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

by Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

  When I saw that for ease of working he’d taken off his gloves I began to assist him.

  “Comrade Commander, what are you trying to do with the engine with such a frostbitten face, eh? It’ll get scared and won’t start”, my mechanic joked. Indeed my face was scary: it had turned black all over. I daubed it with grease and on top of that put on a mask of mole-fur. Such masks had been issued to all airmen but we didn’t like to wear them – the furry skin on its lining with cutouts for the eyes and mouth made us look as if we were at a carnival.

  To send me off to warm up Dronov was inventing various ruses but then he gave up and the whole business went faster. Aircraftsmen are an amazing lot! As a rule they are great masters of their craft or as it is said now, ‘craftsman with golden hands’. They wouldn’t go to eat or sleep until a plane was fully ready and then, having handed it over to a pilot, wouldn’t leave the aerodrome but would patiently wait for his return. He would begin to tidy up the parking lot – he would roll up the aircraft covers, carry brake shoes to the right place, then would simply smoke so the waiting time didn’t drag on so long. And he would cast glances at the sky time and again – is he coming back yet? A mechanic would recognise the approach of his plane from afar – by a note in the engine’s roar known only to him. And then he would run to meet it! How happy these modest aerodrome labourers were when their pilots came back to the ground alive and in one piece. And there would be no limit to their grief if their pilots had not come back from a mission…No, I could not have become a plane mechanic – I wouldn’t have had the strength to wait! Especially at war when all possible time for return is up and all hope rests on a miracle but the mechanic still waits, peers into the sky, listens, hopes…

  That time Dronov came back to the squadron with me and he showed his comrades the holes he had had to patch up in the frost.

  “I counted 87 holes but Annoushka and the General weren’t scratched! That’s what it means to have the ‘devil’s dozen’ as your tail number”, Dronov chuckled. But I knew: apart from all the numbers, apart from luck, on those flights I’d been faithfully guarded by the hands of my mechanic. And by fate as well. I do believe in fate.

  Generally speaking everything had turned out alright except that we’d got our fingers and cheeks frostbitten. But who would pay attention to that at the front? It was a trifle not worth remembering! But the Artillery Commander couldn’t forget that night on the steppe and he remembered my personality. As soon as he’d flown back to Front headquarters he notified the signals commander Korolev: “I’m taking Egorova. I need combat pilots for the spotter planes…”

  When it became known in the squadron the airmen began ‘making me see reason’: “Have you gone crazy? You’re a pilot, a human being, not a rubber balloon. You’re meant to fly, not to hang like a sitting duck over the frontline!”

  That was true – it’s not too pleasant to serve as a target. But, word of honour, in what way were we, in our U-2s, not targets for the enemy’s fighter planes? And I’d grown sick of being an aerial chauffeur…I wanted to fight a real war. At least the spotter plane pilots helped to detect the enemy and wipe him out, but what about us? But nevertheless if I were to switch to another kind of aviation I would prefer to be a ground-attack pilot. I wasn’t destined to become a spotter plane pilot…

  16

  The Katyushas

  M

  issions, missions. There seemed to be no end of them. The squadron was manned by ‘Spanish’ pilots but they were shoving me – a girl – into the most difficult holes. It was an unpleasant sensation.

  “Egorova, you will be flying in search of the Katyushas!1

  And again I would answer: “Yes sir, flying out!”

  The Katyushas had just arrived at our Front and it had significantly raised our previously depressed spirits. I was given an approximate area and told that they were big trucks with installations for rockets. They would have slip-covers on top. I was also ordered to hand over to General Pushkin – a Corps Commander – a top secret package.

  The thaw was on. It was raining in the area of our aerodrome. Visibility was at its lowest – about a hundred metres. When I had flown away from the aerodrome a wet snowfall began and fog overcast everything around – I couldn’t see a thing! I decided to increase altitude: maybe up there it would be a bit clearer than near the ground. The altimeter was already indicating 900 metres and indeed the fog had thinned out – but what was that? The plane began to shudder. All its cross-braces began to vibrate. I glanced overboard and saw the wings, the fuselage, even the propeller covered with a smooth icy crust.

  The engine was working, all rudders and elevators were functioning but the plane wouldn’t obey them, it was losing altitude. I pushed the control column away to lose altitude faster but soon some instinct warned me that the ground was already close – somewhere very close. What’s down there, below me? A house, a forest, a river, a gully or something else? I turned off the engine and slowly pulled the lever…Bang! The plane touched the ground and carried us off, dragged us somewhere. I did my best to slow down, to stop our movement. But there were no brakes on the U-2 and I was using the rudder.

  At last the plane stopped and it became astonishingly quiet. Nothing could be seen two steps away – there was fog and I was afraid to walk away from the plane – I could get lost. I had to wait until the fog dispersed. In the meantime I cleaned the ice from my plane and determined my location approximately, based on the time and flight speed. And when it had grown lighter I saw a large haystack in front of the plane’s nose. How had I managed not to run into it?

  Having taken off I managed anyway to find General Pushkin’s Corps with the Katyushas. But on my way back I ran into a heavy snowfall again. I landed the machine by now in pitch-darkness – not even the plane parking bays were visible, so after touch down I taxied ‘on a wing and a prayer’. It was a good thing Dronov the mechanic had heard the ‘voice’ of his plane and run to meet me.

  The squadron commander gave me a long dressing down then: “Tired of living, are you?” The pilots maintained a gloomy silence: it appeared that they had turned back half-way without completing their missions. The Southern Front Signals Commander General Korolev declared his gratitude to me and the political department presented me with a gift – a parcel from the home front. The most interesting moment was that on opening the parcel I found a tobacco pouch on top. “To a dear soldier from Marousya Koudryavtseva – as a keepsake” was embroidered on the pouch and inside there was a photo of a pretty girl. In her letter Marousya asked the young combatant to give the Fascists a real good bashing and come back home soon and victorious. And there was so much in that parcel carefully laid out under the tobacco pouch! Tobacco in packages, a bottle of vodka wrapped in woolen socks and, wrapped in a towel with red embroidery, a small bag of dried fruits. At the very bottom of the box there was a school exercise-book and a dozen envelopes. Half of them bore the address: Town of Mary, Turkmenskaya SSR2, Maria Koudryavsteva. I gave the pouch, the tobacco and the bottle of vodka to my aircraftsman, the towel to the hostess of the house I lived in, and kept the woollen socks and dried fruits for myself. I decided to pass the photo, the writing-book and the envelopes to Victor Kravtsov – a well-built Kuban Cossack who was 22 years old. I remember that in whatever place we were located all the local girls couldn’t take their eyes off him, but the Cossack wouldn’t pay attention to any of them…However, maybe he was only pretending that he was indifferent to them all?

  “Victor”, I addressed Kravtsov, “Have a look at the photo – what a wonderful girl! You write her a letter instead of me. Make her happy to know the parcel got to its destination – to a young soldier, to a pilot on top of that.”

  “Still up to your tricks”, he growled but took the exercise-book…

  Red Army Day came. Our squadron gathered for the festive assembly and executive officer Lisatrevich solemnly began reading a Decree on behalf of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR: Lieutenant Spirin was awarded with
the Order of the Red Star, Junior Lieutenant Egorova – with the Order of the Red Banner (by now I’d been conferred officer’s rank here in the signals squadron).

  I had just flown back from a mission and being a bit late was sitting behind the rest. I still had the noise of a working engine in my ears and I didn’t catch whom the awards had gone to. Suddenly they all clustered around me, began to congratulate me, but I was standing and not believing it: why me? One might say, I’d found myself at the Front by chance. I’d carried out all the missions I’d been given as a soldier should, from the heart. But there was no denying that although it had often been difficult I’d done my best. For some reason I recalled the road reconnaissance sortie – to find out which troops were on the march – ours or the enemy’s…You couldn’t say it was much fun to fly in the daytime in a defenceless plane whose only weapon was the pilot’s revolver! Everyone knew the German aces chased our planes and it wasn’t a big challenge for a Messerschmitt to down a U-2, but their reward for this would be the same as for a shot-down fighter plane.

  “Comrade Commander, what’s wrong with you? Are you alright?” I heard the voice of Dronov the mechanic. “You look awful…”

  “I’m fine, what’s up?”

  “They’re calling you to the presidium.”

  The Order was presented to me by a member of the Frontline Military Council Leonid Romanovich Korniets: the very same General who had shown me by mimicry and gestures that I had to report the location of the Cavalry Corps of Parkhomenko and Grechko not to him but to the Front Commander.

  17

  A hooligan on the road

  I

  n May 1942 the South-Western Front troops began their advance in the direction of Kharkov. We, the airmen of the Southern Front Signals Squadron, were always abreast of events on the front line. We would be advised of the situation before a sortie and we would narrow it down, making flights either to this or that army, corps or division. The troops of the South-Western Front would have to destroy an enemy army grouping and liberate Kharkov. Two of our frontline armies – the 9th and the 57th – were supposed to work together with the South-Western Front. And on 20 May they ordered me to fly to the 9th Army with a top-secret package. I don’t remember why I had to fly alone. Usually we would fly with navigators, signals officers, special messengers or with someone else but this time I had taken off alone. I remember that approaching the town of Izyum I saw on the roads and simply across fields the movement of our troops. Many fires showed themselves in the Severnyi Donets Valley, near Svyatogorskiy and in Izyum.

  Fires had always aroused in me unreasoning alarm and anxiety since childhood. “A thief will leave the walls at least, but a fire will leave nothing!” the people of our village used to say. It had stuck in my memory for the rest of my life how the harvested corn had burned. Before threshing the corn was usually dried in barns. The sheaves would be stacked on grates in covered bays and a large stone oven – a teplinka – would be heated underneath. Heat would come up and dry the sheaves for threshing. Our corn barn caught fire from failing to watch the teplinka. A heart-rending cry resounded in the middle of the night: “Fire! We’ve got a fire!” Everyone jumped out of bed and began to rush about the house. My half-dressed brothers dashed out of the house, and mum couldn’t even make it to the door, holding in her hands the first thing that had fallen into her hands – the samovar…

  Now there was a war: whole cities, our whole land, were burning but still I couldn’t get used to the fires. And now my heart thudded anxiously at the sight of the burning valley. And above me in the sky an aerial battle was raging. A couple of our I-16s were fighting against six Me-109s. The odds were not even but our pilots were skilfully avoiding the Messerschmitts’ fire, closing in for head-on attacks, and the Fascists, fearfully keeping their distance, couldn’t do much. Our guys obviously had the advantage. They shot down one Me-109: it crashed, and I must admit I was gloating and didn’t notice when a German fighter pounced on me like a black kite. A fiery spurt cut the air in front of my eyes. I wished I could dive into a ravine or a gully but there were only flat fields with loose piles of last year’s corn before me nearly up to the very horizon. On the right there was solid forest, on the left – the town. My machine caught fire: it immediately became hot and stuffy in the cockpit. The tail was burning – now it was going to reach me, the engine, the fuel tank and then…Having barely touched down I jumped out of the plane and tearing off the smoking rags of my overalls ran towards the woods. The German seemed to have gone berserk. He descended to contour level and turned the whole fire of his guns on me. In 1941 and also in 1942 the Hitlerites could afford this luxury – to chase a lone Russian soldier across the fields in a tank, to strafe someone with all cannons and machine-guns, diving from the sky…But I kept on running and falling over. At times I would fall down pretending to be dead and hiding my head under the corn stalks, arms and legs spread out. When the Messer went away to turn around I would jump up, clasp the secret package to my bosom and run again…

  Having expended all his ammo the Fascist flew away. I was in a forest. It was quiet – there was no one around. And suddenly I wanted so much to lie in the glade, as in my childhood, to shut my eyes and switch off! Young foliage had already appeared on the trees – the spring was coming into its own. I had never been afraid of death but suddenly now I wanted to live so much! It would be bad to die in the spring. One’s life is much, much dearer in the spring…

  Whilst I was on the run my plane had burned to the ground. The bag of mail and my leather jacket that were in the fuselage had burned too. What could I do now? How to find the 9th Army headquarters? Looking around I saw a telephone cable hanging on some tree branches. I followed it, hoping it would lead me to some command post. I had barely walked thirty paces when I met two soldiers who were winding the cable onto a reel.

  “Where’s the CP?” I asked them.

  “What do you mean the CP, the Germans are there!” they yelled without stopping. “It was evacuated long ago, everyone’s gone.”

  “Where to?”

  The soldiers didn’t know – their business was to wind the cable. Coming out of the forest I ran towards the road across a field – but the road was empty. Lone soldiers and small groups of horsemen moved however they could, staying away from the road. A truck racing past rode around me as I stood in its path with my arms stretched out. Then an Emka1 appeared – I tried to wave it down but in vain – the Emka dashed past me without slowing down. Then without stopping to think I pulled out my revolver and fired into the air. The driver reversed and stopped not far away from me. Then a front door opened and a dashing captain with a medal on his chest effortlessly leaped out of it. He deftly snatched the weapon from my hand, twisted my arms behind my back and then thrust his hand into a breast pocket of my blouse for my papers. I couldn’t allow him to treat me this way! No less deftly I bowed my head and bit the captain, who screamed from pain, on the hand – the blood actually spurted! I saw a chubby General get out of the car. He began questioning me: who I was and by what right I was behaving outrageously on the road.

  “And who are you?” I blurted out, but handed him my certificate. This certificate was quite impressive – issued personally to me it recommended all military units and civil organisations render all assistance to the presenter of this document in the performance of his duties.

  “Where are you headed?” the General asked, more politely now.

  “To the 9th Army headquarters.”

  “Get in the car,” he offered and courteously enquired: “Where did you get burnt?”

  I told him what had happened to me and suddenly…burst into tears – I don’t know whether it was from resentment or from pain. My burnt hands hurt really badly and to top it off that captain had stripped off the skin when twisting my arms and now they were bleeding.

  “Don’t cry, girl” the General began to calm me down, “otherwise your face will smart from the tears. We’ll get you to 9th Army headquar
ters in a flash…”

  But the “now” and “in a flash” are quite imprecise concepts in war. Only after three hours did we find the Army headquarters where I handed the package over to the head of the operations department. They swabbed my face and dressed my hands in the medical post. They fed me in the canteen and by evening they had sent me off to the aerodrome.

  I got a fraternal reception in the squadron. Narodetskiy the Quartermaster even brought me sweets instead of the hundred grams of vodka we were issued with for sorties. He knew that I wasn’t drinking my ration and was giving it away to the mechanic or the pilots and he was trying to give me a treat for the occasion with sweets or something tasty. When we had been based near Voroshilovgrad and living in tents in the forest we didn’t do much flying. Narodetskiy invited me to go on an excursion to Voroshilovgrad once. Having had a look around the city we dropped into a supermarket and there I saw a wide-brimmed hat with a splendid spray of artificial flowers. I stood for a long while admiring it and then the catering officer, catching my gaze fixed on the straw wonder, whispered something with the sales-girl and she handed it over to me…The hat was hung on a nail in my tent. But once I was coming back from a mission and what did I see?…our pet Drouzhok2 – a dog travelling with the squadron since we were at the Tikhiy farmstead – in that hat! My brothers in arms had cut holes in it for his ears, tied it on firmly with twine and the dog was rushing about in that stylish apparel, barking. Of course, the pilots were hiding from me in the tents…Then they laughed and Kravtsov scolded me: “That’s for taking presents from the Quartermaster!