Among the Red Stars

by Gwen C. Katz

  My memories of the war were already softening, taking on the blunted edges of a dream. Yet the losses were real. The perils of war had claimed one friend after another. Lilya, who had achieved all our dreams by becoming a fighter ace, only to succumb to her own nightmare when she went missing in combat. Zhenechka, brought down by shell fire in Crimea, who would never go back to her beloved observatory in Leningrad. Tanya and Vera, who had been assigned to fly with other girls that night in Poland but had insisted on flying together, as if they knew that flight would be their last.

  Even Marina Raskova. She crashed during a blizzard before she ever had a chance to command her dive bombers in combat. When we heard about her death, our sorrow was tinged with the fear that our regiments would be disbanded in her absence. But she had given us what we needed most: the tenacity to keep fighting without her.

  And then came the end of the war and, with it, the end of the women’s regiments. We cried and kissed each other and promised to reunite in one year. But my heart ached when I thought of the faces that would not be there.

  At least there were two friends from the 588th with whom I never needed to part. One human, one machine. I grabbed Iskra’s hand.

  “There they are!” someone cried. People crowded the loading dock, friends and family who felt like visitors from a previous life. But I only had eyes for one of them. He stood at the front of the crowd, waving to me with his left hand while his right hung slack by his side. His face had filled back out and regained its color. He wore a flat cap and a red work shirt with one sleeve rolled up because he couldn’t roll up the other, clothes that suited him far better than a Red Army uniform.

  A freckly teen girl stood near Pasha. It took me a second to recognize his kid sister. She pointed at us. “Look at all their medals! There’s the Order of the Red Banner, the same one you have . . . the Guards badge . . . Order of the Great Patriotic War . . .”

  The barge came to a stop at the end of the canal. Pasha gave me a hand onto the dock and kissed me lightly on each cheek as if we were relatives, because he was Pasha and he would always be shy. I hadn’t waited three years for that. I pulled him into a close embrace, receiving a single arm wrapped tightly around me in exchange, and kissed him on his warm, full lips, heedless of all the eyes on us. I could feel his heart beating strongly where his body pressed against mine. It had come so close to fluttering to a halt. I searched his dark eyes. Pain and fear still hid in their depths. War had left its mark on more than our bodies.

  “I’m back,” I said. “This time it’s for good.”

  He said, “It’s been hard waiting.”

  Together. After four years of letters, I could scarcely comprehend that we would finally be together. Separation had become normal. There was an unfamiliarity to the idea of sharing the mundanities of everyday life with him that somehow felt even more personal than that night in the partisan camp.

  I said, “Do you know I haven’t heard you sing since before the war?”

  He pressed his cheek against mine and sang in his smooth, rich baritone. I was filled with the words of “Katyusha,” the song that had gotten us both through the war.

  I held Pasha for a long moment before releasing him to hug and kiss my parents and greet everyone who had come to see me and my cousin. It was difficult to remember that these people and this little town had once been my whole life.

  “Iosif Grigorevich! Did my shipment arrive?” I called.

  “Safe and sound,” said Iosif Grigorevich. “Have you thought about my offer? It’s about time I handed over the reins to the aeroclub.”

  “I haven’t decided.” Over the past four years, I’d poured all my energy into just making it to the end of the war. I hadn’t put any thought into what I would do now that it was over.

  Pasha and I led the way across the rusty bridge, my left hand clasping his right, unmoving but still beautiful. The wound had saved his life. When it became clear that he was damaged beyond repair, he was sent home, minus three toes and the use of his right arm. According to the Soviet Union, he was useless. But I knew they were wrong.

  He’d waited out the war in Stakhanovo, listening to his radio and writing to me. I’d hoped that, now that he was safe and loved, his letters would lose the despair they had taken on while he was fighting and sound like his younger self again. Instead they were filled with nightmares and crippling anxiety. Often, he dreamed about Petya. We’d never learned what happened to him. I promised Pasha that we’d go to Rzhev and look for Petya when the war was over, but that didn’t stop him from tearing himself up with guilt.

  A celebratory bottle rocket went off with a shriek. Pasha ducked automatically as it screamed into the air. I put a protective arm around his shoulders. He laughed it off, but he was shivering. I called, “No more of that! Don’t you think enough things have exploded in the past four years?”

  Number 18 stood on the Stakhanovo aerodrome’s cracked earth beside the aeroclub’s old Yakovlev bushplane. On its wings, red stars with thick double borders of red and white. Victory stars. On its tail, the design that I had chosen to decorate my faithful biplane: a prancing white horse. The aircraft no longer carried bomb racks or a machine gun. It was no longer a night bomber, but a simple trainer.

  “She’s changed since I saw her last,” said Pasha.

  “Haven’t we all?” I said.

  The Stakhanovo Aeroclub’s fresh crop of young pilots climbed on the wings and sat in the cockpits. Iskra scolded, “Show some respect for the old girl. She’s a veteran, you know! See that patch? It’s from a flak gun on the Taman Peninsula. And that one? Shrapnel from an air raid near Warsaw.”

  Pasha’s sister hung back by the edge of the canal, a homemade notebook clasped to her chest. Pasha gave her a soft push forward. “Go on. She won’t bite.”

  The girl approached me and looked up shyly. “I was wondering . . .” She drew a circle in the dirt with her toe. Then she held out her notebook. “Would you sign this?”

  I let the notebook fall open in my hands. A black-and-white copy of myself looked up at me. The other Valka looked grumpy. She had spent all morning trying to figure out why Number 18’s oil pressure kept dropping and wasn’t keen to answer questions for a silly piece that would run in Women’s Day.

  I slowly flipped through the notebook. There they were, page after page of stories about the women’s air regiments carefully cut out and pasted into the notebook. Page after page of gray raster-dot memories. U-2s flying over the newly liberated Caucasus. Major Bershanskaya profiled as a remarkable military commander. Lilya Litvyak, world’s first female ace. Lilya Litvyak, missing, presumed dead.

  Seeing the faces of my lost friends preserved by cheap black ink on pulpy newsprint, I felt their deaths anew. Iskra and I would get civilian jobs, we would marry, maybe have families, grow old. We would live. But these girls would remain forever young and smiling in their flight helmets and garrison caps.

  “Whenever one of your letters came, Pasha would tell me about your adventures,” said the girl. “Do you . . . do you think I could ever do things like that?”

  Innocent earnestness shone from her young face. She’d spent the war wanting to be me while I had spent it wanting to be where she was. “How can I explain this to you?” I said. “You don’t know what the war did to me. Out there, it didn’t feel heroic. It felt like terror and pain and loss. You wouldn’t want to have adventures like mine, not if you knew what they were like. And you shouldn’t go looking for them.”

  The girl looked crestfallen. “But you showed everyone! You proved what we can do!”

  I looked up into the vast, beautiful, perilous sky. Women would continue to brave it. They’d know the cost and they’d do it anyway. I said, “Yes, you can do what I did. And I can teach you how.”

  Author’s Note

  VALKA, ISKRA, PASHA, AND PASHA’S VARIOUS COMRADES-IN-ARMS are fictional. However, Aviation Group 122 really existed, and all the other airwomen in this book are real people. Many of the
exploits described here actually happened, beginning with the flight of the Rodina.

  I did have to make some departures from history for the sake of the story. Dates have been changed, episodes combined, people and sometimes entire regiments included in events they were not actually present for, and so on. For instance, the incident when four aircrews, among them Galina Dokutovich (Galya), are taken out by a night fighter actually took place on July 31, 1943. Zhigli’s erstwhile pilot Polina Makogon collided with another aircraft (sources disagree on whether it was a fighter or another U-2) in a separate accident. Nevertheless, I believe that the book presents a fundamentally accurate impression of what it was like to be an airwoman in the 588th.

  Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was a real person, and her execution took place as described. The photos of her execution were later found on the body of a German officer near Smolensk. She was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, the first woman to receive that award during the war. In one of the photos, a young boy is visible, watching her being marched to the scaffold.

  Operation Mars was one of the most costly battles of World War II. Over 100,000 Soviets were killed or wounded in three weeks, and they failed to capture the salient. The Soviet authorities covered up their embarrassing defeat, leaving thousands of soldiers unburied and unidentified. Only after the fall of the Soviet Union did the full magnitude of destruction at the “Rzhev meat grinder” become known. The 588th did not provide air support for Operation Mars because it was still engaged in the battle for the Caucasus, but other U-2 regiments did.

  The 588th Night Bomber Regiment continued to excel under the capable leadership of Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, who remained in command until it was disbanded. After the Nazis were pushed back from the Caucasus, the regiment’s journey took them to Minsk, Warsaw, and finally Berlin. They flew over 23,000 combat missions. In February 1943, they achieved elite Guards status and were renamed the 46th Tamansky Guards Night Bomber Regiment in honor of their service in the Taman Peninsula. But to the Germans, they were the Nachthexen, or Night Witches, and that is the name by which they are best known.

  The reliable Polikarpov U-2, which was renamed the Po-2 in 1944, was one of the most-produced aircraft in history. Some 40,000 were built. U-2s served as trainers, crop dusters, seaplanes, bush planes, reconaissance aircraft, air ambulances, transports, attack aircraft, and of course night bombers.

  Tatiana Makarova (Tanya) and Vera Belik were both killed in August 1944 when their plane was attacked by a fighter and caught fire. Both were posthumously made Heroes of the Soviet Union.

  Yevgeniya Rudneva (Zhenechka), the regimental navigator, was shot down and killed in April 1944. She was also decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union. In 1972, an asteroid was named after her.

  Yevgeniya Zhigulenko (Zhigli) survived the war to become another Hero of the Soviet Union, flying 968 sorties and rising from navigator to squadron commander. After the war, she put her flair for drama to use as a filmmaker. Her movie The Night Witches in the Sky is based on her wartime experiences.

  Klavdiya Ilyushina (Klava) also served with the regiment until the end of the war. Afterward, she remained in the military as an engineer.

  Lidiya Litvyak (Lilya) went missing over enemy territory on August 1, 1943, pursued by eight German fighters. Her worst nightmare had come true: her plane and body were not found and she was classified as a deserter under Order 270. Determined to clear her name, Litvyak’s mechanic embarked on a thirty-six-year search for her crash site, which turned up dozens of other aircraft and finally, in 1979, the body of a female pilot that was identified as Litvyak’s. Litvyak was finally made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1990. She shot down eleven enemy aircraft and an observation balloon during her time as a fighter pilot. She and her best friend, Yekaterina Budanova, who was shot down a few weeks before Litvyak, are the only female fighter aces who have ever lived.

  On January 4, 1943, Marina Raskova was killed in a crash while transporting one of the 587th Day Bomber Regiment’s aircraft during a snowstorm. She never had a chance to command her regiment in combat. Her death was a severe blow to all the women of Aviation Group 122. The day-bomber regiment, though it received very little publicity, performed well. It was awarded Guards status and renamed in honor of Raskova.

  All three pyaterka pilots crashed and died under suspicious circumstances. With the disappearance of Litvyak, all the pilots who had opposed Tamara Kazarinova as commander of the 586th Fighter Regiment were dead or missing. There was never any official investigation into their deaths. Rumors abounded that Kazarinova was using her personal influence to harm the 586th whenever she could and that she even prevented it from achieving Guards status. Although Tamara Kazarinova never commanded again (her appearance at the 588th is fiction), the Kazarinova sisters still got the last laugh. Militsa Kazarinova edited two collections of memoirs by the women of Aviation Group 122, exercising great control to present a positive image of herself and her sister. For many years, her version of history was the official one.

  The bonds that formed between the airwomen of Aviation Group 122 were never broken. They kept their promise and reunited every year as long as they lived.

  I hope you found the story of the Night Witches as fascinating as I did. If you are interested in learning more about them, you can read their accounts in their own words in A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II, by Anne Noggle (TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1994).

  Acknowledgments

  WHILE I’M USUALLY INDEPENDENT TO A FAULT, I CAN honestly say that not a single word of Among the Red Stars would exist without the support of the many wonderful people in my life.

  Emilia, in your hands this book has transformed from a manuscript caterpillar into a beautiful book butterfly. You’re a miracle worker. Owen, you made my cover look better than I could have asked for. It blew me away when I first saw it, and still does.

  Thao, you took a chance on an unknown writer and you’ve been a constant source of support and wisdom. I can’t wait to see where the publishing journey takes us next.

  Fiona, you saw a diamond in the rough when there was a lot of rough and very little diamond, and you patiently explained the necessity of things like “plot” and “feelings.” Your lessons will always stay with me.

  Jordan, you endured countless conversations that went like this: “Pick a color for this scarf.” “Blue.” “No, a color other than blue.” You have accompanied me through all the most frustrating and tedious parts of this project and yet you manage to remain enthusiastic about it, which must be a superpower.

  All my friends and family, you helped me far more than I realized at the time. JR, you told everyone about this book before I had started writing it, thereby obligating me to finish. I should use that strategy more often. Katie, Katt, and Gerard, you all read my writing back when it didn’t even pretend to be good and you all refrained from throwing me out a window. Your failure to defenestrate made me the author I am today.

  Finally, I owe a great debt to the incredible women of Aviation Group 122. This is their story, and while most of them are no longer around to see it, I’d like to think they would consider it a fitting tribute to their service.

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  About the Author

  Photo credit Walt Trepashko

  GWEN C. KATZ is a writer, artist, game designer, and retired mad scientist easily identified by her crew cut and ability to cause trouble. Originally from Seattle, she now lives in Pasadena, California, with her husband and a revolving door of transient mammals. Visit her at www.gwenckatz.com.

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  Among the Red Stars

  Credits

  Cover art by Owen Freeman

  Cover design by Michelle Taormina

  Copyright

  HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  AMONG THE RED STARS. Copyright © 2017 by Gwen C. Katz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  ISBN 978-0-06-264274-5

  EPub Edition © September 2017 ISBN 9780062642769

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