Day in, day out we flew and pounded the ground — theoretically. We read whatever we could find about aerial and land battles, studied tactics: ours and the enemy’s. We had already been issued with flight maps. We would match them up and stick them together. Whole bedsheets were the result: we had a longish flight route to the front…
At Doctor Kozlovskiy’s insistent request I was shifted from the ninety-person communal house-dugout with three-tier bunks, into a Finnish hut. A room had been vacated there and the commanders offered it to me — after all, I was the only woman. But right in this cosy hut was where I almost perished. Once I came from the aerodrome chilled and saw that the stove had been thoroughly heated and the coals hadn’t gone out yet — they were playing beautifully with now blue, now red, now golden sparks. I feasted my eyes on them, warmed up, then swallowed some pill prescribed by our Doctor as a sedative, lay down on the bed, still dressed, and fell asleep. And here I was, asleep and I saw Victor, as if in reality, in a white shirt and tie. He has an embroidered Central Asian cap on his head. Then in a kind of mist I see myself in a pleated black skirt and a blue football jersey with white collar and laces. I have on a white beret, white plimsolls with blue edging, and white socks. The beret sits literally on the crown of my head and on my right ear — that was stylishness among us. All this magnificence had been acquired by me in the Torgsin104 for an antique gold coin presented to me by my mum. And now, in dream as in waking, I saw in that Torgsin splendour not only myself but Victor too, with a tie he had never worn before. We were in the Sokolniki105 among daisies on some vast meadow. Victor picked me one daisy and said: “Here, tell your fortune: who do you like more — me or ‘Prince’ Tougoushy?”
I felt easy and cheerful in the dream but suddenly I heard someone knocking on the door. I wanted to get up but couldn’t. But they rapped on the door louder and louder repeating my name. I somehow got up and walked, holding onto the wall. I fell over, sat up, fell over again. I decided to crawl — nothing was working. At last I reached the door and turning the key slid to the floor… It turned out I had been poisoned by charcoal fumes: the stoker had closed the stove damper too early. Fortunately our pilots were walking past my hut late in the evening. Noticing the light in the window they decided to drop in and began to knock on the door, but no one opened it. Then the guys understood — something had gone wrong… The guys carried me out to walk it off in the fresh air and walked me around outside all night long. By now crying, I begged them to let me go and have a rest, but the pilots would have none of it: they had their own ‘method of healing’ — the aviation one. In the morning I turned up for studies run personally by the regiment commander. He looked at me for a long time and then said briefly: “To the medical unit, immediately!”
In the medical unit Doctor Kozlovskiy again began to wail over me: “My sweet girl, what’s this bad luck pouring over you as if from a horn of plenty? Where did you manage to hurt your forehead so?”
“I fell on the door key…” I told the doctor about my dream and added: “I wish I hadn’t woken up…”
Kozlovskiy flung up his arms at me and began telling me off: “We’ll all be there but not everyone manages to live his life with dignity. Only infirm, weak-willed people with fragile psyches die of their own free will… Keep that in mind, girl!”
On the second day after the incident I came to classes as if nothing had happened, covering my grazes with powder. Those days everyone’s mood was excellent — at long last, after heavy defeats we were on the advance. We received brand-new silvery-painted planes each with a gunner’s cockpit in which a large-calibre machine-gun half-ring mount was installed. This innovation cheered us up. From now on the Sturmovik would be securely protected from the rear against the enemy’s fighters.
We were in a hurry to fly off to the front as soon as possible but the weather was holding up. It was March but the winter had gone mad and didn’t want to give way to spring. But then a light frost came, the sky became clearer and the sun appeared. We took off and headed towards Saratov.
Nothing boded trouble, rather the reverse, everything was festively cheerful — the clear blue sky, comrades in arms flying wingtip to wingtip… Saratov came in sight — we were supposed to land at the Razboishina aerodrome. Due to the long flying distance we were running out of fuel and it would be dangerous to do a second circuit. Straight after landing one had to taxi out quickly to vacate the airstrip. But someone suddenly hesitated and the pilot next in line went for another circuit. The engine stalled, the plane hung in the air and crashed to the ground at an angle… Junior Lieutenant Pivovarov lost his life. We all were shaken by our comrade’s death and landed our planes at random. I’d seen many deaths at war but here, deep behind the frontline, when the war had been forgotten, if only for a short time, it was hard to see a comrade’s death…
Only this morning we had sat with him in the canteen having breakfast and he, smoothing the fair hair hanging over his high forehead and casting a dark-blue eye towards me, said, addressing the pilot Sokolov: “Volodya, do you know who Egorova will be giving the hundred grams of vodka she gets for a combat sortie?”
“I will be putting my cup at the aerodrome by the landing T so that you and the other Bacchus worshippers will come home drawn by the smell, instead of going astray and landing wherever you feel like”, I had rudely replied then.
“What was I talking to him so rudely for?” I cursed myself now. “What for?” Some kind of alter ego sits inside me. This alter ego doesn’t listen to me. The first ego often keeps silent but the other one often asks for trouble. Once upon a time my brother told me that I had a ‘partisan personality’. He may have been right: although I try to make myself quiet I don’t always manage it. I’d snapped today again and now I was scourging myself…
The second part of our route was Saratov-Borisoglebsk. It was shorter than the first one and we flew it quickly. But what was that? My plane’s left undercarriage didn’t want to come down! The whole regiment had landed but I was still circling over the aerodrome trying to drop the jammed landing gear at different flight settings but couldn’t do it. I cast glances at the fuel gauge: I would run out of fuel soon. For the last time I tried to unfold the undercarriage by energetic aerobatics but all in vain. They were already ordering me from the ground to go for a belly-landing. But I felt sorry for the brand-new plane and took a decision to land on the right wheel only.
Closing in for landing, right before touchdown I carefully tilt the machine towards the unfolded undercarriage. The plane softly touches the ground and runs down the airstrip listing to the right. I do my best to hold the Sturmovik in this position for as long as possible. But the speed drops, the plane doesn’t obey the controls anymore, the list gradually disappears and now, having drawn a half-circle on the ground with the left wing and propeller my Il stops — there’s no more fuel…
People mobbed the plane but I was still sitting in the cockpit with its closed canopy, in a kind of stupor. Sweat poured down my face, my back and hands were wet… Captain Karev jumped up on a wing. “Climb out, why are you still sitting? I wanted to welcome you with flowers but there aren’t even any florist shops in Borisoglebsk. You may count on a bouquet from me!”
I got down on the ground and the first man I saw was the teacher of aerodynamics from the Kherson aviation school. It appeared that my alma mater had been evacuated to Borisoglebsk and merged with the local fighter pilot school where Victor Koutov, Louka Mouravistkiy and other Metrostroy guys had studied before the war… That same day the mechanics replaced the prop, fixed up and painted the wing and my Il-2 took its place in line with all the regiment’s planes, looking no different from the others.
In the morning we were on our way to the front. We topped up the fuel tanks in Tikhoretskaya and headed towards the end point of our route, Timashevskaya, for service in the 230th Ground Attack Aviation Division of the 4th Aerial Army. The stanitsa106 of Timashevskaya was called in Kuban ‘that one’: it was right there, wher
e a woman lived seeing off nine of her sons to the front: Alexander, Nikolay, Vasiliy, Filipp, Fedor, Ivan, Ilya, Pavel and the youngest, Sasha who was born in 1923 and would become a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1943, posthumously. None of her sons came back home…
Our regimental staff had already arrived at the spot and quickly prepared us lodgings in a school. All the rest of us were looked after by the BAO (Aerodrome Services Battalion). Me they billeted in a hut not far away from the school where the flyers lived, hosted by a lovely young woman whose husband was at the front. Doctor Kozlovskiy as usual did his best to organise a Russian bath for us. But this time it was not in some hovel. A large panel truck arrived, parked near the river, pumped up some water, heated it up, and those who wished went there to steam, strictly observing a schedule set up by the regimental Chief-of-Staff and the Doctor.
23. The skies over Taman
It didn’t take long to get us into operation. We studied the operations area, familiarised ourselves with the intelligence data and, as the deputy comesk of the 2nd Squadron Pasha Usov liked to say, “we were off”. The newly-appointed Chief-of-Staff of the regiment Captain Leonid Yashkin, appointed to our unit in place of the departed Captain Belov, summoned all the flying personnel to the headquarters dugout for a briefing on the operational situation in our sector of the front.
To start with he advised that he had arrived from the Academy without graduating from it, and before that he had been Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the 366th High-speed Bomber Regiment. Before the war Yashkin had served as a junior commander, and had a Leningrad working-class background. His father used to work at the ‘Red Nailmaker’ plant and perished during the Blockade of Leningrad. Telling us about it Yashkin began to run the fingers of one hand through his unruly fair hair and wiped a tear off his cheek with the other… Leonid himself had been a worker at the ‘Red Nailmaker’ in the past, and his sister Anastasia was a medic at the front.
Getting up from the table Captain Yashkin pulled down his blouse as if shaking off the hard memories, straightened his belt and the loaded holster on it, put on a businesslike look and began his report: “Developing the advance in the South our troops have cleared the Soviet land of Fascist vermin. They have advanced hundreds of kilometres and liberated many areas of the North Caucasus, the Rostov District, part of the Ukraine and reached the Azov Sea… Their plans to capture the Caucasus oil and conquer the Black Sea coast and its ports have led the Hitlerites to complete destruction and a retreat from the North Caucasus in the direction of Rostov and the Taman Peninsula. Now, fearing a breakthrough of Soviet troops, the enemy has built a heavy defence line from Novorossisk to Temryuk. There are concrete pillboxes, dug-out weapon emplacements, anti-tank and anti-personnel fortifications, trenches with communication lines, dense landmine fields, a large amount of field and flak artillery. Because of the numerous water obstacles the Germans have called this strongly fortified position ‘The Blue Line’. According to their plan, it is supposed to cover their retreat to the Crimea.”
The Captain went on with his report but I became pensive… Suddenly I recalled Lermontov’s story Taman. I was fond of Lermontov107. Before the war Victor Koutov had presented me with a book of his verses, and currently it was striding with me down the roads of war…
“…In order to create a threat against their flanks”, the voice of the Chief-of-Staff was coming from somewhere distant, returning me to reality, “and to prevent the German Fleet using Tsemesskaya Bay, on the night of 4 February troops sent from Gelendzhik landed there. They captured a bridgehead called ‘Lesser Land’. The Germans have been trying all possible ways to annihilate the bridgehead. So, fighting doesn’t die down there day or night. Thus, we will be helping our landing party to wipe out the Fascist scum on the Taman Peninsula…”
Straining my memory I recalled our history teacher telling us that Taman was colonised by the Greeks a thousand and a half years ago, then settled by the Khazars, Mongols, Genoese, Turks… Suvorov had built a fort there.108
“We have a mission. The squadron commanders are to stay for the briefing”, Regiment Commander Kozin entered the room with these words and unfolded a map on the desk.
We left the cramped quarters but stayed together, waiting for the decision: what if any of us went on a combat mission? “Maybe I will be included in the fighting group?”, I thought shyly. Everyone was excited — both novices and ‘oldies’, but tried to conceal it. Pilot Rzhevskiy told us a joke about a daughter who asked her father to tell her all he knew about steam engines, which had just come to existence. Her father talked a long time, showed her a picture, and then asked his daughter: “Well, do you understand everything?”
“Everything, Daddy! Just show me please, where they harness the horses…” The airmen laughed. A short brawny fellow from Rybinsk, Volodya Sokolov ran up to me and, putting on a serious face with difficulty, said:
“Anyuta, let’s swap heights!”
“Let’s do it, Volodya. I love high-heeled shoes so much but feel shy of wearing them because of being tall. But how shall we do it? And what will I get for the difference — after all I am 170 centimetres tall and you’re only 160?”
“Sokolov, Egorova, Vakhramov, Tasets, Rzevskiy, up to the commanders!” This was an order from the Chief-of-Staff. Everyone forgot all about jokes and ran into the dugout.
We were proffered not a straight flight route but a kind of zigzag one. “We’ll avoid the enemy’s flak guns. It’ll be better that way. Stay in the formation, do what I do”, the navigator Karev, our leader, said and showed us on the map who was to fly where. My position was wingman to the right of Petr Karev.
What I was thinking about before my first combat sortie in a Sturmovik, it’s hard to say. There was no fear. There was a kind of satisfaction: look, they’ve included me in the first flight group, now I must not disgrace myself — after all, I am the only woman amongst so many men, and what men — Sturmovik pilots!
A quartet of LaGG-3s from a fraternal fighter regiment based on the same aerodrome as we were, was to escort us. There were five regiments in our 230th Ground Attack Aviation Division: four ground-attack and one of fighters. The Division was under the command of a Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Semyon Grigorievich Getman.
Here we were sitting in the cockpits of our combat planes and waiting for the signal — a green flare. My eyes slid over the instruments, my fingers ran over (as if to get the feel of them) the numerous switches and handles — I was checking the correct setting of their positions. My mechanic Rumskiy was here, next to the plane. He had made the plane ready for a combat sortie long before but now he wipes clean the long ago cleansed and shiny reinforced glass of the cockpit, then sets straight a parachute strap on my shoulder and looks at me as if to ask: “What else can I do for you?..”
“Thanks, friend. I need to be alone for a little while and concentrate, to collect my thoughts”, I thanked my mechanic, and looked at Karev’s Sturmovik standing ahead of me to the left. The group leader was quiet. He put his hand on the cockpit sides and seemed to be singing. “Doesn’t the coming mission really worry him in the least?” I thought with astonishment. But my thoughts were interrupted by a green flare soaring above the Command Post. Hissing nastily it rose above the field and began to fall very slowly and burn out. Time we take off! Our course — to ‘Lesser Land’.
During the flight I did my best to stick close to Karev: I was afraid of falling behind. Here was our target. The leader swung his plane in a manoeuvre — I did the same, he dived almost to the very ground — so did I, he shot — I shot too. I dropped my bombs after him as well. But after the fourth pass on the target I fell behind nevertheless. And I didn’t just fall behind but lost the whole group. What should I do now? Now I was flying on my own among dense shell bursts. I manoeuvred desperately, looked for the group but didn’t see it… Near Myskhako I turned onto our territory and became a witness to dozens of our planes and the enemy’s fighting an aerial battle over Tsemesskaya Bay. Fighter plan
es were falling into the sea, pilots were descending on parachutes, motorboats were rushing towards them from both sides. I was observing such a battle for the first time in my life…
It was not easy for a novice to make sense of the melee taking place over the Taman Peninsula. Two fighters dashed towards me like black vultures. For some reason I took them for our ‘Yaks’ but when a machine-gun tracer passed ahead of me to the right and they began to turn for a second pass I clearly saw white crosses on their fuselages. The Germans behaved extremely insolently, taking no care for their own defence, and attacked from different directions but without result. The Sturmovik’s speed was lower than the Messerschmitt’s, and during one of their attacks they skipped forward and appeared in my gun-sight. I pressed all the triggers simultaneously but, alas, no discharge followed: all my ammunition had been spent over the target. That time I was saved by our fighters. They drove the Fascist vultures away from my plane and even shot one down — and so I made it home safely.
During debriefing Captain Karev harshly reprimanded me for falling behind the group. I couldn’t disagree with him and I humbly admitted my negligence. During this flight the pilots Sokolov and Vakhramov were shot down by flak but several days later they returned to the regiment. Vakhramov and his aerial gunner were picked up in the sea by our motorboat, whilst Sokolov, having made it to our territory on his shot-up Sturmovik, landed on the Kuban river floodplain.
Fighter planes gave us Sturmoviks a reliable cover from the air. I still remember the names of many fighter pilots who became famous over Kuban: G. A. Rechkalov109, V. I. Fadeev, N. F. Smirnov, G. G. Goloubev, V. G. Semenishin, V. I. Istrashkin. The callsigns of the Glinka brothers — Boris Borisovich and Dmitriy Borisovich — were ‘BB’ and ‘DB’110… But it seems to me that the dashing fighter pilots didn’t much like flying escort to us Sturmovik pilots, being our ‘nannies’. It was another thing to get a combat mission to go ‘free hunting’! You found a target, engaged the enemy without looking back at the Sturmoviks, shot a Fascist down and came back to your aerodrome victorious. But flying escort, your chance of shooting down an enemy plane was quite low…
Over Fields of Fire Page 16