As chief commander of the artillery within the 19th Army of the Soviet Union in July 1941, Kamera lost contact with the 19th Army during operations near Smolensk, but succeeded in assisting Konstantin Rokossovsky's improvized counterattack against the advancing forces of Germany's Army Group Center at the heights of Yartsevo in Smolensk Oblast.
Her first husband was the composer Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin, who was killed at the front near Yartsevo in 1941 after the death of their infant son (their daughter Tatyana 1940-1974 became a poet and translator), a double tragedy that left her devastated.
Yartsevo |