Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 (Soviet Memories of War)

by Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

  “Where will I find your Secretary?” I asked in a peremptory voice some weedy chap with spectacles proceeding importantly along the corridor with a brief case. He glanced at me in wide-eyed astonishment: who was this wanting “Himself”? But, detecting determination in my face and look, he asked no questions but said simply:

  “Over there, around the corner there’s a door padded with black leatherette…”

  A small chubby secretary blocked my way through this door with her chest but then either my appearance or look or my considerable height made her let me through to the door to my dreams. Seizing the opportunity I resolutely crossed the threshold and straight from the entrance, afraid of being stopped, blurted out in a rush “I need a job and accommodation. And as soon as possible!”

  A young man sitting at a large desk raised his head a bit and looked at me through his spectacles in astonishment.

  “What exactly is your problem, comrade?”

  “My problem can’t wait…”

  Terribly agitated, and confused because of it, I began to tell about myself: the underground, the aeroclub, the flying school, my brother…I talked without concealing anything, like in the confessional. The secretary listened to me in silence and I saw a real concern and involvement in his look. It seemed to me that he understood he had before him a person who had been deprived of her life’s work. Not just a girl but a Comsomol member who had mastered the complicated craft of flying. A major war was just round the corner, industry had been growing at an unprecedented pace, the army had re-armed and there was a desperate shortage of trained pilots. The obkom secretary knew all that perfectly. Listening to my confused story he was more and more surprised at how they could without any reason remove a student-pilot from flying at a time when flying personnel was so badly needed, when the OSOAVIAHIM had no time to train students for the flying schools. When the pre-army training program was strained to the limit! “What kind of documents have you got on you?”

  “Here you are”, I laid my passport, Comsomol membership card, red certificate – the citation I had received from the Government for the construction of the first stage of the underground – and the certificate that I had completed gliding and flying training in the aeroclub.

  Reading the documents, the secretary was questioning me, ringing someone, calling someone to come around, and I was sitting on a couch and… crying.

  “Well, will you be able to train our guys in gliding?”

  “Of course I will!”

  “Excellent. You’ve got the right papers.”

  Even my breathing stopped!

  “Well, cry-baby, let’s go for lunch”, I heard his mocking voice.

  “Thanks, I’m not hungry.”

  “Let’s go, let’s go”, he pulled me by the arm.

  After lunch, seeing my empty purse, he lent me 25 roubles till my first pay.

  “It seems you were interested in work and lodging?” There was craftiness in the secretary’s voice. “Whilst you were crying here we recommended you to the Smolensk flax works as a bookkeeper. You’ll be balancing the accounts. And you will organise a gliding school there. There is a go-ahead, youthful bunch there. Shoot off to the personnel department now. I have made all arrangements. As soon as you settle in go to the aeroclub and see the commissar – I’ve heard there is a training detachment for those who have already completed pilot preparation. How many brothers do you have?” the secretary asked suddenly.

  “Five.”

  “Well now, how rich you are in brothers, and I have none! If you’re gonna write about all your brothers you’ll use up too much paper. Is that clear?”

  “Thanks for your advice!”

  “Show all your “credentials” at the aeroclub and request they accept you into the training detachment. Should any questions arise, don’t be shy, come around…”

  “Thanks”, sobbing through my nose, I muttered, and shot off to the flax works thanking my stars: what a lucky girl I was to come across good and kind-hearted people!

  On the same day I was employed as a spinners’ salary clerk, and by night-time I had been lodged in a dormitory in a room where the best shock worker, Antonina Sokolovskaya, lived. And I was accepted into the aeroclub’s training detachment and I began to fly again. What a joy it was – to rush to the aeroclub after work. A lorry would be already waiting for us there and we would ride in it to an aerodrome located a fair way from the city…

  Well into autumn we sat exams on the theory and practice of flying before the State Board and were disbanded pending special orders. I had no hope of getting a referral to a flying school. After all there were five other girls in our detachment, hereditary natives of Smolensk, and I was a newcomer. Therefore I decided not to attend the aeroclub anymore and started getting ready for an aviation institute. An aviation one and nothing else. If I failed to become a pilot at least I’d be near the planes. Once upon a time my brother Vasiliy had insisted on my studying…“Once upon a time”…And only a year and a half had passed since I bade farewell to Moscow, the Metrostroy, the aeroclub, my comrades, Victor, my brother. Somewhere up north Vasiliy was doing his term “incommunicado”…

  Mama had written me that with the help of kind-hearted people she had done up a petition to our fellow-countryman Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin2 – trying to convince him of Vasen’ka’s3 innocence. Mama had had no response and then decided to come to Moscow herself. “Katya with my grandson Egoroushka walked me to the waiting room of the President’s office and then left”, my mum wrote. “There was a long queue, a lot of people had turned up. My turn came. I thought Mikhail Ivanovich would be there himself but looking at who met me I found no goatee. I expected the assistant would walk me to our countryman but he only said: ‘The Chairman of the Supreme Soviet doesn’t receive people on such questions…”

  I continued to work at the flax factory. Twice a week I trained glider pilots, attended courses in preparation for tertiary study. One evening on my day off I popped into a café, sat at a table and ordered an ice cream.

  “Egorova!” Someone called from behind me. I turned to the voice and, seeing the aeroclub commissar, came up to his table. He introduced me to his wife and daughter and seated me next to them.

  “Why aren’t you attending the aeroclub?” The commissar asked me.

  I expressed my concerns and he told me, “You should after all, yesterday we decided to grant you the only female assignment to the Kherson aviation school.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you, ‘Kokkinaky’4! And turning to his wife he explained with a laugh, “The guys gave Anya that nickname and I’ve been calling her that!”

  “That’s fine, call me that, I even like it”, I replied frankly. “After all, the Kokkinaky brothers are famous test pilots and record-breakers!”

  “Tomorrow take the referral from the aeroclub headquarters, resign from the factory and go to Kherson as fast as possible. Consider that you’ll have to pass exams there on general secondary school subjects as well as special disciplines. The competition will be hot, get ready!”

  Indeed in Kherson there was a great flood of graduates from the country’s aeroclubs. They came from Moscow and Leningrad, Arkhangelsk and Baku, Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Minsk, Tashkent and Dushanbe. It was not a military school but OSOAVIAHIM one. Only girls were being accepted in the navigating division and mostly guys in the instructors’.

  First of all we were sent for a medical examination. Those who passed would be divided into groups for the general subject exams. The oral exam on mathematics was run by an old lecturer from a teacher’s training college. Convinced that he had poor hearing, we helped each other with prompts and most of us received ‘fives’5…

  Gradually our numbers were becoming lower and lower – but now we had passed the credentials committee. Following the advice of the Smolensk Comsomol obkom I had said nothing about my elder brother. At long last the lists of those accepted were posted up. I read: “Egorova – to the navigating division”. There was
no such great boisterous joy in my heart as back in Ulyanovsk but nevertheless I ran to a post-office and sent my mum a telegram – I wanted to make her happy for a while. Yes, to make her happy by letting her know her daughter had been accepted into flying school!

  When she got my telegram from Kherson my mum replied with a letter, which I have kept.

  My dearest, greetings!

  I got your telegram. I am happy for you. But I would be happier if you were not striving for the sky. Are there really no good occupations on the ground? Your friend Nastya Rasskazova graduated from veterinary college, lives at home, treats livestock in the kolkhoz and her mum has no trouble at all. But you – all of my kids – are somehow driven, always want to achieve something and strive for something.

  There is no news from Vasen’ka. Ah, my girl, my heart’s been tormented with suffering about him. Is he still alive, my dear boy? I remember coming to Moscow to see him and he’d already become a director and some kind of Deputy. He put his leather jacket on me, linked his arm in mine and walked me to a theatre. And there were mirrors all over the place in there and I actually thought, why are there people looking like us walking past – what a surprise! If you could only put in a good word for him…

  But you do your studies, do your best. What can be done now if you have already fallen in love with your aviation and you are doing well in it. If you – my kids – are happy I am happy too. If you grieve – I – your mother – grieve too.

  I’ve got eight of you – my children, and I am uneasy for all of you. All of you – my baby birds – have flown away. I’ve seen the last one – Kostya – off to the Army. I ordered him to serve faithfully and honestly but when the train had begun to disappear behind a turn I fell over onto the platform unconscious. What has happened to me – I am at a loss…

  Oh, mama, mama! How could I explain to you what flying meant to me? It was my life, my song, my love! He who has flown into the sky – found his wings – will never betray it and will be faithful to it till the end, and if it happens that he can no longer fly he’ll dream of flying even so…

  I liked the way the teachers in our school conducted the lessons. The most interesting classes were run on meteorology by an old retired sea captain who had ploughed all the seas and oceans. He was the idol of us all! The captain would enter the lecture room with his head proudly raised in a peaked service cap with a very high crown. We would all stand up to greet the captain, and looking at his meticulously ironed and made-to-measure uniform I would want so much to look like him! But the captain was not tall at all, had deep-set eyes that looked at us kindly and respectfully. The captain would begin each lecture with an ancient superstition: “If the sun sets in a cloud, navigator beware a gale…” Or he would recall another proverb related to our future occupation.

  For the first time I understood what a good teacher was: he loved his profession, was addicted to it, and would not only impart good knowledge but would also inculcate in his listeners a love of the subject. Studying was easy for me. After all I had already worked as an instructor! We studied the theory of flying and, of course, flew – on two-seat U-2, UT-1 and UT-2 trainers.

  The war against Finland sped up our graduation. They abruptly shortened, ‘rounded off’ the training program and took us through to the exams, which we also sat in a hurry. They didn’t even manage to tailor us uniforms and we graduated in the old blouses and skirts we’d worn as cadets.

  After graduation I was transferred to the Kalinin City aeroclub to work as the aeroclub navigator. But it turned out on site that there already was a navigator in the aeroclub but they were short of a pilot-instructor. I really wanted to fly and happily agreed to take up that position. After a test of my flying techniques I was permitted to train student pilots and was assigned to a group of 12 men. The guys were different in their general level of training, physical development and character. They were united by one quality – their passion for aviation. Everyone was eager to complete ground training as fast as possible and to begin to fly. And I knew exactly how they felt!

  The flight commander Senior Lieutenant Petr Chernigovets came to our classes often. He had been a fighter pilot in the Army and had been sent to the OSOAVIAHIM to “reinforce the training personnel”. Chernigovets was really a skilled flyer, knew mathematics and physics well and easily explained cumbersome aerodynamics formulas. The students liked him for his respectful attitude towards them. Petr helped me a lot too. One flying day the senior pilot-instructor Gavrilov crashed. The trainee pilot was thrown out of the plane when it hit the ground, and in the heat of the moment he got up and ran. The surgeons examined him, auscultated him and suspended him from flying. And in five days he was no more…Flights stopped. The students walked around depressed. The flight commander Cherepovets ordered the whole fight to line up to analyse the accident.

  “A plane, as you are aware”, he began, “is a plane and no matter how slow and simple it may be, you have to treat it respectfully – in other words, carefully and seriously. The experienced pilot-instructor Gavrilov had relied on his student but the latter neglected the laws of aerodynamics or knew them poorly – and here is the result. During the last turn, as we all saw from the ground, the plane nosed up, lost speed and fell into a spin. There was not enough altitude to pull the machine out of its critical position and it hit the ground. The profession of pilot”, Chernigovets continued, “is not only romantic but dangerous as you have seen for yourselves. But there is no point being down in the dumps, let’s get down to business!”

  And he began to draw right there, on the sand, various plane positions in the air simultaneously explaining and asking one or another student. It helped the guys get over it.

  For an instructor the first independent flight of his student is an event just like his own. I remember that the student-pilot Chernov was the first one from my group to be sent by me into the air. The detachment commander had already approved it but I was uneasy and requested the squadron commander to fly with him once more. The comesk6 made a circular flight with Chernov and yelled “Why waste plane resources, let him go!”

  I took the signal flags with emotion as the instructor Miroevskiy had done long ago. Everyone was watching the trainee pilot as he sat in the cockpit, focused and serious, and waited for permission to take off. I raised the white flag and then swiftly stretched my arm out showing the direction along the airstrip with the flag.

  The plane headed for take off and it seemed to me I had forgotten something, hadn’t said something! I wanted to shout out some loud directions after him! Keeping my eye on the plane I walked to the finish point to meet my pupil at the landing T…

  A student called Zhoukov was the second to fly and he made it superbly too. But a student called Sedov gave me a lot of trouble. While everything had been coming easily to Chernov, Sedov had learned to fly slowly, if surely. I understood that later, when all twelve students were already flying independently, and I began to summarise the hours they had spent with me in the air. It turned out Sedov had flown with me less than the rest. “How did that happen?” I thought about it and understood: I had held up Chernov as an example all the time but had made Sedov do more ground training. As a result more fuel and plane and engine resources had been spent on Chernov. But both of then flew at the same level by the end of the program, and Sedov even did it a little bit more elegantly and confidently.

  One day the State Commission came upon us unawares but by now I was confident – my guys flew well. Only one student got a ‘four’ for aerobatics, the rest got excellent marks.

  There was a festival at our aerodrome on Aviation Day. We, the pilot instructors, had been preparing for it ahead of time. We had been flying in formation, practising individual flying, flying in pairs and sixes. We’d been flying gliders too. Parachutists had been preparing their own program but it was we, the flyers, who would have to drop them. And early in the morning the aerodrome was ready to receive guests. The space for spectators was marked off a thick rope.
We checked our planes time and again, specified the program – and the festival began!

  At last the announcer called out my flight. I carried out an aerobatics set over the aerodrome, landed and hadn’t managed to taxi in when I was told: “Your mum is here”. It appeared that having found out from a provincial newspaper that there would be a festival here she came to Kalinin and headed to the aerodrome straight from the train station. Of course, mum had brought with her a basket of gifts. She sat down on the grass behind the barrier and began to watch what was happening in the air, and she was sitting quietly until my surname was announced. Then she got anxious and when I began to do aerobatics, mum rushed to the centre of the airfield shouting “My girl, you’ll fall down!” holding her festive lace apron as if she was setting it under me so in case I fell I would fall on it! Orderlies walked mum to headquarters. It was clarified who she was worried about – and then the head of the aeroclub offered her “a ride in an aeroplane”. But mum refused categorically…

  After our students graduated we, the instructors, were awarded a river boat tour from Kalinin to Moscow to visit an agricultural exhibition. And soon we steamed down the Volga feasting our eyes upon the marvels on her banks. Then we sailed through the channel7: seeing the shipping locks for the first time, I was amazed and delighted. Then there was Moscow. We visited the exhibition, I also saw my family on the Arbat8. Now Katya worked as a knitter at a stockinet factory, Yurka was studying at school. We talked a lot. My brother took an opportunity to send a letter in which he wrote that they had sailed down the Yenisei river for a while on a barge with criminals. The ‘mobsters’ scoffed at the ‘politicals’ and took away their clothes and food, but the guards either noticed nothing, or didn’t want to notice. In Igarka they were put ashore and marched into the tundra. Many of them caught cold and died. Less than half survived…