Over Fields of Fire

by Anna Aleksandrovna Timofeeva-Egorova

  “I can do bandages, take me!” I said.

  He said “My girl, what are you talking about? They’ll kill you!”

  “No way will they kill me!”

  “So how old are you?”

  “Seventeen…”

  Seventeen-year old Yulia Krashchenko was an army medic. Short and agile, she would rush about battlefields, hurry to any groan, any call of: “Sister! Help!”170 It might seem that it was beyond her strength to drag out even one casualty — often a big and heavy man. But she had dragged out more than five and more than ten…

  During the forcing of the Southern Bug river the Fascists tried to break the thin river ice and drown her company that was striving to reach the occupied river bank. The bank was steep, the water was cold — and all around her were fire, groans and entreaties: “Sister, help…” Yulia was bandaging wounded men, but dragging them not to the rear but forward: it was impossible to crawl back — the enemy shells had already smashed the ice. She met the dawn of 23 February 1944 on the high bank of the Bug. It was then that Guards Sergeant Y.F. Krashchenko was awarded the medal ‘For Valour. And later, several months after that, a battle broke out on the Vistula river, which had been turned by the Germans into an impregnable defence line. One night a group of Soviet troops crossed the river and consolidated their grip on the opposite bank. Yulia Krashchenko was amongst them. The German artillery battered them incessantly, dozens of Fascist planes bombed the small bridgehead, trying to throw the troops into the Vistula. The company commander was killed but they held on, trying to keep the bridgehead. Like steel wedges, columns of Tigers, Ferdinands and Panthers advanced onto our lines pressed against the Vistula. During all those difficult hours our Air Force was helping the land troops. Yulia didn’t know that up there, in the skies, in a Sturmovik cockpit there was I — a woman with whom a shared misfortune would soon bring her together…

  The Fascist tanks flattened the trench in which the medic Krashchenko was dressing the wounded. That’s how she had found herself in captivity. And then, after our conversation with the Gestapo man, towards evening two strong Germans appeared and said, pointing their fingers at Yulia: “Kommen. Schnell, schnell!”

  I asked the Hitlerites where and why they were taking the girl? One of them, pressing a finger against his temple, squeezed out: “Pif! Paf!” and off they went.

  They locked me inside. Silence. How terrible silence can be… Grief stripped all my strength. I wanted to shut my eyes and not open them again. A condition of extreme apathy twisted my last forces and will into a tight knot. And who knew how it all would have come to had I not sensed the tenfold strong support of friends. The POWs began to demonstrate their sympathy to me by different means, and even through the walls of the casemate I felt their fraternal handshakes. The Englishmen passed me a trench coat and the Poles tailored a jacket ‘in the latest style’ from it; the Yugoslavs found me a warm scarf, and our Russian guys hand-made me slippers out of trenchcoat cloth, with red stars on the toes. Had the camp administration found out about any of these gifts, severe punishment would have befallen the donors. But what is death by shooting against the great force of human solidarity! And the will to live arose in me again. To live so as to see the end of hateful Fascism with my own eyes!

  They then banned Sinyakov and Trpinac from treating me, and a traitor with the black eyes of a brigand began to dress my wounds. But my comrades in misfortune didn’t abandon me even then. Miraculously once they passed me a bread ration with a note inside: “Hold on, sister!” That unforgettable bread ration… I won’t enlarge upon what that meagre piece of bread meant back then. He who has been hungry knows, and the one who has never starved — as they say — God forbid! Two hundred grams of ersatz bread and a litre of soup from unpeeled and badly washed turnips — such was the daily ration for the Russian POWs of the ‘SZ’ camp. And a starved man, reduced to dystrophy, had sent me his bread ration…

  On one excruciating day of my solitary confinement my attention was attracted by a tall skinny guardsman — a youth of about seventeen. That was not his first day of guard duty, and each time he studied the ‘flying witch’ with unhidden curiosity. I saw that the guard wanted to talk to me but was hesitant. But once, looking back at the door, he produced a wrapper from his pocket, pulled out a piece of pie and actually stepped towards the bunk. Swiftly putting the pie on my chest, he smiled.

  “Bitte essen, Russische Frau!” the youth said cordially and went back to his place straightaway. “Bitte…”

  “Take it back! I don’t need anything of yours!” I replied more by gestures than by words.

  “Nein! Nein! Ich bin Fascisten nicht!” The guard exclaimed and hurriedly began to explain that his mother had come to visit him from the countryside and brought him presents…

  It was already January 1945. On the last day of that month Major Ilyin’s 5th Shock Army tanks liberated the accursed camp ‘SZ’, but two days before the arrival of our troops the SS guards drove out of the barracks all those who could still stand on their feet. Only the dying men and some doctors and medics headed by Doctor Sinyakov were left in the camp. Working together, they secretly dug a deep hole under the operating room and hid underneath till the liberation.

  Through the bars on the window I saw a Gestapo man and two submachine-gunners with him were running into the French barracks and shooting: apparently they were finishing off those who couldn’t walk… But then the cannon shots, previously reaching the camp like a far-off roar of thunder, began to resound just nearby. The shells were bursting right and left of the punishment cell, which had been locked. There had been no one on guard for quite some time already. And suddenly everything fell silent. A lull set in. Suddenly the door swung open and I saw our tank-men in it… How happy I was! “They’ll fix me up for sure”, I thought. “I’ll get better myself — such is my character!”

  Major Ilyin — the tank brigade commander — advised me go to hospital with the wounded tank crews who were about to be taken away in carts. He knew that I would be going through hard times — apparently he was aware of our SMERSh171. That’s was why he recommended I lose myself among the wounded tank-men. He said: “You were flying at tanks when they shot you down!” But I found out the 16th Aerial Army in which I used to serve was operating towards here. That was why I declined:

  “I will be looking for my regiment. It must be somewhere here, on this sector of the front.”

  With the tank crews’ field mail service, I immediately sent letters to my mum in the village of Volodovo, Kouvshinovskiy Region, and to the regiment. Because of the happiness, that day I got to my feet and walked. I remember I put on those gift slippers with red stars on the toes, made by an unknown friend for me, braced my hands against the bunk and moved forward. But my legs were trembling like strings, my flabby muscles wouldn’t obey me, my burns had just grown over and began to crack and bleed straightaway… “Stop! Sit down for a bit, have a rest”, I said to myself and then carefully shuffled around the floor again. One more step! I swayed but didn’t fall, stayed upright and walked on, although holding onto the wall…

  And the ex-POWs of the camp, those who could hold weapons, climbed up on the tanks and went into the battle for Küstrin. Sinyakov organized a field hospital in the camp at the tank crews’ request: their rear lines had fallen behind during their rapid advance. Georgiy Fedorovich did more than seventy operations on wounded tank-men over several days. And back then, in the camp, immediately after the liberation he brought my Party membership card and decorations and handed them over to me…

  35. The SMERSh

  I am careful with my memory — generally I try not be carried away by recollections. Memory is memory and life is life. Nevertheless, I have to tell my grandchildren and great-grandchildren the truth. That truth that when the fighting near Küstrin had died down and the rear lines had caught up, all of us survivors, now ex-prisoners of the Küstrin camp, were ordered to walk to the city of Landsberg — for a check-up. I could barely walk,
but there was a horse-driven waggon on the road, and Doctor Sinyakov talked a coachman into giving me a lift to the nearest town, to where the soldier was heading. Georgiy Fedorovich told me to wait for them by the first building at the entrance to the town. The soldier helped me: he lifted me off his wreck, took me to the proper place, helped meto sit down. But I didn’t have to wait long. As soon as I had sat down on a bench, an officer with a sabre and two soldiers with submachine-guns on both his sides came up to me. “Who are you?” I explained: “Doctors are coming to pick me up shortly. They will assist me in getting to the town for a check-up”. “You know, we should feed you! You must be starving!” I thought it was a bit strange. He was behaving in an unpleasant, affected way. And he also had quite a ‘professional-looking’ face. And they lifted me up under the arms, took my straw handbag and off I strode through the prostrate German town. The dashing officer was in front of us, and the two soldiers were holding me under the arms… I plodded along and the tears were running… I was wearing the jacket ‘cut to the latest Warsaw fashion’, that gift from the British POWs. On the jacket were my two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star, the medals ‘For Valour’ and ‘For the Defence of the Caucasus’: the Party membership card was in my breast pocket. My hair, singed by the fire, had just begun to grow out and that was why I’d covered my head with the warm scarf — it was a gift from the Yugoslav peasant from the Banat province — Zhiva Lazin.

  So I walked through the town — in such a uniform, slippers made of trenchcoat smooth woolen with red stars on the toes, escorted by a ‘guard of honour’. “Soon you will have a dinner and everything else!”

  I was brought to a commandant’s office — to a Soviet officer who was a town major. Without hesitation, with no particular formality or interrogation of a ‘suspicious person’ he ordered me shoved into a vehicle, and then under a reinforced escort carried to the SMERSh Counter-espionage Section of the 32nd Rifle Corps of the 5th Shock Army. There I was ‘billeted’ on a trestle-bed in the watch-house and brought some kind of thick broth. Hitlerite POWs were downstairs in the basement, and I, thank God, was not with them but above them. As airmen say, I ‘had an altitude gauge’…

  The very first night two soldiers with submachine-guns took me for an interrogation. I had to walk up a very steep stairway to the first floor of the building adjacent to the watch-house. My legs were not very responsive, the thin skin that had just appeared on the burns was cracking. The crooks of my arms and knee-joints were stinging and bleeding. But if I tried to stop — a soldier would push me in my back with his submachine-gun…

  I was led into the room which was lit brightly. The walls were covered with paintings; a large carpet was placed on the floor. There was a major sitting behind the desk. He had benevolent looks — but he started by taking away my awards and the Party membership card. For a long time he did now allow me to sit: all that time he spent studying the items with such attention — using a magnifying glass. I thought I was just about to collapse but held on by drawing on some remaining strength, and kept asking for permission to sit down. At last the Major gave permission. I thought that no force would tear me off the chair now! But no, the ‘benevolent’ major suddenly barked:

  “Get up!”

  I sprang to my feet. And so they started, the questions rained down upon me: “Where did you take the decorations and the Party membership card from? Why did you give yourself up? What was your mission? Who gave you the mission? Where were you born? Who is your contact?”

  The major kept asking me these and other questions in that order or mixed up, right up until morning. Whatever I said, he shouted the same thing: “You’re lying, you German shepherd!”

  This was to go on for ten nights in a row! They escorted me to the toilet. Food was brought to me once a day at the same place — the watch-house, on the trestle-bed… I was snubbed with the dirtiest words… My name was forgotten: I now was ‘the Fascist Shepherd’.

  I cannot forget how after the war was over I told about my ‘stay’ with the SMERSh to Petr Karev — the former commander of our regiment. It was the first time I ever talked to somebody about it — and I was crying almost hysterically And then Petr yelled:

  “And you did what?! Why didn’t you remind him about flying reconnaissance missions in 1941 — on an unarmed U-2?! When in the same year your U-2 plane was set on fire, shot down by the German fighters — but being scorched with fire, you delivered the orders to our troops! And wasn’t it ever worse? All you have passed through? We took Kovel, Lutsk, Warsaw… Why didn’t you, a Sturmovik pilot, throw something at the mug of that scoundrel rear trooper!?..”

  Karev angrily axed the air with his hand and suggested: “Let’s drink, Anya Egorova. Let’s have our ‘frontline 100g ration’!”

  On the tenth day of my stay with the SMERSh I ran out of patience. I rose off my trestle-bed and without saying a word moved towards the door. . I made it to that wide stairs and rushed to the first flour — straight for that major.

  “Freeze, you whore! I’ll shoot!” That was a ‘fine hint’ a guard gave, rushing towards me. But I kept going up the stairs almost at a run. Where did I gain the strength for that? I think in the 18th century the Englishman John Bradman remarked: “Beware the anger of a patient man”. How right was he…

  I flung the door open and from the doorway shouted (or was it that it only seemed to me that I was shouting?): “When will you quit taunting me?.. Kill me, but I won’t let you taunt me!”

  I came back to my senses lying on the floor on the carpet. There was a glass of water next to me, but no one was in the room. I quietly sat up, drank the water, somehow dragged myself to the divan standing by the far wall, and sat down. Then the door opened and Major Fedorov entered. By that time I already knew his surname.

  “Have you calmed down?” he asked politely.

  I didn’t reply.

  “Nine days ago the former POWs of the Küstrin ‘SZ’ camp — the doctors — were looking for you. They wrote all they knew about you. How you were captured, how you behaved and how they’d been treating you. They requested you be allowed to go with them to the Landsberg camp for a check-up, but we couldn’t do that then. It looked too suspicious — to preserve your decorations in such a hell. And moreover — to keep the Party membership card! To cut it short, you are now free to go. You are considered as being checked. If you want, stay with us and we will find you a job…”

  “No, no”, I said hurriedly. “I wish to go back to my regiment. It is somewhere around there, fighting in the same sector…”

  “You are free to go wherever you want”, snapped out the major.

  “How will I go without a certificate? I would immediately be taken again, and placed somewhere once more!”

  “We do not provide any certificates! If you want to go to your regiment, I advise you to come to a checkpoint at the road. You could then ask them to give you a lift to a proper place.”

  “You have been taunting me major — and now you are laughing? Can’t you see: I can hardly walk! And who would get me into a car without a document? My regiment is in this sector — so give me a horse or a carriage. Or give me some certificate and a lift to the checkpoint — I beg you for Christ sake!”

  The major had softened and did me a favor. He made a certificate with my whereabouts, one saying I had passed the check-up. Following that he ordered to get me on a carriage, bringing me to the checkpoint. There, I was advised where the headquarters of the 16th Aerial Army was located. They then put me onto a passing vehicle.

  But from the Army personnel section I was immediately transferred to the Army-level SMERSh. “We will send an inquiry to the 34th Rifles Corps of the 5th Shock Army where they checked you out”, they told me. But the room I was placed into had all the utilities, and I was fed in the officer’s mess. The SMERSh chief’s wife brought me magazines and books. Some more women visited me, Army HQ officers, the pilots… They congratulated me on my return ‘from the world beyond’,
I received many gifts. A whole pile of various things accumulated in my possession, and I remember someone joking: “So, Comrade Egorova, you’ve been to hell, now paradise awaits you…”

  And one day Captain Tsekhonya came to see me. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his first or parental name but I will never forget his kindness! He had served in our 805th Ground Attack Regiment as an Adjutant in the 3rd Squadron. That was what they then called the position that is now called ‘Squadron Executive Officer’. As Deputy 3rd Squadron Commander I used to curse him over all sorts of ‘trifles’ although they say that there’re no trifles in the Air Force. But he was such a sluggish chap that I used to ‘push him’ a bit. Tsekhonya would not get angry at me (or would just pretend not to), but either way he would not repeat his mistakes. And now, having found out I was alive and that I’d been found, he came to visit me. The captain brought me a gift of some beautiful dresses and said: “I put together a parcel for my wife, but I found out you were alive and I’ve brought it to you…”

  “What do I need dresses for?” I said apprehensively. “You’d better send it home to your wife, they are in great need after all, but those are useless here. Probably the quartermasters will supply me with a uniform blouse and a skirt?”

  “You need treatment, Annochka”, Tsekhonya said affectionately and… burst into tears, staring looking for a handkerchief in his pockets…

  Having received my letter, they reported from the Regiment to my Division: ‘Senior Lieutenant Egorova is alive and is on our sector of the front’. The division commander Colonel V. A. Timofeev then ordered our regiment Zampolit D. P. Shvidkiy to mount an ‘expedition’ to search for me. And now we were to meet…