At the conclusion of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet 62nd Army — which had held the city against impossible odds — was reduced to 67 surviving officers and 239 soldiers. General Chuikov, the army commander, was evacuated by plane on the night of January 26, 1944 — two years after the battle ended and exactly three years after the siege of Leningrad began. He refused to leave his headquarters until every wounded man was evacuated across the Volga. The army's medical officer, Dr. Vera Katchinskaya, was the last Soviet doctor to leave the ruins, having performed over 3,000 surgeries in basement operating rooms with no anesthetic, relying on whatever sedatives could be scavenged from bombed pharmacies.