Valentin Vakhramov was mastering the Sturmovik quickly and easily and we stubbornly competed with him: who of us after all would be the comesk’s wingman? But once…Vakhramov had flown back from the firing range, landed the plane confidently and already on his run-in, accidentally confusing the levers, he retracted the undercarriage…The Il’s undercarriage immediately folded back and the plane began to crawl on its belly…When we ran up Valentine was already climbing out of the cockpit, gloomily looking at the prop blades bent into ‘ram’s horns’. There were tears in his eyes. No one was scolding him then, nobody was reprimanding him, but he was suffering so badly that it was sad to look at him.
By nature Valentin was a reserved, outwardly rather a coarse man. But this put-on roughness originated from his desire to look more adult. There was nothing funny or mysterious in him but for some reason the pilots had nicknamed him ‘the Fakir’. Just once, forgetting about his ‘dignity of seniority’, he had shown us tricks with cards and burning matchsticks – and the nickname had stuck to him! I knew Valentin was fond of poetry and wrote verses himself, not daring to show them to anyone. I also knew that his mum – a worker on a military production-plant – and a sister he loved tenderly, lived in Siberia. When he got letters from them he would go off somewhere well away where no-one would bother him, and read them several times. Once he had showed me photographs of his family. Eyes similar to his looked at me from them with sadness.
“You have a beautiful sister”, I remarked once.
“Yes”, Valentin agreed, “but she’s badly ill. I doubt whether I’ll see her again. And my mum too – tuberculosis…” Only then I understood from where the Vakhramov’s inescapable sadness came from…
Travel orders to pick up new planes arrived unexpectedly. We thought it wouldn’t hurt if we trained some more over the firing range and in formation as well, but the commanders knew better. And now we were on our way from Baku to Krasnovodsk across the Caspian Sea. From there we would have to make our way to the Volga Region by train via Ashkhabad, Mary and Tashkent.
The Caspian Sea raged so, that it made all the airmen seasick, that was why we got off the ship in Krasnovodsk pale, worn out, and staggering. “Well, ‘Stalin’s falcons’2, why are you in the dumps? It’s not the ocean of the air!” one of us joked bitterly.
We reached the train station with difficulty, took seats in the wagons and the train carried us to the rear across the Kazakhstan steppes. The train moved so slowly that one could easily walk next to it without falling behind. Having recovered from the sea voyage we felt much more confident and calmer than at sea. Some read, some played dominos, and song lovers gathered around Zhenya Berdnikov, an aerial gunner – Zhenya was a good guitar-player.
During stopovers we would run out to buy milk. It seemed to Vakhramov that a half-litre can, with which a woman was ladling out milk from her bucket, was too dirty, and he was outraged: “How can you dip a dirty can into the common bucket?”
The farmer’s wife silently lifted her skirt, wiped the can with the hem, and smiling sweetly measured out three times half a litre into Valentin’s mess-tin. Valya paid for the milk and with curses handed it over to someone in the queue. Everyone there burst into loud laughter…
Training started on the third day of our trip. The head of the aerial-gunnery service Captain Koshkin was the first to come to our wagon. “We’ll be talking today about targeted shooting and bombing from a Sturmovik,” he proposed and pulled out the manual from his map-case. “We need to practise it and pass a test.”
“Why a test?” Rzhevskiy asked. “Let’s sign on the brochure that we’ve read it – that’s all the labour we need for such a thing.”
The special instruction on the use of factory markers and viewfinder pins necessary for correct determination of the plane’s diving lead during bombing indeed deserved attention. In order to shoot there was a crosswire gun-sight on the plane: once you’d led the plane close enough to the ground, you pulled the triggers. The cannon, machine-gun and missile tracers might be corrected by one movement of the rudders, and the target would be knocked out. But there was no bomb-sight. Each flyer had worked out his own method of bomb delivery. We’d been bombing as if by eye – using a ‘template’ of ‘bast shoe’ or ‘flying boot’ size. Jokers suggested the following ‘models’: ‘bomb-sight B-43’ for a bast shoe size 43, or ‘F-43’ for a flying boot size 43. “And Egorova will have her own bomb-sight: BF-38 – box calf flying boot size 38!” the pilots laughed.
“Joking apart, how to handle it in reality?” I unwillingly wondered. Well, you could go into a dive using the mark on a wing, but then you had to determine the angle by eye and begin to count seconds: “twenty one, twenty two, twenty three”…At the same time you were not supposed to miss the right altitude – you had to watch the altimeter. But then you were under ack-ack fire, and on top of that you couldn’t break away from your formation – then you would become easy prey for fighters. Generally speaking, although the instruction was just a nuisance to us, we practised it and passed that test before the captain. I have to admit that later our squadron bombed rather well. Either that instruction had helped or we all had the same size of flying boots…
We stayed three days in Mary. Fortunately the news from the front was cheering – our advance in the Stalingrad area had begun. We found out during one of the numerous stopovers that the encircled German troops were in an exceptionally bad situation. They were being systematically bombed by our air force, harassed by the infantry and shelled by the artillery. However, our journey wasn’t without its ‘extraordinary incidents’. In the area we were traveling through were many evacuated families of our regimental comrades. Some had left Derbent earlier so they could catch up with us after seeing their families. One of those who caught up with us reported directly to the commanding officer: “Arrest me, Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, I’ve killed a man…”
It appeared that he had been in a hurry to see his wife and the daughter he had seen only on the day she was born. His wife had been writing him letters full of love and faithfulness and tracing on the paper sometimes the daughter’s hand, sometimes her foot. And here he was turned up at home – his wife opened the door and gasped…She didn’t want to let him in but the pilot burst into the house – there was a rear-area serviceman nursing his daughter…Turning into some kind of madness, our comrade shot him, grabbed his daughter and off he went to the train station. He made it to a big city, handed his daughter to an orphanage and rushed to catch up with his regiment. And here he was – come with cap in hand…
Investigators would later find out the rear-area man had not been killed, only slightly wounded: the bullet had hit his leg. The girl would be returned to her mother, our comrade would be demoted in rank but he would be still in combat. But in the meantime our ride went on and on…
Here we were in Tashkent. We called in at the oriental bazaar, buying there the famous dried apricots that were allegedly a cure for all possible diseases. But the main point was, they were said to make one young and beautiful. Sure, we were young but everyone without exception also wanted to be beautiful and that was why everyone was buying dried apricots. If one had no money he would borrow from his mates. I also bought Tashkent sultanas but they turned out to be merely dried grapes with pits.
When approaching Kuibyshev at the Grachevka Station we heard a Sovinformbureau communiqué from the loud-speakers: “The Southern grouping of the German troops under command of General Field-Marshal Paulus has capitulated. The Northern group has capitulated too”. This happened on 2 February 1943. It got noisy straightaway in our wagon: we rejoiced in the great success of our Army, shouted ‘hurray’. And one more thing – we were outraged that they had been so slow taking us to pick up our new planes. We had missed out on the Stalingrad fighting…
22
Wingtip to wingtip
A
t last we arrived at the plant where we were to receive brand-new planes and fly them to the front. In expectation
of the machines the pilots lodged in a huge dugout, as big as a Metrostroy tunnel, with two tiers of bunks. Here I received a letter from Raya Volkova, a Metrostroy girl. She wrote that the construction of the Moscow Metro was continuing, that the third-stage line with the stations ‘Sverdlov Square’, ‘Novokuznetskaya’, ‘Paveletskaya’, ‘Avtozavodskaya’, ‘Semyonovskaya’ would start operating soon. “At all stations”, she wrote, “there will be bas-reliefs on the walls with the inscription: ‘Constructed during the Great Patriotic War’. There’s a war on but we are in peaceful construction work. It’s true many Metrostroy men are building defensive installations as well. We’ve helped the men of Leningrad erect fortifications, laid out the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga…The guys from our aeroclub are all at the front. Your instructor Miroevskiy and Serezha Feoktistov are fighting in Sturmoviks. Vanya Vishnyakov, Zhenya Minshoutin and Serezha Korolev, in fighter planes. Louka Mouravistkiy, Vanya Oparin, Sasha Lobanov, Arkadiy Chernyshev, Vasya Kochetkov and Victor Koutov have been killed…”
“Victor who?..” I felt as if I had been struck by lightning – everything grew dark: there was neither sun, nor people, nor this war there…It seemed there was nothing to breathe, my eyes couldn’t see, my ears couldn’t hear. When I had come to my senses I saw Doctor Kozlovskiy above me with a syringe in his hand. He kept saying:
“Have a cry now, sweetheart, have a cry. You’ll feel better straightaway…” But I couldn’t cry. Something unbearably heavy lay on my heart and would not ease even for many long years after…
A kind soul, our doctor! He looked after me and healed my soul back in that hard time of mine. And not only mine…In the regiment there was no man more caring and attentive to us. Kozlovskiy literally looked after each airman: how and what he ate, how he slept, what his mood was. He always organised a Russian bath for us along with a change of underwear. He would pick some shack on a riverbank, skilful mechanics would put together a stove out of rocks, put on it a petrol drum, heat plenty of water – and the bathhouse was ready! Doctor Kozlovskiy always requested that a ‘tub’ be prepared for me – in other words a separate drum of hot water, and demanded insistently that I sit in it for no less than ten minutes. We airmen called our doctor ‘Specially for You’. And here’s why: when giving out to us chocolate or vitamins he would call each of us aside in turn, look around and say secretively: “Specially for you!” Wags among the pilots, catching sight of the Doctor, without pre-arrangement would pull chocolate out of their map-cases and yell all together: “Specially for you!” The doctor would take no offence and would do exactly the same at the next distribution of chocolates or vitamins. Kozlovskiy wouldn’t refuse medical help to anyone where we were based. I remember in Timashevka near Krasnodar I ran up to him with a request to help my billet-hostess and her baby when it was born: and snatching up everything necessary straightaway he rushed to save the mother and her baby. And this kind of thing happened many a time.
Our doctor once sent his wife a parcel along with a sergeant-major going via Moscow to Kuibyshev on service business. The sergeant-major found the hospital in which Kozlovskiy’s spouse worked. Worn out by the heat, he unbuttoned the collar of his blouse, took off his field-cap and sat in a chair in the hospital ward. Then the woman he was waiting for turned up. The sergeant-major stood up, staggered up to the woman and said, “Hello! I bring you your husband’s greetings from the front, and a present.”
“Why are you out of uniform? What sort of way is this to talk to someone senior in rank?” he heard her squeaky voice turning to a screech. The sergeant-major was taken aback. He sharply turned around, put the parcel on a table, put on his field-cap and silently left the building. When he came back to the regiment he wouldn’t upset the doctor, he just passed on greetings from his wife and added: “I handed the parcel over personally, don’t you worry!” The sergeant-major was maligned and mocked in the regiment for quite some time after that but it had nothing to do with our doctor. Him we respected…
There was always a long line in the plant canteen. When your turn came you would give them you ear-flapped hat and get an aluminium spoon. Our lunch would consist of three meals: ‘hasty’ soup, ‘shrapnel’ porridge and ‘blancmange à la raspberry’. The guys would joke: “You can survive on it, but will not chase the girls”.
Day in, day out we flew and pounded the ground – theoretically. We read whatever we could find about aerial and land battles, studied tactics: ours and the enemy’s. We had already been issued with flight maps. We would match them up and stick them together. Whole bedsheets were the result: we had a longish flight route to the front…
At Doctor Kozlovskiy’s insistent request I was shifted from the ninety-person communal house-dugout with three-tier bunks, into a Finnish hut. A room had been vacated there and the commanders offered it to me – after all, I was the only woman. But right in this cosy hut was where I almost perished. Once I came from the aerodrome chilled and saw that the stove had been thoroughly heated and the coals hadn’t gone out yet – they were playing beautifully with now blue, now red, now golden sparks. I feasted my eyes on them, warmed up, then swallowed some pill prescribed by our Doctor as a sedative, lay down on the bed, still dressed, and fell asleep. And here I was, asleep and I saw Victor, as if in reality, in a white shirt and tie. He has an embroidered Central Asian cap on his head. Then in a kind of mist I see myself in a pleated black skirt and a blue football jersey with white collar and laces. I have on a white beret, white plimsolls with blue edging, and white socks. The beret sits literally on the crown of my head and on my right ear – that was stylishness among us. All this magnificence had been acquired by me in the Torgsin1 for an antique gold coin presented to me by my mum. And now, in dream as in waking, I saw in that Torgsin splendour not only myself but Victor too, with a tie he had never worn before. We were in the Sokolniki2 among daisies on some vast meadow. Victor picked me one daisy and said: “Here, tell your fortune: who do you like more – me or ‘Prince’ Tougoushy?”
I felt easy and cheerful in the dream but suddenly I heard someone knocking on the door. I wanted to get up but couldn’t. But they rapped on the door louder and louder repeating my name. I somehow got up and walked, holding onto the wall. I fell over, sat up, fell over again. I decided to crawl – nothing was working. At last I reached the door and turning the key slid to the floor…It turned out I had been poisoned by charcoal fumes: the stoker had closed the stove damper too early. Fortunately our pilots were walking past my hut late in the evening. Noticing the light in the window they decided to drop in and began to knock on the door, but no one opened it. Then the guys understood – something had gone wrong…The guys carried me out to walk it off in the fresh air and walked me around outside all night long. By now crying, I begged them to let me go and have a rest, but the pilots would have none of it: they had their own ‘method of healing’ – the aviation one. In the morning I turned up for studies run personally by the regiment commander. He looked at me for a long time and then said briefly: “To the medical unit, immediately!”
In the medical unit Doctor Kozlovskiy again began to wail over me: “My sweet girl, what’s this bad luck pouring over you as if from a horn of plenty? Where did you manage to hurt your forehead so?”
“I fell on the door key…” I told the doctor about my dream and added: “I wish I hadn’t woken up…”
Kozlovskiy flung up his arms at me and began telling me off: “We’ll all be there but not everyone manages to live his life with dignity. Only infirm, weak-willed people with fragile psyches die of their own free will…Keep that in mind, girl!”
On the second day after the incident I came to classes as if nothing had happened, covering my grazes with powder. Those days everyone’s mood was excellent – at long last, after heavy defeats we were on the advance. We received brand-new silvery-painted planes each with a gunner’s cockpit in which a large-calibre machine-gun half-ring mount was installed. This innovation cheered us up. From now on the Sturmovik would be
securely protected from the rear against the enemy’s fighters.
We were in a hurry to fly off to the front as soon as possible but the weather was holding up. It was March but the winter had gone mad and didn’t want to give way to spring. But then a light frost came, the sky became clearer and the sun appeared. We took off and headed towards Saratov.
Nothing boded trouble, rather the reverse, everything was festively cheerful – the clear blue sky, comrades in arms flying wingtip to wingtip…Saratov came in sight – we were supposed to land at the Razboishina aerodrome. Due to the long flying distance we were running out of fuel and it would be dangerous to do a second circuit. Straight after landing one had to taxi out quickly to vacate the airstrip. But someone suddenly hesitated and the pilot next in line went for another circuit. The engine stalled, the plane hung in the air and crashed to the ground at an angle…Junior Lieutenant Pivovarov lost his life. We all were shaken by our comrade’s death and landed our planes at random. I’d seen many deaths at war but here, deep behind the frontline, when the war had been forgotten, if only for a short time, it was hard to see a comrade’s death…
Only this morning we had sat with him in the canteen having breakfast and he, smoothing the fair hair hanging over his high forehead and casting a dark-blue eye towards me, said, addressing the pilot Sokolov: “Volodya, do you know who Egorova will be giving the hundred grams of vodka she gets for a combat sortie?”
Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 (Soviet Memories of War) Page 16
