Among the Red Stars

by Gwen C. Katz

  Please send me another letter, a long one. I need something to occupy me and I want to know that my Pashenka is safe.

  Yours,

  Valka

  I heard voices outside and looked up to see Iskra entering the tent on her left foot, balancing with a crutch. Her other foot was splinted. Zhigli followed, a copy of the military newspaper Red Star tucked under her arm.

  Iskra ruffled my hair like I was a small child. “How are you feeling, baby cousin?”

  “By normal standards or by the standards of someone who was on fire?” I asked. “What happened to you, bunny rabbit?”

  “Funny story. I jumped out of a moving airplane. Sprained my ankle when I hit the ground, but it’s not bad. And one of the flares got me.” She held up a bandaged forearm. “The worst part was that you were burning right there in front of me and I couldn’t help.”

  “But I had Zhigli.” I looked up at her. Her dark-lashed eyes were full of earnest concern. “I didn’t deserve it.”

  “Maybe not,” said Zhigli, “But it was fated. I was grounded so that I could help you. See?”

  I wasn’t superstitious, but I couldn’t deny that if Zhigli hadn’t been grounded, I wouldn’t have survived. Twice she’d been delayed from flying, and both times she’d ended up exactly where she needed to be. I wondered if fate would someday put me in the right place when someone needed me.

  The fight that I’d kept going for so long seemed unbelievably petty. It was time to end it. “What a day. First you almost get shot down, then me. I’d better say this before either of us has another brush with death.” I took a deep breath. “Look, when Iskra was arrested, I couldn’t make any sense of it. I needed someone to blame, a villain for the story I was telling myself. And I picked you. That was wrong of me. I know you didn’t turn her in. I think I’ve always known. You don’t have to forgive me, because I’ve been really awful to you, but I’m sorry.”

  Zhigli threw herself on the bed and hugged me, but she quickly let go at my involuntary squeal of pain. “I knew we couldn’t stay enemies. We were always destined to be friends.”

  Thinking back on everything that had happened since we’d first sat next to each other on the train, I decided she was right.

  She added, “Captain Ilyushina says you owe her a new blanket.”

  That made me smile.

  “I have something for you,” said Iskra.

  “A letter?” I asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “No, baby cousin, there hasn’t been anything from Pasha,” said Iskra. “He’s probably fine. You need to give that boy more credit. He’s been out there for more than a year. He’s a survivor, like you. And look what you got!”

  She handed me a small strip of cloth, khaki with a yellow stripe.

  I turned it over in my hands. “A wound stripe? I don’t know . . .”

  “I can sew it for you,” Zhigli offered.

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . I don’t want to show off that I’ve been wounded. I don’t want my defining achievement to be catching on fire.”

  “I’m wearing mine,” said Iskra, pointing to a red stripe sewn prominently over her left pocket. “I earned it; why shouldn’t I be proud to wear it? But I only got the one for light wounds. You got the prestigious one.”

  “You weren’t the one who crashed the plane,” I pointed out.

  “Believe me, Valka, the crash isn’t the part people are going to remember,” said Zhigli, sitting down on the side of my bed. “Hitting that airfield was incredible! They’re still tallying up the damages, but I’m sure the Luftwaffe won’t forget it in a hurry. Bershanskaya was over the moon—once she found out that you were going to be all right, that is. The girls of Aviation Group 122 are turning into real war heroes!”

  “Aviation Group 122? What have the other regiments done?” I asked.

  “We’re not the only ones who’ve been keeping busy,” said Iskra.

  She and Zhigli grinned at each other and Zhigli held up the newspaper. “Now this you’re going to love.” She began to read. “‘While the 437th IAP was engaged in the defense of Stalingrad—’ Why do newspapers always find the dullest possible ways to recount everything? I can tell this story much better.”

  She set down the newspaper and launched into a highly animated narration, punctuated with many gestures of her long-fingered hands. “High over Stalingrad, an Me 109 flashes through the sky like a streak of deadly lightning. Its target, a Yak-1—one of our very own pyaterka pilots, valiantly engaged in the defense of the city. The Messerschmitt’s pilot, Luftwaffe ace Erwin Meier. Three iron crosses adorn his uniform. Meier has brought no fewer than eleven planes plummeting from the sky in flames, and his appetite is already whetted for a twelfth. The pyaterka pilot maneuvers with all the skill of her aerobatics training but cannot evade him. Soon she is in his sights. A smile creeps across his face, the smile of a ravenous wolf. Cannon fire rings out.”

  Zhigli’s eyes widened in pretend shock. “But what’s this? The Yak is still flying. It’s the Messerschmitt that has been raked with bullets. Another Yak-1 has appeared out of nowhere on his six. It’s fresh off shooting a German bomber and the taste of victory is in the pilot’s mouth. Meier dodges this way and that, but the agile Soviet fighter remains on his tail. Clearly he has met his match! Who is this mysterious pilot? He can’t make out the tail number, but over its regulation camouflage, this Yak’s fuselage bears a picture of beautiful white flowers!

  “Another barrage rips through his plane, tearing the engine to pieces. ‘Impossible!’ thinks Meier. ‘I am invincible!’ But his aircraft is in flames and he has no choice but to bail out and accept defeat.

  “On the ground and captured by the Soviets, Meier requests the honor of meeting the pilot who defeated him. And who do you think is brought forward?”

  I shrugged.

  Iskra said, “She’s blond, she’s cocky, and she keeps flowers in the cockpit of her plane.”

  My jaw dropped in a combination of a gape and a delighted grin. “You’re kidding! She only transferred three days ago!”

  Iskra held up the newspaper, pointing to a small photo of Lilya in her flight gear, leaning against her fighter’s fuselage and looking understandably self-satisfied.

  Zhigli said, “Meier, presented with this petite and beautiful young girl, refuses to believe his eyes. ‘You’re playing a cruel joke on me!’ he rages. ‘How can this girl fly a fighter? She’s a child!’”

  I smiled. I’d thought that once, but heaven help an enemy pilot who made the same mistake.

  “But Lilya recounts their dogfight to him in vivid detail, and eventually Meier is forced to concede that he has been bested by a girl. He drops to one knee, slips his gold watch from his wrist, and presents it to her in recognition of her honorable victory. And how does Lilya respond? Looking him dead in the eye, she says coldly, ‘I do not accept gifts from my enemies.’ And she turns on her heel and strides away.”

  I said, “That sounds like Lilya. Did she really paint flowers on her airplane?”

  “Lilies, naturally,” said Zhigli. “They’re calling her the White Lily of Stalingrad.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  5 October 1942

  Dear Valyushka,

  You’re hurt! I knew this would happen. Even as your accomplishments fill me with pride, I’m always terrified about how it all might end. Every night as the sun sets, I think of you taking off and of the danger you will be in. Sometimes it wakes me at night. It’s almost too much to bear. I wish I could have really been there with you. Of course in reality I don’t know anything about airplanes and would only have made things worse.

  I have little enough control over anything here. Petya has attracted attention. That’s not a good thing. Our commissar took him to headquarters to tell his story. A few days later, a new member joined our squad. A woman. She showed up while Petya was helping me divide the loaf of hard black bread for lunch. I cut the bread and Petya calls out the name of each soldier in his
childish cyan voice. He takes this duty very seriously.

  Vakhromov was preoccupied with his own thoughts and missed his name, which according to Pashkevich’s rules means that he misses the whole meal. I sneaked him a slice anyway and asked what was on his mind.

  “My daughter,” he said. “Her birthday was a few days ago.”

  Have we really been out there that long? It seems impossible.

  Vakhromov said, “I keep thinking about that first year with my son. Every day when I came home he’d learned something new. With my daughter, I’ve missed all of that.”

  “It will all be over soon. I mean, it has to be, right?” I said without much certainty. Even with the lend-lease supplies that are now trickling steadily in, it’s hard to imagine the Red Army persevering for another year like this one, Leningrad besieged and starving, desperate building-to-building fighting in Stalingrad, an endless impasse here at the Rzhev salient.

  That’s when the new woman showed up. She had a PPSh-41 slung over her shoulder and her hair was pulled into a severe braid. Our commissar interrupted the bread ritual to bring Petya to her. He said, “Petya, this is Comrade Stepanova. She wants you to tell her your story.”

  Petya said, “I don’t want to,” and Vakhromov said, “You’re making him relive the worst day of his life,” but Stepanova said, “Tell me.” Her voice was cold crystal blue.

  So he did. She listened intently, not betraying any hint of emotion. She made him describe everything: Zoya, what she looked like, what she was wearing when she was caught, her tormentors, their uniforms, what they did to her and how she responded.

  When he was finished, she said, “There’s no doubt about it. He was there.”

  Petya ran back to me and clung to my dirty tunic. I gave him a piece of bread and took the heel for myself while I listened to Stepanova and the commissar’s conversation. I only understood half of it, and that half I didn’t like.

  “Are you sure you want the kid?” the commissar asked Stepanova. “The villagers are willing to help.”

  She said, “Zoya burned their village. They’re not reliable allies. The kid we can control. You see how he trusts those soldiers.”

  “Do you think an eight-year-old’s memory is reliable?”

  “He described everything perfectly,” said Stepanova. “How’s the intelligence report coming?”

  “It’s hit a snag. You remember Malakhov? He’s been convicted of antigovernment activities.”

  “Wrecker?”

  “Worse than that. Trotskyist.”

  The only crime worse than sabotaging the state: supporting Stalin’s greatest rival. I’m redacting Stepanova’s reply, a word no woman ought to use.

  The commissar said, “I know. But he was our main contact in that area. We’ll find them, don’t worry. It’ll just take time.”

  Pashkevich broke in and demanded to know what this was all about.

  “We’re recovering the photos,” said Stepanova, as though no further explanation was required.

  “Like hell we are. Who’s in charge here?” Pashkevich demanded.

  “I am,” said Stepanova, crossing her arms. “Or are you blind as well as stupid?”

  Her collar tabs bore a T-shaped gold insignia. She was a starshina, the squad’s ranking NCO. When Pashkevich saw that, he threw down his rifle and yelled, “That’s it! I won’t take orders from a woman!”

  “I’ll give you thirty seconds to rethink that statement before I arrest you,” said our commissar.

  Pashkevich glared, muttered something that might have been an apology, and stalked away.

  Petya was still clinging to me and listlessly nibbling his piece of bread. Vakhromov came over and picked him up. The boy said, “Why does everyone want to hear that story? It’s not a nice story.”

  Vakhromov chewed his lip while contemplating his reply. He said, “Those fascists did some very bad things. We think everyone should know about it, so that everyone will know what bad people they are.”

  That was enough to satisfy a kid, maybe, but after everything I’ve been through, this felt too neat, too heroic. Once Petya was tucked into bed, I found Stepanova and asked, “The fascists commit atrocities every day. You could walk through any occupied city and find a story like this. Why this one? Why us?”

  Stepanova said, “It’s true. You could find something like this anywhere. But if you looked for a hundred years, you wouldn’t find someone like Zoya.”

  I know you asked for a long letter, but you can see from my spotty writing that I’m running out of ink. Please send more so I can keep writing to you.

  Yours,

  Pasha

  P.S. You called me Pashenka.

  8 November 1942

  Dear Pasha,

  Did I? It must have been the morphine.

  Thank you for writing. I couldn’t lay my hands on any extra ink, but enclosed please find a pencil. Writing in pencil is an insult to your beautiful handwriting, but pencils don’t leak or jam, and if they break, you have two pencils, and you can erase if you make a mistake. No need to thank me; I assure you I’m being entirely self-serving in allowing you to keep writing. Your letters are essential to preserving my morale.

  In some ways, being forcibly bedridden was worse than being on fire. All that time I had nothing to do except worry. Sometimes I worried about Iskra and the girls. But mostly I worried about you. I think about those troops who were encircled and how the army decided that they were not worth saving and I constantly fear that you will be swallowed next.

  And every time I fell asleep, I dreamed of fire. Not of my burning plane, though sometimes I thought I heard its ticking engine in the background, but of the barracks at Stakhanovo and of being a little girl again, trying to back away from the flames but unable to because they were everywhere.

  Those dreams were the last straw. I declared myself better, despite the protests of the doctors, and went to rejoin my regiment. My hands have healed, but my left side is scarring from my shoulder to my knee. Another reason you wouldn’t want a picture of me. It was hard getting my uniform on, but I thought of all the sorties Iskra was flying without me and I forced myself through it. I’m not jealous that she flew with other pilots, but now her count is ahead of mine!

  When I arrived at our aerodrome, I grabbed Iskra and pulled her into a bear hug and we kissed each other on the cheeks. She said with a laugh that happy reunions after near disaster were becoming a hallmark of our relationship. I said that I would never let her fly with anyone else again. When I asked her what she thought of the other pilots, she said she doesn’t fly and tell.

  Bershanskaya took one look at me and ordered me back to the hospital. I told her I felt fine. She poked me in the leg. I yelped. She said, “No you aren’t. Get back to the hospital.” But I begged until she relented.

  I got to meet my new sewing machine. It’s Number 18. I’m not sure I like her as much as our beloved Number 41. Same model, same specs, but the engine has a different pitch and rhythm. Will this plane bring me home safe with one wing shredded and on fire?

  Iskra assured me that, once I got in the air, it would be like I’d never been gone, but it was still with trepidation that I put my hands on the controls to take our new plane for a test flight. I taxied her slowly and took off carefully, as though I were back in flight school. And then the thought struck me: What was the worst that could happen? The worst had already happened! And I had survived! I broke into a maniacal grin and thought that I would never be afraid of anything again.

  The girls had tons of gossip to catch me up on. Of course everyone wanted to talk about the Armavir sortie. According to records, Iskra and I took out six planes all together. The KG 51 bomber wing has decided to judiciously withdraw from the Taman Peninsula. “Meaning they’re running away with their tails between their legs,” said Zhigli.

  I thought it was only fair to say that taking out the bomber wing would have done me no good if it hadn’t been for Zhigli. She’s earned her share of the prai
se, both for saving me and for putting up with me.

  No, we didn’t singlehandedly liberate Armavir or even its airport, but we did receive decorations. Would you believe it, Pasha, your Valka is a war hero! The Red Army thinks so, anyway.

  But being a hero should feel like something, shouldn’t it? I ought to feel proud and brave. But I feel the same as yesterday. Helpless in the face of a war too big and too cruel for one bomber pilot to matter. Worried about you. Keenly aware that, even with a medal, I can’t save you from the danger you face.

  There was a ceremony yesterday on the anniversary of the Revolution. Ten of us, me and Iskra among them, were given the Order of the Red Star, and many others got engraved watches. Almost all pilots. I looked guiltily at our armorers as I marched past them to receive my medal. We’d all die without good armorers, but they are never decorated and they get lower pay and worse food. It doesn’t seem fair.

  But there’s no resentment between the girls who got medals and the girls who got watches and the girls who got nothing. How could there be when we know that any of us might not return from the next mission?

  There’s a tradition that when you receive a decoration, you have to drop the medal into a glass of vodka and then drain the glass. Bershanskaya made an exception to her usual rule against alcohol. We didn’t have any glasses, so we had to drop our red stars into empty rations cans. But drinking didn’t unknot the worry inside me. Iskra said I should let myself relax and have fun for one day. I told her it’s hard to, knowing you’re still out there.

  Our humble night-bomber regiment is finally attracting attention. The higher-ups, the ones who wondered if we needed a few big men to help us, have noticed that we fly twice as many sorties as everyone else. We’re being rebased north to rejoin our old division, not as helpless rookies but as full-fledged airwomen. Something big is in the works, an offensive that requires all the best air support available. If you can believe it, that means us.

  It even has a name: Operation Mars. Do you know about it? The name sends a thrill of excitement through me. Mars, the god of war. This is the big one, the turning point, or so I’ve heard. And it all begins with smashing the Rzhev salient.