refused. After seeing that she had completed multiple training courses, she was finally accepted into the army as a sniper and assigned to the Red Army's 25th Rifle Division. There, she became one of 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army, of whom about 500 survived the war. Although she was assigned a combat role, she was issued with just a fragmentation grenade because of weapons shortages. On 8 August 1941, a fallen comrade handed her his Mosin–Nagant model 1891 bolt-action rifle. Pavlichenko then shot her first two enemies and proved herself to her comrades. She described the event as her "baptism of fire" because that was when she officially became a sniper. Pavlichenko fought for about months during the siege of Odesa and is credited with killing 187 soldiers. She was promoted to senior sergeant in August 1941, when she added 100 more kills to her official tally. At 25, she married a fellow sniper, Alexei Kitsenko. Soon after the marriage, Kitsenko was mortally wounded by a mortar shell and died from his injuries a few days later in the hospital. When the Nazis and their Romanian allies overran Odesa on 15 October 1941, her unit was withdrawn by sea to Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula, to fight in the siege of Sevastopol. There, she trained other snipers, who were credited with killing over 100 Axis soldiers during the battle. In May 1942, newly promoted Lieutenant Pavlichenko was cited by the Southern Army Council for killing 257 Axis soldiers. The number of soldiers Pavlichenko is credited with killing during World War II was 309, including 36 Axis snipers. In June 1942, Pavlichenko was hit in the face with shrapnel from a mortar shell. When she was injured, the Soviet High Command ordered for her to be evacuated from Sevastopol via submarine. She spent around a month in the hospital. Once she had recovered from her injuries, instead of being sent back to the front, she became a propagandist for the Red Army, where she was nicknamed "Lady Death." She also trained snipers for combat duty until the end of the war in 1945. Visits to Allied countries In 1942, Pavlichenko was sent to Canada and the United States for a publicity visit as part of the Soviet Union's attempts to convince the other Allies of World War II to open a second front against Nazi Germany. When she visited