Danutė Stanelienė
Danutė Stanelienė (20 April 1922 – 8 August 1994) was a machine gunner in the 167th Infantry Regiment of the 16th Lithuanian Rifle Division during World War II. On 24 March 1945, she became the first woman (of only four) to be awarded the Order of Glory 1st class. Early life Stanelienė was born on 20 April 1922 to a Lithuanian peasant family in village, Lithuania. Her mother died when she was just two years old, but her father later remarried. After completing her third grade of school she took care of her younger siblings from her father's second marriage in addition to working in agriculture. In 1940, she began working at a printing house; and after the start of the war, she was evacuated from the front to Nizhny Novgorod where she worked at a factory. In 1944, she became a member of the Communist Party. Military career After voluntarily enlisting in the Red Army in February 1942 she began serving in a medical unit before transferring to become a cook. While she was a cook she met female machine gunner Lena Sergeyeva. Sergeyeva taught her how to fire a machine gun and told her about female machine gunners