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

by Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

  The guy smiled, “To the theatre, for example. An opera. The last show is on – Carmen – and then the theatre will be evacuated. It’s here in the centre, just nearby.”

  I accompanied the guy to the city voencomat, wished him a victorious homecoming and felt some envy that he was already going to the war to defend the motherland. And I indeed went to the theatre then, but I remember that I was seeing the stage as if through frosted glass. Everything seemed vague and misty but after all I was sitting in the fifth row of a half-full auditorium. I didn’t care much about the show: my thoughts were far, far away. Spain, toreadors, passion and love…It wasn’t touching and stirring me. I watched indifferently as the beautiful Carmen began her famous habanera but at the highest note the orchestra suddenly broke off and an unexpected silence fell onto the hall. The singer froze with her mouth open in bewilderment. A small scrawny man walked across the stage, stopped just before the orchestra pit and rumbled into the silence, “Comrades, it’s an air-raid warning! All of you are requested to go down into the air raid shelter. But please maintain order.”

  Such was the finale of that performance…From the air raid shelter I returned to the aeroclub premises and settled in for the night in one of the offices on a cushion upholstered with black leatherette.

  In the morning someone knocked on the door and a broad-shouldered well-built man in Air Force uniform immediately appeared in the door. There were three cubes on his collar patches: hence he was a senior lieutenant. He didn’t notice me straightaway for I was lying on a cushion behind a barricade of desks.

  “What are you doing here?” He asked sternly.

  “I am from Moscow, I have orders to report to the local aeroclub. And here I am, waiting for someone in charge.”

  The military man’s face cleared: “Consider us here on the same business. I’m looking for someone in charge too. I’ve come to pick up pilots…” here the senior lieutenant made an expressive gesture with his hand – it was clear that our hosts had long left the palace of aviation…

  “What shall we do then?” I asked him anxiously, and at that moment a sudden idea came to my mind. “So you’ve come to find pilots? Take me! Here are my papers. They are in complete order!”

  The senior lieutenant read my orders from the Central Aeroclub attentively. “Well, your references are suitable. I’ll take you, Egorova. But we have to make all the arrangements legally! Let’s go to the voencomat.”

  A battered pickup drove us to the spot. Making our way through the dense crowd of mobilised men we presented ourselves to the commissar. But he, finding out what the matter was, just shook his head: “What’s she got to do with us? She’s come from Moscow – let her get back there”.

  “Now don’t drag your feet, major! We need flyers badly”, the senior lieutenant pressed.

  “I can’t, I have no right to spread anarchy”, the military commissar persisted.

  The argument went nowhere. We had to back down. Listarevich (the senior lieutenant had managed to introduce himself) calmed me down: “Forget about these bureaucrats. Let’s go to our unit straightaway, we’ll sort everything out on the spot.”

  We visited a military hospital on our way and it came out that the Senior Lieutenant Listarevich had picked up two pilots recovered from wounds, a mechanic who had lost his unit and a pilot from the OSOAVIAHIM. Now he cheered up, for he was not coming back to his unit empty-handed! We were rushing in our pickup to some of the 130th Detached Aviation Signals Squadron of the Southern Front. The senior lieutenant had bee a pilot himself and was doing his best to prove it driving his pickup. He sped as if in a U-2, almost 100 kilometres an hour, without thinking much about the men sitting in back…

  At last, the aerodrome – or rather a landing area near Chaplino station in the village of Tikhiy. Covered with dust and pretty well exhausted from the bumpy ride we presented ourselves before the commanders’ eyes straightaway.

  “Not a lot of troops…”

  “The aeroclub was evacuated, Comrade Major”, the senior lieutenant defended himself, “but I brought you some eagles.”

  “Eagles?” The Major asked again and gave me a somewhat suspicious and sidelong look.

  Only now I did notice an Order of the Red Banner on the commanding officer’s chest and rejoiced: it meant he was a combatant, so I couldn’t afford to miss my chance. That was why I boldly reported “Former Kalinin aeroclub pilot instructor Anna Egorova reporting for duty.”

  “But there’s been no order yet to draft women to the front.”

  “Do I really need an order to fight for the motherland?”

  “That’s true…” The major looked at me narrowly.

  “Have you got your papers, Egorova?” The Major’s voice now sounded encouraging.

  “Absolutely!”

  I quickly put on the desk my pilots’ certificate, passport, Comsomol membership card and the orders to the Stalino aeroclub. Having thoroughly examined the papers the Major turned to a captain nearby: “Grishchenko! You’ll fly off to Simferopol tomorrow. You have to fly anyway, and while you’re at it you’ll check Egorova’s flying technique.”

  I intercepted Lisarevich’s glance. My pleased ‘recruiter’ gave me a wink, “you see, everything is alright – you may consider yourself a pilot of the Southern Front’s 130th Detached Aviation Signals Squadron”.

  The squadron commander was Major Boulkin and all the pilots were veterans who had flown the Polikarpov I-16 in Spain3. My eyes grew wide when I saw them all in brand-new uniforms and all with decorations. I thought – where am I? They fought in Spain – they are all heroes’ heroes! And for some reason they’d been transferred to the Signals Squadron…Grishchenko was deputy commander of the 130th Squadron and head of the flying service. For some reason he’d taken a great dislike to me (I didn’t know why) but our flight from Tikhiy Village to Simferopol went safely and my position was approved. Later, when I had already settled down well in the Signals Squadron I was told that Petr Ivanovich Grishchenko used to be a fighter pilot who had been discharged from flying after an accident but after the war had broken out he’d obtained permission to become a pilot in the 130th Squadron. The deputy squadron commander flew courageously and he was entrusted with the most crucial tasks. Once in 1942 near Lisichansk Grishchenko’s plane was intercepted by four Messerschmitts but Petr manoeuvred his defenceless koukourouzniki4 so skilfully and deftly that the Fascists couldn’t do anything to it and went home. Actually, in his riddled plane the lieutenant didn’t make it to the aerodrome – he landed in a bog and nosed over. Our soldiers helped to drag the machine out, the pilot repaired it himself, completed his mission and returned to the squadron. When reporting what had happened the former fighter pilot acknowledged: “It appears the U-2 is a plane too – nothing to shoot with but it’s alright for ramming…”

  Such was the plane I received on the third day of my time at the frontline. Not a high-speed fighter, not a dive-bomber, just a U-2. The plane I was attached to by my already long-term service, the plane that had undergone its second birth during the War and was redesignated the Po-2 after its designer Polikarpov. That was the plane that earned glory, the admiration of the frontline troops and the hatred of the enemy.

  12

  “Is it natural flair or is it all God-given?”

  F

  rontline veterans remember this simple biplane getting the most unexpected, sometimes overblown, sometimes ironic but always favourable nicknames. For the infantry it was ‘frontline starshina’, the partisans nicknamed the U-2 ‘kitchen gardener’ or ‘cropduster’ for its incredible ability to land on tiny patches of ground, and seasoned pilots respectfully called the nimble plane ‘the duck’. But the nickname was not the point. The U-2 had won its glory by honest soldierly work: it transported wounded men, dispatched mail, flew reconnaissance flights, bombed the Hitlerites by night. Generals and Marshals, war correspondents and doctors considered it the best form of frontline transport. Its unusual maneuverability, simplicity o
f maintenance and ease of handling allowed it to conduct such operations as were for fast and heavy aircraft simply impossible.

  It didn’t seem a big deal to fly the U-2 carrying orders, searching for military units, reconnoitring roads, carrying couriers and signal officers. But this seemingly routine work was fraught with such the surprises and dangers! What kind of routine was it if all flights towards the frontline for fast communications with secret mail, and flights beyond the enemy lines were by rights considered combat sorties? It was not for nothing our squadron was recommended for Guards rank, but the unit was too small for that. Only in 1944 was the 130th Squadron given the honorific name ‘Sevastopol’…

  But 1941 wasn’t over and the front was moving east…While putting up increasing resistance to the enemy, our troops were nevertheless giving up their positions. During the retreat communications between units were sometimes lost and there is nothing worse than loss of control when you’re at war! The squadron’s flyers were sent into the air to restore it or to despatch necessary information or a required order. They would take off in rain, in fog, in any weather.

  …On 21 August I received orders to fly to the 18th Army Headquarters. I was advised of the approximate locality where this headquarters ought to be, but once there I would have to clarify its position. The squadron commander warned me that there would be many Hitlerite fighter planes en route. Blink and they will knock you off straight away. I remember the weather was superb, typical August, and at another time I would have been glad of that, but now…In a clear sky a ‘cropduster’ was defenceless against Fascist fighters. You couldn’t get away from them – you had no speed. And plywood is not armour, it doesn’t stop bullets. And your only weapon was the revolver on your belt. The only escape was to dive towards the ground, spread your wings just above the grass and fly so low that you could hear your undercarriage mow the feather-like grass of the steppe.

  And here I am hugging the ground. I have no navigator and I often look at the compass, the watch, the map, keep an eye on the ground: it’s quite close, under my wings. I am happy that I can recognise the farmsteads flashing by under me – the time I pass over them coincides exactly with the calculations. Of course, the compass is a good thing but I’m not much good with it. I prefer to compare the terrain I pass over with the map, and, to be honest, when working as a pilot instructor I rarely had to stick to a flight path, there were few ‘blind’ flights in the clouds or at night when you wholly rely on instruments. When farmsteads and gullies had stopped flashing under my wings and the barren steppe spread underneath, anxious thoughts crawled into my mind: what if this compass is off? Maybe they failed to get rid of the deviation? Now it seems to me that I shift course to the right…No, maybe, to the left! “Trust the compass, trust it…It’ll lead you where you need to go…” I assure myself, “it won’t let you down”.

  Suddenly I see two approaching dots. “Messerschmitts,” I guess in a flash. Yes, that’s them! And now they’ve swooped over my head, insolently showing off the spiders of their swastikas. They let off a burst, swept past somewhere but came back straightway. I remember them covering my U-2 with their shadows but they couldn’t do anything else. So they left…

  I sighed with relief: now I could concentrate on the ground rapidly flashing under my machine so as to get back my bearings. Here was the village where the headquarters of the 18th Army was. Noticing a small patch of ground with three U-2 planes – the Army Headquarters’ Signals Flight – I landed. My passenger, a naval captain of the Dnieper Flotilla – went to Headquarters and I had to wait for him. In the meantime the pilots from the Army Signals Flight refuelled my plane, treated me to watermelon and told me about the situation on this sector of the front.

  On my way back I lost concentration and was immediately punished for it: everything got mixed up and confused in my head. I began to swing wildly from one side to another looking for any noticeable landmark but only the deserted steppe lay silently beneath…Calming down a bit I headed eastward and flew by compass. I saw a railway station. I tried to read its name but couldn’t. Then I decided to land and find out. There was a method of orientation called “questioning the local population”. It turned out to be the village of Porovka. The Tikhiy farmstead was nearby and I returned to the aerodrome safely. There Squadron Commander Boulkin asked me, knitting his brows, “Why have you been in the air so long?”

  “There was a delay with my departure from the Army headquarters”, I weaseled.

  It was the communications officer who told the major about our encounter with the Messerschmitts and about my desperate manoeuvres. I disliked Boulkin and I wasn’t the only one.

  “Get some rest!” Boulkin said. “You’ll fly there again tomorrow.”

  But on the next day I had to fly to Kalarovka near Melitopol. There was the headquarters of the 9th Army and I’d been ordered to deliver a communications officer there with urgent orders. The weather that day was excellent, visibility limitless. So as not to come across the Fascist hawks, I flew hugging the ground. Here a village appeared, buried in verdure, and I lifted the plane a little: with this altitude I could have easily snagged a tree, a post or some chimney. As soon as I climbed up my field of view improved and I immediately noticed, not far away, white huts clustered around a wide gully. Turning back to the lieutenant-colonel I waved my hand down: to say ‘that’s it, we’ve arrived’. But while I was closing in for landing I noticed unusual, somehow convulsive movement, on the roads leaving Kalarovka. The troops were moving mixed up with cattle, carts loaded with goods and chattels milled around under the wheels of military trucks. Empty tonne-and-a-half1 trucks were sweeping past on the sides of the roads, the infantry was marching not in columns but in small groups few in number. An uneasy disorder was everywhere apparent…

  I landed the plane near a windmill on a hillock, taxied right up against the mill and turned off the engine. “Something’s wrong”, the communications officer who had flown in with me muttered. “You stay here and wait for me to come.” And he ran down a footpath towards the village.

  I began to look for something to camouflage the plane with and, finding nothing, sat under a wing and began to wait. I waited an hour, twenty minutes more, thirty…But the lieutenant-colonel still didn’t come back. I began to feel somewhat alarmed. The crackle of gunfire was heard from the gully: there could be no doubt a battle was breaking out down there…

  I crawled out from under the wing and moved a bit forward to position myself better. There was hustle and bustle in the village: the cattle were bellowing, machines roaring, people running…I had a full view of the village from the hillock: the gully divided it into two. And while the streets of the eastern side were crammed with troops its right half was empty. But right behind that emptiness lay the frontline. The sounds of fighting were coming from there – from the west. I understood: the Germans were just about to break through to the buildings about half a kilometre beyond the gully…And that’s what happened. Suddenly an explosion boomed in a deserted street, then another, then a third. The roof of one of the huts caught fire, a slender Lombardy poplar bent down in the middle, and frightened birds shot up into the sky. And suddenly in front of me, like on the movie screen, very close, the blunt snouts of German tanks came into sight. Their cannon muzzles were seemingly targeted directly at the hillock upon which the plane stood unmoving, an excellent target. Unfortunately it didn’t just seem that way: a shell exploding by the mill made me run to the plane.

  A good two hours had already gone by but the communications officer hadn’t come back yet. Obviously, he’d forgotten about me. “What should I do? The Hitlerites will be here very shortly. I have to save the plane…” – These thoughts got mixed up in my head. A second shell exploded next to my plane and tore the cladding of the fuselage and the wings with its fragments. I quickly jumped into the cockpit, tried to start the engine but failed, for I needed someone to turn the propeller. Then I saw a tonne-and-a-half truck rushing down the road. It was fis
htailing for there was no tyre on one of the wheels. Running down to the road I tried to stop it but the driver (he looked like a boy to me) decided to drive around me. Without stopping to think I pulled my revolver from its holster and began shooting furiously at the intact tyres. He stopped and cursing began to pull out his rifle…

  “Drop that thing”, I pointed at his weapon. “Help me start my engine instead.”

  The driver was taken, hearing a female voice. “Stop, I tell!” I said and put the revolver away.

  “What are you up to? Don’t you see: the Fascists are on us, the front’s been broken through. I have to catch up with my unit.”

  “You’ll still have time! My plane’ll be lost here.”

  “The hell with it, jump in here while it’s not too late.”

  A new explosion made me turn my head towards the U-2. I saw shell fragments tearing apart the fuselage of my shuddering plane. “It’ll be done for…” I jerked the door of the truck, “Come on out! Just for a minute.”

  “It’s plain you’re crazy!” the chap obeyed. “Where is the plane?”

  I pointed up towards the mill. “You’ve gone mad! Don’t you see them shooting? Your bird is about to catch fire! Jump in the cabin!”