by Anne Noggle
I found myself whispering to my mama to help me. Ahead of me were the banks of the strait. I felt the wheels sliding on the water; then they hit and stuck in the sand. I had made it just to the water's edge. Then I heard my navigator's voice. "What the hell!" I was crazy with relief and happiness. I turned and leaned over her; she was stuck in the cockpit with one leg pierced through the cabin floor. She was alive, she was safe!
While we were stalling, her seat had fallen to the bottom of the cabin, and her leg had stuck into the broken floor. When she took off her helmet, I saw a huge bump on her forehead; she had hurt her head when we crashed. The infantrymen were running to our wrecked plane. She, who had miraculously escaped death, was now grieving over her forehead because she wanted to look attractive! Life took over from the war-we all wanted to love and be loved. She cried with dismay, "Look how many grooms are around, and who is going to marry me with this huge hump on my forehead?" I burst out laughing, but it was a hysterical laughter. Thus I relieved myself of that intensity of fear and tension.
Many of our crews were killed in the war, and we had to cope with this as best we could. The way I felt then was that I wanted the old times of my happy youth to return, and I idealistically visualized it. But at the bottom of my heart the feelings were more complex and complete. Seeing and hearing those massacred or herded into concentration camps as slave labor intensified and hardened our will and desire for revenge.
All my life I've been living with a vision that has become the main theme in both my feature films: a small boy, helpless and desperate in his misfortune. He is not a fruit of my fantasy-he is a real person. In my films he is a symbol of the great Russian tragedy of the millions of homeless, orphaned children.
I met this child on one of my missions. We were flying back to our regiment at dawn, and in the outskirts of a Belorussian village I saw something very tiny, a black spot-but it was something alive. When we landed I saw a small boy all alone in the deserted village. My first impulse was to give him all the rations each pilot carries in her emergency sack: candies, a bar of chocolate, sugared milk. I grabbed it from the cabin and flew to the child, spreading my arms like wings, hoping to see a smile on the face of that tiny creature whom I could make happy for at least a few moments. But in front of me was a skinny, frozen face with enormous green eyes. And in them no glimpse of joy. "Aunty, are you going to the front?" he asked me, and in his voice was a weak hope. "My daddy is at the front. Find him, please. My mama is dying there in the trench. If you find him, she won't die...."
So you see, we couldn't help flying in combat, and we did our best for those tiny human beings so they would never have to suffer anymore-it was a genuine truth of heart.
Junior Lieutenant Olga Yerokhina-Averjanova, mechanic of armament
I was born in 1924. Now I am a retired medical doctor. When the war broke out I was finishing secondary school; I was seventeen. I had a discussion at home with my mother and father, and we decided that I should go to the front to defend the motherland. It was a home council. Moreover, I was the leader of the Communist League organization at school. I lived in the Caucasus in the city of Stavropol.
At first they didn't want to take me into the army because I was so young and didn't have any technical background. But later I was allowed to join the army, and I was admitted into the military school of junior airforce staff. I studied there for three months and was then admitted to the 63rd Air Regiment, a male regiment, which flew the Boston-29 aircraft. I was a mechanic of armament.
In 1943 Bershanskaya, commander of the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment, selected me as a reinforcement for her regiment. It was easier to serve in the male regiment in the physical sense that the heavy duties were performed by the men. But from the point of view of human relationships, it was much better in the women's regiment. When we were on duty we called each other and members of the command and staff by their rank, very officially; and then in the mess or barracks, we called each other informally, addressing each other by our first names. This made friendships and relationships, and it was all due to Bershanskaya, our commander, because she was a marvelous person.
We had a terrible accident in the Caucasus, when four of our aircraft crashed into each other. Two of them were awaiting permission to land at night after a mission, and they were circling and circling because nearby were German fighters, and they couldn't allow them to land. Two others were taking off on a combat mission, so in that darkness they ran into each other and crashed. Only one person survived while seven perished. Some of those could have survived, but they hadn't been provided with parachutes. When they hit the ground some of them were still alive and were crying out for someone to save them because their aircraft were on fire. No one could help them. They couldn't escape from the cockpits, and nobody could come close to the planes because of the fires. They exploded, one after another. Only one managed to escape from the cockpit, and she was permanently crippled.
After each combat night we were allowed to sleep three or four hours before a new duty day. But on the night of a crash we never slept, never left the airfield. We waited until dawn, believing in miracles, asking God to save our girls, waiting for them to return. Many of them did not come back, but sometimes when the planes were missing after a mission they really did return. They were shot down and made emergency landings, returning sometimes two or three days later. They were considered to have perished, but happily they turned out to be alive and safe. Each loss was a great grief to us.
The aircraft carried different types of bombs. One small one made a crackling sound when it hit, and it was very frightening to those on the ground. The biggest complication to our duty was that we had to work at night loading the bombs, and we used torches. If the batteries gave out, we were forced to load the bombs by feeling with our hands where to attach them to the aircraft.
Once when we were stationed in Poland, a male engineer of the air division came to check our work. He decided to teach us how to handle all the equipment and fuses and how to fix everything on the aircraft-he wanted to show us his manly skills. He took an explosive device in his hands that was ready to explode, and when I saw what was happening, I jumped up and threw it away from his hands. At that moment the device exploded, and a piece of shell penetrated his head. He was cut from his eyebrow along his cheek.
We had some nights that we called our maximum nights. These were nights when the air crews made from 12 to 18 missions. Irina Sebrova was a leader in the competition to complete missions; she had i,oo8 combat missions, and I worked on the aircraft of her formation. Near the end of the war I was promoted to junior lieutenant.
Our regiment received attention and much publicity during the war, and we were promoted more frequently than the male regiments. The men didn't believe that women could do any good at the front; they thought that it was not the female job to fly combat or serve in the army. Later on, when we had proven ourselves, they respected us.
Hygienically, it was a hardship. We didn't have enough soap or water. Sometimes we used water from puddles to wash ourselves. In one area the water was very salty, so we would melt snow. Our staff would say that we had to always remember that we were women and take care of ourselves.
First we fought in the Caucasus, then in the Crimea, then on the Belorussian front. The women of our regiments would never wish a war to come to anyone-to kill or be killed. All of us wanted to be peaceful, friendly, kind, open, the way we are now in 199o.
Junior Lieutenant Mariya Tepikina-Popova, pilot, deputy squadron commander
I was born in 1917 in the Urals near the town of Sverdlovsk, and I came to aviation accidentally. I went to teachers' college, and when I was a third-year student, the Komsomol leader of our college suggested that I should enter a pilots' school in Bataisk. He chose me because I was an athlete at school. I was afraid to be trained as a pilot; I didn't know if I could do it. I had planned to be a teacher, but the Komsomol leader persuaded me. From 1936 to 1939 I attended that aviation pilo
ts' school. I was nineteen when I entered pilot training.
When I graduated I flew as a pilot with Aeroflot, our national airline. I had been flying with the airline for two years when the war broke out. I married during this period, and my husband was a pilot, too. When the war started, he was drafted into the army air forces and was shot down and killed in 1941. In October, 1941, right after my husband perished, I was transferred to the town of Dzhanbul with my baby son. I worked there as an instructor until 1943, and there I also buried my son. You can understand my sentiments when I tell you that I couldn't stay in the rear anymore because I lost both of those dear to me, but they wouldn't let me go to the front until 1943. 1 cried for three days before the commander of the pilot training school allowed me to leave.
I went to Moscow to military headquarters. They wanted me to join the 125th Dive Bomber Regiment flying the Pe-2, because I had by then over goo flying hours. Before then I never even knew that there were women's regiments! Then I heard that Bershanskaya commanded the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment, and because I knew her, I asked to be assigned to her regiment as a reinforcement pilot.
While I was being interviewed at headquarters, a personnel officer saw my last name and asked if I was related to the political officer of the same name, who was assigned to the same training school where I had been a pilot. I knew that the political officer had been taken and imprisoned as an enemy of the republic in 1937. I thought quickly how I would best answer, because I was not related to him. But in those times you had to answer in such a way as to completely deny any knowledge of him, or the consequences could be quite unpredictable and could include prison. So I answered that I kept my distance from the command and staff of the school and didn't know him. The personnel officer understood my evasive response and replied, "Oh, since he was my best friend, and you are a Tepikina too, I'll let you join the 46th regiment."
I joined the regiment in August, 1943, and I flew my first combat mission a week later. I learned to see in the dark and to determine our target visually. It took practice to recognize objects in the darkness. On summer nights we flew five or so combat missions, and in winter we flew ten and up to fifteen missions. When we returned to reload the plane with bombs and fuel, the navigator would go in and report on the mission just completed. The pilot would stay in the cockpit, and I often dozed while this was going on.
Once when we had been heavily shelled by antiaircraft fire and were walking together toward the command headquarters to report that fact, we turned to look at each other. We burst out laughing, because we were covered with black soot from the explosion of the shells so close to us in the air! And so we remained alive.
I had three forced landings during the war. Once we were assigned a mission in the Crimean area of the Black Sea where our troops were making a landing on the seacoast. There was a very powerful searchlight used by the Germans to spotlight our troops, and then they would shoot at them. I asked our commander if I could blow up the searchlight and got her permission. We succeeded in gliding in quietly with our engine throttled back and then blew it up. But when I opened the throttle to regain our altitude, the engine would not increase power but continued to idle. I didn't want to land in the sea, so I decided to glide to the coast. Then I quite clearly saw the road that led from the coast to our auxiliary airfield, and although I had only 16o meters of altitude, I did manage to glide over the low hills and make it back to the field.
Another time I was on a mission in the Kerch region, and before I crossed the front lines I noticed that the oil pressure had dropped to zero. I knew that in a few minutes the engine would burn up, so I turned back. Below me I saw the signaling lights of an auxiliary airfield and the responding lights of a partisan aircraft, and I descended to land. When we had to make an emergency landing, it was best and safest to drop the bombs before landing. But if we could not see an open area when we were on our side of the front lines, we did not drop them for fear of killing our own troops. In this case I could not drop the bombs, and so I landed ahead of the partisan aircraft, leaving him to circle the field again, because I had a load of bombs. The officer in charge of the airfield started cursing me as I taxied in, calling me every dirty name he knew, because I had cut off the other plane in the landing pattern. Also, he didn't want a loaded bomber landing there. Then, as I drew near him, he recognized me as a fellow pilot from our civil flying days.
What I feared most was flying toward the searchlights and the antiaircraft guns and worrying about the disposition of the guns relative to the target. After dropping the bombs the emotional strain receded, and when we hit the target we cheered. Even my navigator was clapping her hands and beating her feet on the floor, and we forgot about our fear.
Once I was flying a mission, and with forty-five seconds remaining before dropping our bombs, we were caught first by one searchlight and then by some twenty more searchlights. We dropped the bombs, and then I managed to escape by opening the throttle and diving at a speed of up to 17o kilometers per hour. Our maximum diving speed was supposed to be iso. We flew out over the Black Sea at a very low altitude, and then we flew back to our field. When we arrived, nobody expected to ever see us again, because they saw us in all those searchlights and did not think we could escape them. The most amazing thing was that our plane was not even hit on that mission. We were met at the airdrome with hurrahs from the other crews.
I remember when we had our airdrome on the banks of the Neman River, and the Germans, on the other bank, were firing every morn ing at the girls going to the toilets. To avoid needless losses, our commander asked the ground forces if they could stop that firing. About thirty troops crossed the river and were then subjected to heavy fire from the Germans. A soldier swam back across the river and asked our commander to help save them because they were suffering losses! Our commander sent one aircraft to bomb that area from a height of goo meters, and they missed. So then I was sent on the same mission with Rufina, my navigator. We flew in at Soo meters and hit the target. Upon our return to the airdrome, there were shouts of hurrah by the whole regiment. We had saved the girls.
On the way back from that mission, we saw a group of fascist soldiers lying in the wheat two kilometers from our field. When we reported it, we were asked to fly over that place and drop a flare to indicate where the Germans were. The navigator said we could not drop a flare because it would burn the wheat field. I circled and dove at the German position three times, down to five meters so our troops could find them. Our soldiers encircled them, and they were captured.
I made 640 combat missions, and I was awarded four orders. I married again in 1945-I married a pilot, and we had a wedding party there in the regiment. Our regiment was released in October, 1945. In 1947 I managed to get a position as a copilot in civil aviation, flying cargo aircraft. I flew only one year, and then the doctors refused to let me fly anymore.
Senior Sergeant Nina Yegorova-Arefjeva, mechanic of armament
I come from Yaroslavl, a town on the Volga River. I only managed to finish secondary school, and the very next day the war broke out. When I first heard that Marina Raskova was forming the regiment, my first impulse was not to try to join the regiment but to go to the front.
When I joined the army, I was first sent to a military school to take a ground course in aircraft armament. That was in the Caucasus, seventy kilometers from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. The class ahead of me had been studying armament for three years before the war, and we were to study for only three months! Ours was a female class: only women. We studied twelve hours a day. Only the command and staff and instructors were men. We hardly slept.
We didn't have any textbooks, and we had to listen and take notes. There was a great shortage of paper in the country, as there is now, and we had to take newspapers and write between the lines for our notes. Further, we not only had to study twelve hours a day but also perform our duties: get up for alarms at night, and at times go to collective farms to help pick and collect the crops. We live
d in wooden houses with twenty-four of us in one very small house. We slept in tiers with upper and lower berths.
Our military school was a secret because of the war, and at night we were not allowed to switch on a light. When we had an alarm at night, we had to search in the dark for our clothes. Then we were lined up and marched around, for discipline.
I was assigned to a male fighter regiment after training. We were all distributed to different regiments. Some of the women were sent to the female regiments, but I was not. Later on Bershanskaya, the commander of the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment, chose me as a replacement in her regiment. I found the conditions there much more favorable. Everyone was so nice and open. The Germans called the crews night witches. They liked to sleep at night, and our aircraft made the Germans' life not so easy; they disturbed their sleep. Sometimes, when our planes were throttled back gliding in over the target, the Germans would cry out, "Night witches!", and our crews could hear them.
Captain Larisa Litvinova-Rozanova, pilot, commander of the formation
Hero of the Soviet Union
I was born in Kiev in 1918. I started flying when I was twenty, and in 1939 I finished glider school; then on to the pilots' school at Kherson, where I became a pilot instructor.
I joined the women's regiment when it was formed in October, 1941. When I was training at Kherson I had an additional number of hours in ground school and became a navigator as well as a pilot. So six of us who had that additional training as navigators became the navigators of the three regiments. I also trained women to become navigators for our regiment. I did not want to be a navigator, I wanted to continue as a pilot, but I had to do it.
In 1942, when we were at the front and had fought for about a year, they decided to form a third squadron of the regiment. I went to the regimental commander and asked to be a pilot. And so I became a pilot again and was named commander of the formation. I was a pilot for a year and seven months.