya Mikhailovna took Gulya to the orphanage of the MOPR (International Organization for Assistance to the Fighters of the Revolution), where the girl met the children of revolutionary heroes from different countries. Some of them were orphans, while others were in prison.

Gulya was allowed to stay in the orphanage, and a week later "she already spoke a little in all languages." There, the girl was solemnly accepted into pioneers.

At the age of twelve, Gulya and her mother moved to Odessa, where she played her first major role in the movie - the fearless partisan daughter. During the filming, she learned to ride without a saddle and made the stubborn horse jump over an obstacle. This was the first height in the life of Guli.

Second height. Excellent exams

After filming, Gulya and Zoya Mikhailovna remained to live in Odessa. The girl had to get used to the new school, she missed Moscow and her father. Classmates became friends with her when they learned that Gulya is a real actress.

Before Gulya got used to the new school, she had to move to Kiev, where the filming of the new film began. This time, the girl played the granddaughter of an old miner. For good work in the cinema, Gulya was awarded a library and a huge aquarium, but the girl asked for a small wristwatch instead of an aquarium.

The next movie, in which Gulya played, was shot "among the spurs of the Carpathians, on the green shores of the Bug." Returning, she fell ill. Due to filming and illness, Gulya completely abandoned her studies and began to lag far behind. Zoya Mikhailovna invited her daughter to hire a tutor, but she refused and made up for several months.

Eternally catching up, catching up, going back, learning what others have long learned, for this, in fact, it took a lot of endurance and patience.

In the summer, the thirteen-year-old Gulya successfully passed the exams and moved to eighth grade. This was her second height.

Third height. Joining the Komsomol

For excellent exams Gulu was waiting for a reward - a trip to Artek.She got into a special shift, where "almost all the guys were rewarded with tickets for some merit to the country." About many girls read in the newspapers.

One day, pioneer leaders led the children on a campaign to the top of Ayu-Dag. At night, Gulya decided to test herself for courage, left alone in the woods, got lost and was searched for a long time by the whole detachment, and then severely reported to the whole camp. Then a movie was brought to Artek with Gulya in the title role, and the girl was forgiven.

After the rest, Gulya went with the guys to Moscow, where the pioneers of Artek met with the Soviet government, and the girl saw her father and Eric. Returning to Odessa, Gulya again plunged into school and became a counselor on October, but then Zoya Mikhailovna was again transferred to work in Kiev.

A new room was allocated in Gule's new apartment. Life began to improve, but then a neglected disease woke up. Zoya Mikhailovna sent her daughter to a sanatorium on the Odessa estuary. There she made friends with her peer Mirra Garbel and for a long time was at enmity with a strict nurse who insisted on following the regime.

In the sanatorium, children from Spain rested. Gulya quickly made friends with them and spent all her money on gifts. I had to ask my parents to send money for a ticket. By the end of the treatment, Gulya realized that the strict nurse was right, wrote her an apology letter and decided to learn how to control herself.

The habit of self-discipline of Gulya was not given; she was often accused of unreasoned acts before the class. Because of this, Zoya Mikhailovna did not let her daughter go to Moscow for the winter holidays.

The right to joy must first be earned.

To instill discipline, Gulya decided to go to military school. They took there only those involved in sports. Gulya got a haircut "under the boy", enrolled in a group of jumpers in the water and changed her lifestyle - now she tidied up her room, helped the domestic worker and was never late for anywhere.

At school, they noticed that Gulya had changed for the better, and accepted her into the Komsomol. So she took her third height.

Fourth height. The battle of Stalingrad

Gulu was not accepted to the military school. The girl continued to be friends with Mirra, although a frivolous classmate tried to quarrel them. By the summer, Gulya learned to jump from a ten-meter tower, won the competition and successfully moved to the tenth grade.

After graduating from school, Gulya decided to enter the Irrigation and Reclamation Institute and go to the desert to fight with the sands. This decision was influenced by my acquaintance with the young landowner Sergey, in whom Gulya fell in love. A year later they got married. In the same year, the Great Patriotic War began.

Pregnant Gulya, along with Zoya Mikhailovna, managed to leave Kiev for Ufa, where her son Sasha was born. For a bright crest on the top of the head, Gulya nicknamed the boy the Hedgehog.

Gulya loved her son, but could not stay idle, watching the fascists occupy one city after another. She was worried about Mirra and Eric. And Gulya decided that it was better not to live for Hedgehog, but to die, protecting him.

Soon, Gulya went to work at the hospital, where she read aloud to the wounded and wrote letters for them. On the day that Soviet troops won their first victory near Moscow, Gulya learned that her husband, Sergei, was killed by a shell fragment. At that moment she decided to go to the front.

In the spring, when her son grew up a little, Gulya went to the headquarters of the 214th Infantry Division and she was "enrolled in the health battalion and also was accepted into the agitation brigade of the political department of the division as an artist."

On the way to the front, Gulya made friends with the nurses Luda and Asya.

The troops of the reserve army moved to the Volga and Don and took up defense on the Solon River.

There were enough cases in the hospital, but Gulya immediately asked the regiment commander Ivan Fedorovich Khokhlov to send her to the front line and got her way.

In the first battle, Gulya was frightened, but tried to overcome her fear.

There is a dark, blind force in a person that can make him run away from the battlefield, but there is also something stronger than this blind greed for life, and this is a rational will.

Heavy fighting for Don began. After each battle, Gulya picked up the wounded and drove to the hospital, and during rare breaks she wrote letters to her mother, father and Eric, who also fought.

In one of the letters, she told Zoe Mikhailovna how she stepped on a Molotov cocktail, it caught fire and Gulya, engulfed in flames, went to the German trenches. Since then, the legend “about a girl who“ doesn’t burn in a fire ”” went along the fronts, someone even composed a song about a “fiery girl”.

When parts of the 214th division left the west bank of the Don, Gulya swam across the icy river for 60 wounded soldiers. Then the division received an order to destroy the fascist crossing across the Don and in August joined the battle. The order was executed, but there was no power left for the retreat. A new order arrived: stand to death.

During the fighting, Gulya became even closer to Luda and Asya, and Khokhlov’s regiment became her family. When Gule was offered to work as a secretary in the political department of the division or go to study in Moscow, the girl chose the third option - she remained in her regiment. Soon, the weak and fragile Asya died in battle.

Gulya continued to fight, went to reconnaissance several times. In October, she was awarded the Order of the Fighting Red Banner. Then the offensive began. The division was ordered to break through the enemy defenses in the area of ​​56.8.

The battle for heights lasted all day. By evening, the battalion in which Gulya was, was cut off from the division. By morning, reinforcements were still far away, and the Nazis were pressing on, trying to recapture the hard-won height. And then the wounded Gulya raised the surviving fighters to attack, she went ahead and died after a few steps.

- Comrades! .. I am the first to storm! Who is following me? Go on the attack! For the motherland!
- Go ahead! - Picked up one voice.
- For the Motherland! - echoed dozens of voices.

The soldiers rushed to the enemy to avenge Gulya. So the last height in Gulina’s life was won.

Gulya was buried on the banks of the Don. Soon, an obelisk grew on her grave, and a memorial plaque appeared in Artek, where she was resting. After the war, Zoya Mikhailovna and Hedgehog moved to Moscow. The boy grew up, became a doctor and settled in Kiev. Eric, a childhood friend of Guli, went through the whole war, reached Prague, became the “knight of many orders”.

The retelling is based on the 1975 edition.