“Any chance of going back over? I mean after the invasion.”
“An excellent chance, if you’re up for it. Ike already likes you, and that’s got to be a plus. Come on. I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
Sitting next to him in the car, she brooded. She was contributing to the war effort, as if the NKVD and Kazar and Lubyanka prison had never happened to her. So why couldn’t she shake off her depression? Fingering her collar, she felt the worn parachute silk at her throat and a light went on.
“George, I’m sorry I didn’t mention this earlier. Do you know how to begin an inquiry with the Red Cross? I want to find out if Lilya Drachenko is in one of the POW camps in the Ukraine.”
“Hmm. Certainly it’s possible to file an inquiry, but at this stage, it’s extremely unlikely to be productive. The Eastern Front is too unstable, and we’re not even sure where all the camps are. Do you know the name of the possible camp?
“Well, the location, at least. Vinnytsia, in the Ukraine. I want to find out if Lilya Drachenko is in any camp in or near there.”
He jotted the information in a tiny notebook. “I’ll contact someone with the Red Cross, but you mustn’t hold out a lot of hope.”
She nodded. Hope had shrunk to the tiniest of straws, and she clutched at it.
*
Scarcely had Alex settled into her London rooming house and gotten used to regular meals, long restful nights, and showers, when General Morgan’s secretary telephoned. She was brief and to the point. Alex’s clearance had been approved, and SHAEF had an aerial-reconnaissance assignment for her.
And now her Spitfire zoomed in one more time over the beach while she snapped her final ten shots of the cliff side. She marveled at the speed and agility of the reconnaissance plane that allowed them to dart in low and speed away again. Lilya would love these, she thought.
After delivering her coastline films to SHAEF, she received permission to photograph the gathering Allied forces and materials, provided she passed her negatives through military censors.
In mid-May she photographed the endless rows of tents and Quonset huts spread out over meadows and fields, the stockpiles of lumber, oil barrels, rubber tires, pontoons, and dried eggs, and the training exercises in the villages of Southwest England. Exactly as the Kremlin had done, the censors of SHAEF allowed her to publish the cheerful close-ups but withheld the larger scenes from publication until after D-day.
She worked with cool professionalism, though one of her film assignments opened the wound that had scarcely closed. On a foggy morning on a wide street in Liverpool, a seemingly endless line of US P-51 fighter planes trucked past her on the way to their air base, their wingtips removed so they could pass through. Airplanes on a city street as far as the eye could see left her awestruck, and as she raised her camera, she felt the ghost of Lilya Drachenko peering at them through her eyes.
Off duty, she didn’t know what to do with herself. When she wearied of sitting in her room, she visited the military canteens. The randy GIs left her cold, and the nurses, canteen girls, female ambulance drivers, and Wacs were of only slightly more interest.
But one evening a slender blond woman with Slavic features seemed to sense her interest and sat down next to her. “Hi there. I noticed you were sitting all alone, so I brought you a beer. One of the fellas told me you’re just back from Russia. Wow. Musta been cold, huh?”
“In winter, yes, it is.” Weather wouldn’t have been her first choice of topic, but it would serve. The beer was a nice gesture, too. She took a sip.
The young woman held a cigarette delicately up by her cheek but didn’t seem to smoke it. “Can’t be much worse than at home in Iowa. Y’know, those Midwestern storms. Days when you just didn’t want to go out of the house. So, how’d ya like it?” She sidled closer so that her knee brushed Alex’s thigh, ever so lightly.
A bit unsubtle, Alex thought, but she wasn’t looking for intellectual discussion. Just solace. The beer was helping.
“There were a lot of days like that, but in a war zone, you can’t decide to stay home. The Russians themselves suffered terrible hardships, though they’re incredibly tough people.”
“I’ll bet. The guys must be real animals. So, d’ya have a Russian boyfriend?” She winked.
Alex was taken aback. Obviously they were going to waste no time on small talk. “No. I spent most of my time with the female aviators. Bombardiers and fighter pilots.”
“Holy moly! Women fighter pilots.” She pressed her cheek with open fingertips that held red lacquered nails. “They must have been brutes, too. I can just imagine them. Big lumpy things that look like men.” She tittered. “They’d scare the bejeepers out of me.”
Alex thought of gentle Katia, who’d died carrying her out of hell. An inner door that had been slowly opening suddenly slammed shut, and she stood up. “I just remembered I’ve got to be someplace. Thanks for the beer.” She slipped between the dancing couples and left the canteen.
Though the night was warm, she huddled inside her jacket, lonely. Was this the only kind of woman she attracted? Worse, the silly creature with her cartoon notions of Russia could have been Alex herself, two years earlier. She leaned against a light pole, her fists deep in her raincoat as evening mist settled around her, chilling her.
Lilya, my darling, look what you’ve done to me. Please, please still be alive some place. Loving you has ruined me for anyone else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lilya was hanging limp from the pole when Olga returned with one of the soldiers, who cut her loose. He turned away to fire at the camp guards gathering to repel the intruders, while Olga caught her in her arms and dragged her back to their shed.
“Is it liberation?” Lilya asked through lips that hardly moved.
“I don’t think so. It looks like just a small detachment. Olga paused for only a moment.
“Come on, this is our chance.” Olga dragged her to her feet again.
She stuffed straw into both their jackets and wrapped their scraps of blankets around their shoulders. “We look like garden scarecrows,” she muttered as she snatched Lilya by the hand and led her at a run through the fence hole left by the attacking troops. The other women followed them.
They ran, following the crack of gunfire, trying to catch sight of the retreating intruders. Camp guards pursued them now, shooting down all but four of the fleeing women, but when the Soviet detachment halted and returned fire, the guards withdrew.
Two of the intruders backtracked to where they stood. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“We want to join you,” Olga had the breath to call out. “Two snipers, a medic, and a pilot. Can you take us someplace where we can get warm? We can fight.” Hunched over and wretched, Lilya had to admire Olga’s negotiating skills.
He hesitated, but Olga pressed her case. “Why did you attack the camp in the first place if you didn’t want to rescue anyone?” Lilya could see now that they weren’t in full uniform but were partisans wearing the Red Army tunics over an assortment of trousers.
“We were supposed to do reconnaissance and then hit the administration barracks,” the one who seemed to be the leader said. “But we came in from the wrong side, and the guards spotted us.”
“Too bad. But you can still help four comrades.”
He wrinkled his nose and seemed to consider how much of a liability it would be to return with four women. “All right, but you have to keep up.”
Lilya was at the end of her strength, but the thought of freedom invigorated her just enough to muster the will to stagger forward for the next twenty minutes. And finally, when they emerged from a thicket, she saw a troop carrier on a path in front of them.
“Get in,” the partisan said, and they clambered in gratefully.
*
The partisan detachment took them to a shed in the woods that might once have been a hunter’s lodge. Firewood was piled up against one wall, and two sentries stood guard. The interior consisted of t
wo rooms, one with a wood stove, table, and kerosene lantern, and the other, as far as she could see through the open door, with crates of munitions and supplies.
As they entered, the commander turned up the wick on the lantern to see them and snapped, “Close the goddam door,” at the reporting soldier.
“Yes, Comrade Kovitch,” the man said and, waving the other soldiers away, closed the ill-fitting door behind them.
Kovitch himself was unremarkable. Of slight stature, he had an odd diamond-shaped face that seemed to narrow at the top due to a severely receding hairline, and at the bottom by virtue of a mustache and goatee. His uniform that, unlike those of his men, was complete and held decorations, indicated he was a colonel.
“What’s this? I ordered you to knock out the camp administration building, and instead you bring me back four women.”
“Sorry, sir. But the building was heavily guarded. We were lucky to escape. The women followed us out.”
The commander slid his glance over them. “What am I going to do with them?”
Olga was quick to reply. “I was a sniper, Comrade Colonel, and I’m still a sniper, if you give me a rifle.”
One of the others chimed in. “I’m also a sniper.”
“And you?”
“A medic, Comrade Colonel.”
“And you?” He looked at Lilya. It was obvious now that he was toying with them, like a skillful shopper about to make a purchase. But what good was a pilot to partisans?
Olga spoke up again. “She’s a fighter pilot, Comrade Colonel. She fought at Stalingrad.”
That caught his attention. “Stalingrad, eh? What’s your name?”
She hesitated for the briefest second. “Aleksandra Vasil’evna Petrovna, Comrade Colonel.”
He peered at her longer than he should have, as if something about her appearance troubled him, and she feared he might have recognized her. But a new sound seized his attention. He stared up at the ceiling of the shed, as if he could see through it, and Lilya recognized the unmistakable clatter of a U-2 motor.
Strange. There were no targets here. What were they doing so close?
“The supplies. Take two of the men and get out there fast with the signal lights,” the commander barked.
As the soldier scrambled out to obey the order, Kovitch turned his attention back to the four women. “I’ve lost several of my best riflemen in the last days. If you are who you say you are, and God help you if you aren’t, then I can use you.”
He waved over one of the men who’d brought them in. “Take them into the other room and get them appropriate uniforms. They can wait for the supplies to get rifles.”
Lilya’s head swam. They were saved, but they were going to fight alongside the men instead of being returned to their regiments. Under the circumstances, that was the best she could hope for. Now if they could just get some warm food in their stomachs.
The “appropriate uniforms” they received amounted to padded jackets, and while Lilya’s was too large and smelled of machorka smoke and sweat, it was a relief to finally be warm. The soldier also fished out two-finger mittens for them.
Now that their status as comrades was clear, the soldier was less brusque than before and chatted with them as they tried on the jackets. “You’re lucky. The delivery just came and we should have extra food tonight. The commander’s good about passing it around to the men the first night.”
“That’s a relief,” Olga said, buttoning up the collar of her new jacket. “The Fritzes have been starving us for months. Saves them the cost of bullets.”
The soldier looked her over. “You look starved. You’re going to have to toughen up fast here. We’re always on the move and can’t carry any dead weight. Good thing you’re snipers. We always need those.”
He studied Lilya. “We don’t need pilots, that’s for sure. But he probably kept you because you look like his daughter.”
“He has a daughter? There are women in the group?”
“Had. She was killed a few months ago somewhere east of here. We don’t usually patrol alone, but she’d just gone out to deliver a message and never came back. We found her body a few days later, near a plane wreck.”
A faint memory came to her. A woman’s voice in the woods, then soldiers and pain, then nothing. Lilya’s hand went unconsciously to her mouth. “Do you know what kind of plane it was?”
“No. Some kind of fighter plane, they said. The patrol came back to report it, but when they returned the next day to bury her, she was gone. Commander Kovitch never got over it.” He stepped back and observed that all of them were now adequately dressed. “Come on, help bring in the supplies. No work, no food.”
Lilya followed him out, musing over a partisan woman she would never meet and who had died in her place.
*
By the first week of January she’d gained back most of her weight and had proved herself. She was useless as a sniper, but when it came to trudging through snowy woods on sabotage missions, she was as stalwart as any man. She even inherited a thick ushanka to protect her head and ears when one of the men in the group was killed.
More importantly, the unit supplied her with new temporary papers, thereby confirming her flimsy new identity in the Soviet military machine.
On two more occasions she heard the familiar clattering of a U-2 engine when a plane came in to deliver supplies. None ever landed, and she wondered how close their base was. Could she locate it and return to the night bombers? Major Bershanskaya would surely protect her and not surrender her to the NKVD.
Though the partisans had supplied her with a padded coat, she couldn’t strike out alone in winter, uncertain of where she was going and with little food. The other women might also be punished in some way for her desertion. And so she stayed, free and yet a prisoner.
*
The months passed, and as Lilya had once been a “free hunter” aviator, she was now a “free infantryman.” She was assigned to the First Ukrainian Front, but as they fought their way north and west, the detachments around her were thinned by death, and she was rounded up again into the First Belorussian Front.
Regardless of her place in the Red Army, her daily life was the same—crouching under cover alternated with running toward the enemy. At night, life meant shoveling cold food into her mouth and huddling with the other women in whatever shelter was available for a few hours’ sleep before the next advance.
And advance they did, kilometer by kilometer, though rain and the spring mud put the whole war into slow motion, like dream paralysis.
In spite of the ferocity of their defenses, the German armies were obviously in full retreat. But as she passed through Ternopol, Proskurov, and Kovel, Lilya saw the wasteland the invaders had left behind them, torching every village and farm, poisoning wells, and slaughtering or driving away the livestock.
If they moved fast enough, they could sometimes put the enemy to flight before he set his fires and could save a village from ruin. In May, they succeeded, and a grateful family of peasants invited her and the other women in for the night. They butchered a chicken, and though the portions divided among six people were miniscule, it was a taste of heaven to have fresh poultry in her mouth instead of bread and a few ounces of horse sausage. Even better, the family offered their bed to them while, for that one night, they slept in their barn.
Lilya and the other women leaned their rifles against the bedroom wall, within quick reach, and removed their boots and heavy jackets. The bed was spacious, for the couple had slept in it with their two children. Still, for four grown women, it was almost as crowded as their nest in the POW camp, and they spent the first half hour giggling.
“Just like the old times at in the camp, eh?” Olga joked, fitting herself onto the outer edge. “If anyone farts, I’m throwing them out of bed, you hear?”
“We smell so bad, we’ll never notice,” Lilya replied from the other side. In fact, she’d long since ceased to notice odor. The feel of a mattress underneath her was
blissful, and she tried to think of the last time she’d slept on one.
It came to her suddenly, and it was her last thought before she slept.
Sandwiched between her fully clothed comrades, she dreamt of lying—clean, nude, and deeply aroused—in Alex’s arms.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Alex stood in the pelting rain at a depot at Portsmouth, shielding her camera lens with one hand while she snapped photos of the ongoing troop movements. Thousands of men filed past her into the powerboats to be ferried out to the transport ships.
Drying her lens again, she changed position and got a good shot of another contingent of GIs heading out on powerboats to the ships, their edge-to-edge helmets making them look like a single lumpy carapace on the back of some huge floating beetle.
“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,” someone behind her declaimed.
She knew the quote, which she’d memorized herself in college, and when she turned, she recognized the man as well. Robert Capa, her chief competitor.
“Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say These wounds I had on Crispin’s day,” she declaimed back to him, skipping the lines she couldn’t remember.
He stood beside her now, facing outward toward the war-ready harbor, and raised an arm theatrically. “This story shall the good man teach his son and Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be rememberéd.”
She grinned, remembering the final lines of the speech, and spoke them with him in unison: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!”
“Henry V,” she said. “Almost as good as ‘We will fight on the beaches,’ isn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose people need to hear things like that if they’re going to their deaths,” Capa said, opening an umbrella over both of their heads. He was a handsome man, she noted, swarthy and exotic, with thick eyebrows. Though his work was much like hers, she’d always admired it, and now she found she liked him personally.
The Witch of Stalingrad Page 25