by Gwen C. Katz
“They thought she was a boy at first. She was wearing men’s clothes and she had short hair. They took her into a house and made the people leave. There was a light on in the window all night. Sometimes they took her outside in her underwear and made her walk around barefoot. There was snow. She never made a sound.
“In the morning they put a sign around her neck and marched her around town. There were burns and bruises on her face and blood on her fingers. They made us all come out and watch. She was brave. She didn’t cry. They made her stand on a box and put the rope around her neck and she talked to us the whole time. She said she wasn’t afraid to die. She told us to keep fighting.
“One fascist set up a camera and took pictures. The executioner yelled at him because he was being too slow and the soldier girl kept talking and threatening them. Finally he was done. Mama covered my eyes with my hands.
“After she was dead, they were very happy. They got drunk. They pulled her shirt open and stabbed her with bayonets. They were laughing. Mama wanted to take her down and bury her, but they wouldn’t let her. They said she had to stay there as an example. That’s when Mama decided we couldn’t live there anymore.”
Petya didn’t cry while he related this story, but told it matter-of-factly, as if watching a girl be executed was just part of life. I suppose, for him, it is. I wish I could pick him up and carry him away to safety, to Stakhanovo maybe, where my sister could teach him all the things he’s forgotten about being a child.
The commissar said, “What was the name of your village?”
“Petrishchevo,” said the boy.
“Petrishchevo,” echoed the commissar. “The town where Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was sent. You saw them kill her. And you said that the fascists had a camera.”
Another nod.
The commissar looked up at Vakhromov. “Do you know what this means? There are pictures of the execution. Of the war crimes they committed. We have photos of the body, but the fascists will just deny that they had anything to do with it.” And to Petya he said, “Do you think you’d know the man with the camera if you saw him again?”
Petya thought he would.
Vakhromov said, “If you are thinking of doing anything that will put this boy into more danger, I won’t allow it.”
The commissar replied, “There’s a nasty rumor about Kosmodemyanskaya going around. People are saying that she wasn’t killed by Hitlerites at all. The story is that the villagers executed her themselves because they were angry at her for burning their houses. Is that how you want her to be remembered? As an arsonist killed by her own people?”
She was an arsonist no matter what account you listen to, but I knew better than to argue with a commissar.
He went on, “Private, if those photos exist, they can prove how she died. We can put names and faces to this atrocity. The world needs to see them!”
I hope he’s just talking. He’s no commander, after all; he has no authority to send us anywhere. But I’m afraid of what he might have begun. What it might mean for Petya. What it might mean for me.
Yours,
Pasha
TWENTY-SIX
25 September 1942
Dear Pasha,
I can picture the confusion and worry that will cross your face when you open this letter and see tidy cursive instead of my usual sloppy handwriting. Your first thought will be that I’ve been killed in action. That’s what I’d think if I received this letter. Don’t worry. This letter really is from me, only a nurse is taking dictation. As to why . . . I’ll explain from the beginning.
We had just rebased to an auxiliary airfield nestled in a fortresslike gorge with only a narrow opening to the south. We hadn’t had a chance to camouflage the airfield when a squadron of Stukas bore down on us. The instant the major saw those gull-winged black silhouettes in the sky, she yelled, “Everyone in the air—now!”
The fear never goes away, but you get used to it. As that familiar wave of adrenaline hit me, I jumped into the plane and Iskra followed. Masha the armorer spun our propeller. I grabbed her arm, pulled her up after me, and lifted off as a line of cannon fire ripped up the ground behind us. The shadow of one of the attack aircraft passed over us. Its wheel spats seemed close enough to knock my head on. The other U-2s took off like a startled flock of birds. A German tail gunner opened fire on Zhigli. Gasoline sprayed her plane’s canvas side. Her fuel line was hit. My throat tightened. For a moment, I thought I would see two more friends die. And one of them, I realized at that moment, I desperately needed to talk to. I’d left something important unsaid.
Half the regiment was still on the ground, dashing for cover behind the trucks or hitting the ground where they were. The Stukas formed up for another pass. Then, mercifully, a roar of engines, and a flight of Soviet fighters soared over the trees. Cannon fire cut the air. The air was thick with planes, ours, our friends’, our enemies’.
Stukas are deadly against targets on the ground but sluggish and ungainly in air combat. A stricken one spiraled into the cliff side and exploded in a shower of torn metal, forcing the women below to duck and cover their heads. A bent wing slammed into the ground where Masha had been standing. The rest of the fascist squadron scattered. The fighters waggled their wings at us in greeting before they departed. We waved and blew them kisses.
Zhigli had maintained control. She brought her airplane limping back down, gushing gasoline like blood from a wound. Then the rest of us landed our sewing machines one at a time, looking for safe spots amid the rubble.
As I helped the trembling Masha out of the cockpit, I clapped her on the shoulder and told her, “Congratulations, now you’ve flown in combat!”
“I think I prefer to stay on the ground,” she said with a nervous laugh.
Zhigli’s shot-up plane was wheeled off to a hardstand and her mechanic replaced the fuel line by the light of a couple of flying mice placed a safe distance away from the gasoline-soaked aircraft. The damage was more serious than it initially looked. The mechanic had to fetch Ilyushina, who then sat nearby, alternately instructing and berating her, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, less for warmth than to remind everyone that she could have been sleeping if they knew how to do their jobs.
Zhigli paced around her plane impatiently. Her navigator napped.
I wanted to talk to her, but there were preflight checks to be done and flight plans to be reviewed and I didn’t have a chance.
The night’s mission was an important one. We were bombing the airfield in the occupied city of Armavir, the very airfield the fascists have been launching their attacks from. If we could put enough holes in the runway to keep their planes grounded, that might give our forces the edge they needed to kick the Wehrmacht out of its toehold in the Caucasus.
Bershanskaya’s final words to us before we departed were “Watch out. There will be flak.”
I told her, “We’ve flown over a hundred missions. What are the odds that this one will finish us off?”
Iskra said statistics don’t work that way.
We crossed the front lines low. I called down to the soldiers on the ground, “Stand firm, brothers!” and they yelled and cheered in reply.
When we got to Armavir, it was dead black except for a wooly white spot where the clouds hid the full moon. Iskra said, “We could fit in ten runs tonight at this speed,” and I remember breaking into a smirk, thinking how furious Zhigli would be at the time she was wasting.
Tanya and Vera were flying ahead of us. As they reached the parallel lines of lights that unmistakably marked an airfield, a cacophony of shells burst around them. Searchlights swung this way and that in an attempt to pin them down. Tanya banked and peeled away, the bright orange explosions following the sound of Number 9’s ticking engine. I admired the way she flew, smooth and graceful as a ballet.
I slipped Number 41 in between the beams and over the target. I could just make out the shiny snub noses of a line of Junker bombers. KG 51, I recalled from the briefing, was a bomb
er wing with the sigil of an eidelweiss. We were about to knock a few petals off that flower.
Iskra saw them too. “The nerve of them, parked on a Soviet airfield!”
I cut my engine and crept over the airfield. The gunners were still following Tanya, who dived and darted amid the deadly flowers. All this was according to plan. Our sky slugs would never survive the heavy defenses here in the Caucasus, so Bershanskaya had come up with another one of her ideas: decoys.
Yes, that is what it sounds like.
We have no radios, so there’s no way to confirm what the other pilot will do or to let her know if there’s a problem. You need to get inside the other girl’s head. Our squadron has flown so many missions together that this is second nature: I can tell when Tanya is about to climb or bank or dive before she begins. Of course there’s a major flaw to this strategy: you’d have to be crazy to actually try it. Luckily the women of the 588th have all been blessed with a complete and utter lack of better judgment—and a fierce desire to defend our friends.
A navigator needs twenty seconds to aim or she’ll miss the target and the whole sortie will be in vain. You have to defy every natural instinct in order to keep your bomber steady while shells explode next to your ears. I anxiously watched our friends’ plane evade the guns as Iskra aimed. We dropped our bombs.
The guns snapped away from Tanya and onto us. As I banked to draw them away, everything behind me grew bright. Not the clean white of an illumination flare, but a flickery red. The aircraft came around and a giant plume of thick, oily smoke met us. I turned into the wind and climbed until we were clear of it. We were over the airport again. And it was up in flames.
The pillar of smoke rose from a battery of fuel trucks, engulfed in fire. Bright yellow trails licked out from them, following the spilled gasoline as it snaked its way in patterns across the tarmac and pooled in the craters left by the other bombers in our squadron. The ground crew scrambled to put it out. Little white puffs from fire extinguishers mingled with the smoke, but when the flames didn’t subside, the crew gave up and ran.
In another instant the fire had spread to the line of aircraft. One of the hulking bombers was burning. Glass sparkled as the panels of its canopy shattered. Then the fire claimed another bomber. And it was still spreading.
I gave a whoop of excitement. Iskra’s voice came through the speaking tube. “Go, team Koroleva! Now let’s go have a victory dance at the aerodrome!”
“You got it!” I told her. Then Number 9 was beside us. Tanya saluted me.
Had the big explosion made me forget that it was my turn to act as decoy? Had I foolishly assumed that all the searchlights had been taken out in the explosion? It doesn’t matter.
One way or another, the searchlight caught me.
Every detail of Number 41 lit up in bright white, with ink-black shadows cut out in sharp relief. There was a blinding reflection off the windscreen. I instinctively held up a hand to block it. A tracer bullet hissed past me in a stripe of smoke. I bit my lip. A burst of flak fire rang out, tearing through the port wings. The U-2 faltered, the air slipping through the ragged holes. I fought to keep it level.
“We’re hit!” screamed Iskra. It was the least helpful comment she has ever made.
“I noticed!” I yelled back.
We escaped the searchlight beam, but flames were flickering around the tip of the bottom wing. They swiftly licked their way toward the fuselage, making the fragile canvas crumble away into ash. My hands clenched the controls. The voice in my head screamed, “Fire, fire, fire!”
“You have to sideslip!” said Iskra. “It’s the only way to put the fire out!”
She coughed and choked, enveloped by the plume of smoke, which had to be stinging her eyes and making it hard to breathe. She wouldn’t be able to see anything from back there. If anyone was going to land this plane, it would be me. Iskra had brought me home safely once. I had to do the same for her. But when I tried to think about flying the plane, the voice in my head shouted me down. I needed something to focus on, anything but those terrible flames.
The words found me, unsought and unbidden. Your words. “Apple and pear trees were blooming, mist creeping on the river . . .”
I let the song fill my mind and drown out the voice of terror.
And then, amid the chaos, it was like you were there in the cockpit with me. I swear I could feel you beside me, hear you breathing, calm and steady. I had a sense of your hand over mine, forcing the control stick to move. The entire lower port aileron was gone, but I had three left. I banked starboard and jammed the rudder to port. Number 41 glided sideways. The flames wavered, then flared up brighter than ever.
Our friends’ airplane was sticking close to us, even though there was nothing they could do to help. They hadn’t been hit; we’d played our role as decoys. We were losing altitude. All around us, unforgiving rocks. The only safe landing spot was our airfield.
The wing was nothing but a charred wooden frame. The fuselage was beginning to catch. I could feel heat on my leg. “Fire, fire, fire!” screamed the voice. The song returned, louder. I felt you next to me, the side of your face touching mine, your hands on my shoulders, steadying me.
My face and neck grew moist with sweat, whether from heat or fear I don’t know. I forced myself to keep my eyes on the terrain ahead. The jagged mountain that hid the airfield rose before us. I had to bring the plane around to the right, the only side from which the airfield could be approached, but the control stick kept tugging to the left. My hands ached from fighting it.
There it was, a narrow path to safety amid boulders and craters. We were going to make it. But I couldn’t keep her steady any longer. Half the control surfaces were gone. The stick in my hand did not respond. At that moment, everything was outside my control. Nothing is more terrifying for a pilot than having no control.
Number 41 rolled on its lopsided wings. It coasted along the runway, sharp rubble ripping the skeletal port wings clean off. One wheel met the ground as my cockpit erupted in flames. Iskra was already jumping free. For a moment, it seemed as though our U-2 might right itself, but then it rocked and came to a skidding halt on its side, plowing a deep furrow in the field. My head cracked against the edge of the cockpit. My vision swam with hazy colors.
When I could see again, I tried to unbuckle my harness, only to find that it was on fire. It came apart in my hands. There should have been pain, I realized abstractly as I watched the flames crawling up and down the side of my flight suit, there should have been and there wasn’t and that worried me. The choking smoke made it difficult to think. A pop and a hiss and a blinding white flash nearby. Then a green flash. I knew I needed to move, but I had lost track of which way was up. A voice, Iskra’s voice, yelled my name from nowhere in particular.
Through the fire, I could see the indistinct shape of a plane on its hardstand, and another shape bounding toward me. Strong hands grabbed me under the arms and dragged me free from the burning wreck. My rescuer threw me to the ground. She wrapped something soft around me and rolled me roughly on the grass until the flames were out.
As my shock wore off and my blurry vision cleared, I found myself wrapped in a singed blanket. Zhigli was looking down at me. And there, finally, was the pain, an agonizing searing spreading from my thigh all up and down my left side. It was a moment before I realized that I was screaming.
The next few hours were a blur. I’m in the field hospital now, half mummied in bandages. The doctor says a minute longer and I’d have lost my leg. Not that it would have mattered; a minute longer and I’d have lost the entire plane, me and Iskra with it.
It had to be burns when I finally got injured. A bullet wound I could have handled, I think, although maybe I’m only saying that because it hasn’t happened. But burns! Remember the time you touched the flame on the Primus stove, Pasha, and how it kept you up all night? Now imagine that’s running from your calf all the way to your shoulder. The word “pain” doesn’t begin to describe it. I
’ll admit I did my share of writhing and crying before morphine reduced me to a haze.
I’m trying not to look at the other patients in the ward. They make me feel like a faker. I know that’s silly considering I was literally on fire and I thought I was going to die. You can’t be dying and faking at the same time. But I’m going to walk out of here and rejoin my regiment. Most of them won’t.
My hands are blistered from touching the harness’s hot metal buckles, which is why a nurse is writing for me. The doctor won’t clear me to fly for six weeks. Six weeks! I’ll miss dozens of sorties. I don’t know how I’ll manage. But the only actual loss was Number 41. Our faithful winged friend is a charred husk, fit only to be stripped for parts. I wasn’t prepared for how hard that news hit me. We went through a lot with her.
Aside from the nurse, your letters are my only company. I’ve been spending my downtime rereading them. Our letters got us both through the war this far. You made it clear how much my letters meant to you, but I’m not sure if I ever told you how much strength yours gave me.
My eyes keep returning to your last letter, to the part about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. It’s one of those stories that you can never get out of your head. She died bravely, like a soldier. Back in Engels, I used to wonder if I would be as brave as her in the face of death. Now I know. I wasn’t stoic and silent and I don’t expect to be on the front page of Pravda, but I brought us home. I did what I needed to do. I can be proud of that.
Zoya’s story made you fear for me. But you’re a radio operator. You know everything that goes on in your area, and you’ve told me how you overhear things you shouldn’t know. The Germans know that. If they caught you, they would know how much information they could get out of you. All this time you’ve been worried about what they might do to me when I should be worrying about what they might do to you.
The truth is that in a war like this there’s no separating out who is in danger and who isn’t. The risk falls on all of us, men and women, soldiers and civilians. So does the responsibility.