Chapter 11
1 Translator’s note – military commissariat.
2 Editor’s note – winged air force insignia.
3 Translator’s note – during the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 many Soviet pilots fought on the Republican side.
4 Translator’s note – ‘cropduster’ – a somewhat contemptuous nickname for the U-2 biplane, that was used in agricultural operations.
Chapter 12
1 Translator’s note – a most typical truck in the USSR back then – a variety of Ford trucks were built under licence.
2 Translator’s note – apparently from the coal shafts numerous in that part of the country.
Chapter 13
1 Translator’s note – a small town near Moscow.
2 Translator’s note – volunteers, home guard.
3 Translator’s note – Ivan Konev – one of the top Soviet commanders later in the war.
Chapter 15
1 Editor’s note – the most common nickname for German soldiers in Russian military slang.
2 Translator’s note – Party organizer.
3 Translator’s note – Comsomol organizer.
4 Translator’s note – a military rank for political officers.
5 Translator’s note – a common Russian nickname for artillery.
6 Translator’s note – popular Russian nickname for Messerschmitt Me/Bf 109 fighters.
7 Translator’s note – a steppe wind.
Chapter 16
1 Editor’s note – here, a nickname for M-13 truck-mounted rocket missile launch systems.
2 Translator’s note – a Soviet Republic in Central Asia, now Turkmenistan.
Chapter 17
1 Translator’s note – a Soviet-made light vehicle M-1.
2 Editor’s note – literally, ‘little buddy’.
3 Translator’s note – literally, a ‘stormtrooper’.
4 Translator’s note – a Russian proverb identical to the English “to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth”.
Chapter 18
1 Editor’s note – a diminutive form of Ilya.
2 Translator’s note – a man from Kuban, a Cossack-populated area in Southern Russia in the Kuban River basin.
Chapter 19
1 Translator’s note – a red scarf – a sign of belonging to the Pioneer organization.
2 Translator’s note – head of the teaching unit in USSR schools.
3 Translator’s note – Air Force Training Regiment.
4 Translator’s note – Ilyushin Il-2.
5 Translator’s note – referring to the use of castor oil as a laxative.
6 Translator’s note – a nickname for I-16, originating from the Russian pronunciation of I-shestnadtsat (I-16), literally, ‘a donkey’.
Chapter 20
1 Translator’s note – diminutive of Valentin.
2 Translator’s note – a city on the west shore of the Caspian Sea.
3 Translator’s note – a city on the north shore of Caspian in the mouth of the Volga.
4 Translator’s note – of the cockpit windscreen.
Chapter 21
1 Translator’s note – a smaller variety of astrakhan – originally from the Kuban Cossack province.
2 Translator’s note – a common epithet for the Soviet airmen adopted by USSR propaganda bodies during WWII.
Chapter 22
1 Translator’s note – abbreviation of the Russian words for ‘Trade With Foreigners’, a network of shops with luxury goods for foreigners and people possessing foreign currency and valuables in the pre-war USSR.
2 Translator’s note – a recreation park in Moscow.
3 Translator’s note – a large Cossack settlement.
Chapter 23
1 Editor’s note – M.Lermontov (1814-1841) is one of the most recognized Russian poets.
2 Editor’s note – A.Suvorov (1729-1800) – a famed military commander of the pre-Napoleonic era.
3 Editor’s note – ranked fourth in the list of top-scoring Soviet aces of WWII, with 56 personal and 5 or 6 shared air kills.
4 Editor’s note – junior brother, Dmitriy Glinka is ranked seventh in the list of top-scoring Soviet aces of WWII, with 50 personal air kills; elder brother, Boris Glinka, scored 30 personal and 1 shared aerial victories.
Chapter 24
1 Translator’s note – a lake in the Far East of Russia; in the summer of 1938 there was a border clash between the Soviet and the Japanese armies there.
2 Translator’s note – a colloquial form of Kirillovich, his patronym.
3 Editor’s note – a diminutive made by transforming the author’s last name to male first name.
4 Translator’s note – a special political section in the Soviet Army’s units largely involved in political control over the servicemen.
5 Translator’s note – osobyi otdel officer.
6 Translator’s note – a diminutive for Pavel.
7 Translator’s note – a suburb of Moscow.
8 Editor’s note – a nickname for German Junkers Ju 87 dive-bombers in Russian military slang.
Chapter 25
1 Translator’s note – a common Cossack address to a female from the same stanitsa.
2 Translator’s note – prominent Russian 19th Century democrats.
3 Translator’s note – a famous Russian writer in the late 19th – early 20th centuries.
4 Editor’s note – literally, ‘grey hare’; a nickname for someone with typically Russian looks.
5 Translator’s note – abbreviation for the All-Union Communist Party (of the Bolsheviks).
6 Translator’s note – leading from Vladikavkaz to Tbilisi.
Chapter 26
1 Editor’s note – the classic nickname for German Focke Wulf Fw 190 fighters in Russian military slang. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the planes of the ‘Fokker’ design.
2 Translator’s note – a network of special shops organised to supply military servicemen.
3 Translator’s note – home-made liquor or ‘moonshine’.
4 Translator’s note – a city in Siberia.
5 Abbreviation of Mobile Aviation Maintenance Workshop.
6 Translator’s note – a famous Soviet test pilot who died in a flying accident shortly before WWII.
Chapter 27
1 Anti-tank bomblets.
Chapter 28
1 Editor’s note – a line used to indicate a corresponding auxiliary branch of military service (technician-lieutenant; engineer-rear-admiral; colonel, medical service, etc.).
2 Editor’s note – the normal combat load of ammunition for the rear 12.7-mm machine-gun in an Il-2 was just 250 rounds.
3 School for Junior Aviation Specialists.
4 Translator’s note – a Soviet playwright.
5 Editor’s note – ‘The apple’, a then-famous folk dance.
6 Translator’s note – one of the most famous and emotional wartime poems in the USSR.
Chapter 29
1 Editor’s note – this is indeed true: the ratio of losses in Sturmovik pilots and gunners was about 1:5.
2 Editor’s note – this is indeed true: the ratio of losses in Sturmovik pilots and gunners was about 1:5.
Chapter 30
1 Editor’s note – in this area the historic battle of Poltava, between Peter the Great’s army and the Swedish army of Charles XII, took place in 1709.
2 Translator’s note – a deputy commander in political affairs.
3 American B-17 Flying Fortresses flying missions over Eastern Europe sometimes used Poltava.
4 Translator’s note – words of the feminine gender in Russian.
5 Translator’s note – a state-owned collective farm in the USSR.
6 Translator’s note – diminutive form of Vladimir.
7 Translator’s note – a slang word for exemption from military service.
8 Translator’s note – collective farmer.
9 Editor’s note – in
Russian, one would say ‘motherland’.
10 Translator’s note – abbreviation for the Workers and Peasants Red Army.
11 Translator’s note – one of the Soviet Marshals executed during Stalin’s purges in 1937.
12 Translator’s note – brigade commander.
13 Translator’s note – one of the senior members of the Soviet Government.
14 Translator’s note – this Army distinguished itself during the Battle of Stalingrad.
Chapter 31
1 Translator’s note – a woodland in Byelorussia.
2 Translator’s note – Polish Roman-Catholic churches.
Chapter 32
1 Translator’s note – Polish Armed Forces fighting on the Soviet-German Front.
2 Translator’s note – a Polish, Belorussian and American national hero, 1746-1817.
3 Translator’s note – mother of God.
4 Translator’s note – little Miss.
5 Translator’s note – division commander.
6 Editor’s note – another common diminutive for Anna.
7 Editor’s note – see V. Emelyanenko, Red Star against Swastika. The Story of a Soviet Pilot over the Eastern Front published in 2005 by Greenhill Books, London, UK.
8 Translator’s note – Springs.
Chapter 33
1 Auxiliary policemen.
2 Translator’s note – now Kostrzyn.
3 Abbreviated from the German word ‘Krankenrevier’ (meaning ‘sick bay’ or ‘dispensary’) this was a barrack for sick concentration camp inmates. Most of the medical personnel were inmates themselves.
4 Translator’s note – comrade.
5 Sergeant.
Chapter 34
1 Editor’s note – for many decades, the most popular Soviet newspaper.
2 Editor’s note – ‘Sister of Medicine’ is a term for nurse in the Russian language.
3 Translator’s note – abbreviation of a special security service of the Soviet Army, also nicknamed ‘Death to the Spies’.
Chapter 35
1 Translator’s note – ‘quick’ in Ukrainian.
2 Translator’s note – the rebellion of the Red Baltic Fleet naval personnel against the Bolshevik dictatorship ‘for Soviet Power without Communists’ in 1921, thwarted by Red Army troops.
3 Translator’s note – Russian steam-bath.
4 Editor’s note – Russian nickname for grandmother.
Chapter 36
1 Translator’s note – Division Commander.
Chapter 37
1 Editor’s note – where Order of Suvorov stands for the unit award (as was the practice) and Berlin is an honorary title.
2 Translator’s note – the former riding school of the Tsars in the centre of Moscow.
3 Translator’s note – policeman.
4 Translator’s note – Stalin’s younger son – an Air Force General.
5 Translator’s note – held in 1956, Stalin’s ‘excesses’ were condemned there for the first time.
6 Editor’s note – District Committee.
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Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 (Soviet Memories of War) Page 31