Over Fields of Fire

by Anna Aleksandrovna Timofeeva-Egorova

  “They’ve given the blokes a good stir, eh?” Asked Listarevich who had suddenly appeared. I blushed and muttered something indistinct. “What are you shy for? You’ve taught all airmen a good lesson”, and offered me his hand. “Let me congratulate you: the commanders have put you up for an award for searching out the cavalry corps…”

  “Egorova, the commander’s asking for you!” came the call.

  “You’re to fly to the 6th Army to pick up General Zhouk — the Front Artillery Commander”, the squadron commander ordered.

  “Yes sir!” I replied, repeated the order and began to plot the course on my flight map. I took off when the day was already declining. It was pleasant to fly. Everything was white and clean and the sky was clear as if there were no war. However, as the saying goes “God helps those who help themselves”! And just in case, I was doing a contour flight, hiding myself in gullies and copses, trying to merge with the countryside. Immediately after landing a light vehicle rolled up to my plane. A General came out of the car and I delivered my report by the book. “For the Front artillery commander you couldn’t find a bloke?” He asked discontentedly. I answered the question with a question: “Permission to ask where we’re flying to?”

  A colonel accompanying the General named the required place. Taking the map from its case I plotted the course there on a wing of the plane with chilled hands, and got into the front cockpit. The general in his astrakhan, muffled in a scarf almost right up to his eyes, settled behind me and we took off. I could see the tired face of my passenger in the mirror fixed on the left hand side to a centre-section stanchion. Our eyes met time and again, I was showing him with my hand sometimes the earth decked out in silvery winter apparel, sometimes the sun — but the General continued to frown. But suddenly a shadow fell on the plane. I looked around and a treacherous chill ran down my back. Two Messerschmitts were insolently and self-assuredly diving upon us! I began to throw my machine left and right just above the ground fleeing the machine-gun bursts. But the Germans were coming in to the attack again and again! The engine snorted, then did it again… The impression was that it was choking like a man short of air. Below, as far as the eye could see, lay the steppe, densely covered with snow. No welcoming smoke, not a hut. The domain of the wolf. Suddenly the engine stalled… I turned back to my ‘passenger’ showing him by hand that I was going to land. In reply he just shook his head but an open dissatisfaction showed in that movement. “Talk about gentry”, I thought. “He doesn’t understand they can kill us… Like we have to land just because I feel like it?”… Especially given I was carrying not just an officer but a “God of War”81 commander. There’ll be no end of trouble now!”

  The engine stalled and I was going straight for landing. And the Messers82 kept shooting at us. All the time the strong and gusty wind strove to catch the plane’s tail, to turn it upside down or at least break its wings. Generally speaking it was a simple task for a good stepnyak83. A U-2 was not a large machine — just plywood and percale. The wind was stubborn but I was not the complacent type either: I was the determined type too! I held the lever tightly and we landed safely. I jumped out of the cockpit to assist the General who was dressed so warmly that he couldn’t climb out by himself. But the Messers’ blood was still up. Heart-chilling bursts of fire were thrusting into the snow right next to our plane. At last we stopped the plane and ran towards the forest. We were stumbling, falling over, getting up and running again. My General had already run completely out of breath forcing his way through the deep snow drifts — his clothes and age were definitely not suited to cross-country running. Suddenly everything fell silent… Hearing that, I asked the General to wait for me behind the trees.

  “What are you saying, wait for you till the cows come home?” The artilleryman interrupted me angrily, catching up with me. “In this weather I’m not going to do that! We have to leave the machine and look for some dwelling before it’s too late.”

  We again reached the plane, which shuddered convulsively at every squall of wind. I looked at it anxiously, turning a deaf ear to my ‘passenger’s’ words, and thought to myself: “If it blows a bit stronger it’ll break the machine, carry it away. We have to tie it down immediately”. And I climbed into the cockpit.

  “What are you going to do?” The artilleryman was surprised.

  “I’m going to get the hawser from the fuselage — we’ll be tying the plane down.”

  “I’m sorry but this way we’ll be tinkering with it till dark. And we’ll be done for in the dark!”

  “Till dark or not, I have no right to abandon my equipment in this condition.”

  “Well, you know…”

  But glancing at my face, my ‘passenger’ understood I wouldn’t back away from my decision, and took the rope from my hands. We managed to drag the plane, tail forward, up to the forest with great difficulty. Only here did I examine it properly. Well, all in all the Fritz had crippled my U-2 pretty badly. The holes didn’t matter, the main thing was that a propeller vane had been shot off, one cylinder of the engine was gone and the oil and petrol tanks were breached. Strange that it hadn’t caught fire!

  At last we had fastened the machine, tying it to the tree trunks, and disguised it with branches. Together we handled it quickly. Having finished, picked up the documents and plotted the necessary direction on the map, we went deep into the steppe. Oh, that night march was a hard one. We walked for an hour, then another, then a third… Snowy wool kept tumbling from the sky with no end as if from a torn sack. It was becoming harder and harder to walk. But the worst thing was that fatigue was accompanied by indifference. I hung my head low to hide my face from the tiresome snowflakes. Only they kept me aware of reality. “Or maybe it’s a dream after all?” — importunate thoughts were crawling into my head. “That’s the staccato thumping of rock breakers I hear, the faint shouts of miners in the tunnel, the jokes of my girlfriends from the brigade. I hear Tosya Ostrovskaya whispering something into my ear. I can’t understand what she wants and then Tosya begins shaking me by the shoulders. But I still can’t understand… And why is there snow in the tunnel? It tickles my cheeks so tenderly, wraps my hands so warmly. I really don’t want to free myself from its comfortable arms. And again Tosya shakes my shoulder… But this is not my girlfriend — she can’t have this manly bass…”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Anna.”

  “You have to get up, Comrade Anna, get up and walk now.” Now I could discern the words clearly. “It won’t take you long to freeze like this…” But I hadn’t the strength for even a step, and I sat in the snow again.

  “I’m not going any further. You go on your own…”

  “Get up, get up, Anna,” the General kept tugging at me. “You’ll fall asleep and freeze to death!”

  “Yes, yes, need to walk”, I replied automatically. At last I understood what was dream and what was real.” I’ll get up soon, for sure…”

  My mind knew what to do but my legs refused to obey me. How could I find the strength to stand upright, so as to walk across this hostile snow-clad steppe? But the artillery General stretched his hand to me and I walked, managing to overcome my deadly fatigue… I held on to him for the first several metres but then felt more and more confident with every pace. The dead point was behind me and I found my second wind. And the howling of the wind no longer seemed to me so ominous, and the bottomless darkness was no longer so scary.

  By dawn, with frostbitten faces and hands, we had come across our soldiers. They were artillerymen from the unit to which I and Frontline Artillery Commander Zhouk were flying. They walked us into a hut wherein an iron stove was burning and soldiers were sleeping all over the floor. I fell asleep as soon as I sat down by the threshold. In the morning the signalmen reported my location to my squadron, and mentioned that the plane needed serious repairs. Soon after that Spirin, the pilot, flew over to me with Dronov the mechanic and on a second trip he brought all the stuff necessary for repairs to the e
ngine and plane.

  It had taken the whole day to find the plane in an unknown forest (fortunately, a big patch of spilled oil on the snow had helped out) and tow it by horse to a village. Konstantin Sergeevich swore for quite a while examining the damaged plane. He wished a thousand damnations on the German flyers and on Hitler himself, promising to bury the Führer on an aspen stake. But at the same time he went about his business, quickly installing something like a tent over the engine to protect himself from the wind.

  When I saw that for ease of working he’d taken off his gloves I began to assist him.

  “Comrade Commander, what are you trying to do with the engine with such a frostbitten face, eh? It’ll get scared and won’t start”, my mechanic joked. Indeed my face was scary: it had turned black all over. I daubed it with grease and on top of that put on a mask of mole-fur. Such masks had been issued to all airmen but we didn’t like to wear them — the furry skin on its lining with cutouts for the eyes and mouth made us look as if we were at a carnival.

  To send me off to warm up Dronov was inventing various ruses but then he gave up and the whole business went faster. Aircraftsmen are an amazing lot! As a rule they are great masters of their craft or as it is said now, ‘craftsman with golden hands’. They wouldn’t go to eat or sleep until a plane was fully ready and then, having handed it over to a pilot, wouldn’t leave the aerodrome but would patiently wait for his return. He would begin to tidy up the parking lot — he would roll up the aircraft covers, carry brake shoes to the right place, then would simply smoke so the waiting time didn’t drag on so long. And he would cast glances at the sky time and again — is he coming back yet? A mechanic would recognise the approach of his plane from afar — by a note in the engine’s roar known only to him. And then he would run to meet it! How happy these modest aerodrome labourers were when their pilots came back to the ground alive and in one piece. And there would be no limit to their grief if their pilots had not come back from a mission… No, I could not have become a plane mechanic — I wouldn’t have had the strength to wait! Especially at war when all possible time for return is up and all hope rests on a miracle but the mechanic still waits, peers into the sky, listens, hopes…

  That time Dronov came back to the squadron with me and he showed his comrades the holes he had had to patch up in the frost.

  “I counted 87 holes but Annoushka and the General weren’t scratched! That’s what it means to have the ‘devil’s dozen’ as your tail number”, Dronov chuckled. But I knew: apart from all the numbers, apart from luck, on those flights I’d been faithfully guarded by the hands of my mechanic. And by fate as well. I do believe in fate.

  Generally speaking everything had turned out alright except that we’d got our fingers and cheeks frostbitten. But who would pay attention to that at the front? It was a trifle not worth remembering! But the Artillery Commander couldn’t forget that night on the steppe and he remembered my personality. As soon as he’d flown back to Front headquarters he notified the signals commander Korolev: “I’m taking Egorova. I need combat pilots for the spotter planes…”

  When it became known in the squadron the airmen began ‘making me see reason’: “Have you gone crazy? You’re a pilot, a human being, not a rubber balloon. You’re meant to fly, not to hang like a sitting duck over the frontline!”

  That was true — it’s not too pleasant to serve as a target. But, word of honour, in what way were we, in our U-2s, not targets for the enemy’s fighter planes? And I’d grown sick of being an aerial chauffeur… I wanted to fight a real war. At least the spotter plane pilots helped to detect the enemy and wipe him out, but what about us? But nevertheless if I were to switch to another kind of aviation I would prefer to be a ground-attack pilot. I wasn’t destined to become a spotter plane pilot…

  16. The Katyushas

  Missions, missions. There seemed to be no end of them. The squadron was manned by ‘Spanish’ pilots but they were shoving me — a girl — into the most difficult holes. It was an unpleasant sensation.

  “Egorova, you will be flying in search of the Katyushas!”84

  And again I would answer: “Yes sir, flying out!”

  The Katyushas had just arrived at our Front and it had significantly raised our previously depressed spirits. I was given an approximate area and told that they were big trucks with installations for rockets. They would have slip-covers on top. I was also ordered to hand over to General Pushkin — a Corps Commander — a top secret package.

  The thaw was on. It was raining in the area of our aerodrome. Visibility was at its lowest — about a hundred metres. When I had flown away from the aerodrome a wet snowfall began and fog overcast everything around — I couldn’t see a thing! I decided to increase altitude: maybe up there it would be a bit clearer than near the ground. The altimeter was already indicating 900 metres and indeed the fog had thinned out — but what was that? The plane began to shudder. All its cross-braces began to vibrate. I glanced overboard and saw the wings, the fuselage, even the propeller covered with a smooth icy crust.

  The engine was working, all rudders and elevators were functioning but the plane wouldn’t obey them, it was losing altitude. I pushed the control column away to lose altitude faster but soon some instinct warned me that the ground was already close — somewhere very close. What’s down there, below me? A house, a forest, a river, a gully or something else? I turned off the engine and slowly pulled the lever… Bang! The plane touched the ground and carried us off, dragged us somewhere. I did my best to slow down, to stop our movement. But there were no brakes on the U-2 and I was using the rudder.

  At last the plane stopped and it became astonishingly quiet. Nothing could be seen two steps away — there was fog and I was afraid to walk away from the plane — I could get lost. I had to wait until the fog dispersed. In the meantime I cleaned the ice from my plane and determined my location approximately, based on the time and flight speed. And when it had grown lighter I saw a large haystack in front of the plane’s nose. How had I managed not to run into it?

  Having taken off I managed anyway to find General Pushkin’s Corps with the Katyushas. But on my way back I ran into a heavy snowfall again. I landed the machine by now in pitch-darkness — not even the plane parking bays were visible, so after touch down I taxied ‘on a wing and a prayer’. It was a good thing Dronov the mechanic had heard the ‘voice’ of his plane and run to meet me.

  The squadron commander gave me a long dressing down then: “Tired of living, are you?” The pilots maintained a gloomy silence: it appeared that they had turned back half-way without completing their missions. The Southern Front Signals Commander General Korolev declared his gratitude to me and the political department presented me with a gift — a parcel from the home front. The most interesting moment was that on opening the parcel I found a tobacco pouch on top. “To a dear soldier from Marousya Koudryavtseva — as a keepsake” was embroidered on the pouch and inside there was a photo of a pretty girl. In her letter Marousya asked the young combatant to give the Fascists a real good bashing and come back home soon and victorious. And there was so much in that parcel carefully laid out under the tobacco pouch! Tobacco in packages, a bottle of vodka wrapped in woolen socks and, wrapped in a towel with red embroidery, a small bag of dried fruits. At the very bottom of the box there was a school exercise-book and a dozen envelopes. Half of them bore the address: Town of Mary, Turkmenskaya SSR85, Maria Koudryavsteva. I gave the pouch, the tobacco and the bottle of vodka to my aircraftsman, the towel to the hostess of the house I lived in, and kept the woollen socks and dried fruits for myself. I decided to pass the photo, the writing-book and the envelopes to Victor Kravtsov — a well-built Kuban Cossack who was 22 years old. I remember that in whatever place we were located all the local girls couldn’t take their eyes off him, but the Cossack wouldn’t pay attention to any of them… However, maybe he was only pretending that he was indifferent to them all?

  “Victor”, I addressed Kravtsov, “Have a
look at the photo — what a wonderful girl! You write her a letter instead of me. Make her happy to know the parcel got to its destination — to a young soldier, to a pilot on top of that.”

  “Still up to your tricks”, he growled but took the exercise-book…

  Red Army Day came. Our squadron gathered for the festive assembly and executive officer Lisatrevich solemnly began reading a Decree on behalf of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR: Lieutenant Spirin was awarded with the Order of the Red Star, Junior Lieutenant Egorova — with the Order of the Red Banner (by now I’d been conferred officer’s rank here in the signals squadron).

  I had just flown back from a mission and being a bit late was sitting behind the rest. I still had the noise of a working engine in my ears and I didn’t catch whom the awards had gone to. Suddenly they all clustered around me, began to congratulate me, but I was standing and not believing it: why me? One might say, I’d found myself at the Front by chance. I’d carried out all the missions I’d been given as a soldier should, from the heart. But there was no denying that although it had often been difficult I’d done my best. For some reason I recalled the road reconnaissance sortie — to find out which troops were on the march — ours or the enemy’s… You couldn’t say it was much fun to fly in the daytime in a defenceless plane whose only weapon was the pilot’s revolver! Everyone knew the German aces chased our planes and it wasn’t a big challenge for a Messerschmitt to down a U-2, but their reward for this would be the same as for a shot-down fighter plane.

  “Comrade Commander, what’s wrong with you? Are you alright?” I heard the voice of Dronov the mechanic. “You look awful…”

  “I’m fine, what’s up?”

  “They’re calling you to the presidium.”