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

by Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

  “Alright, Dousya, alright”, I calmed her. “Just don’t be angry at the Major. It could have happened to any pilot!”

  But after the unsuccessful flight with the zampolit Dousya was clearly upset: “The regiment has people capable of flying combat missions. Let him deal with his ground stuff!”

  I did not agree with her: from my point of view when a political officer flew himself, he could better understand a pilot’s soul and all the hardships of his work. There had been cases: a Sturmovik pilot returned from a mission, and not yet chilled out after combat, having suffered badly himself, losing a comrade, might commit some breach of discipline on the ground, make a simple blunder – and he would be slated! And how vexing it was for a pilot when the political officers couldn’t understand him and on top of that would give him instructions on flying techniques, knowing nothing about it! No, Dousya was wrong: our ground attack regiment was really lucky that our zampolit was a combat airman.

  On 20 August 1944 we had no combat missions in the morning. By tradition we were going to celebrate our aviation holiday, Air Force Day, and Aerodrome Services Battalion Commander Belousov suggested we utilise Count Zheltowsky’s estate for this purpose. Just recently a conference of the pilots of our division and fighter pilots had taken place on this estate. They had discussed co-operation – providing cover to the Sturmoviks, mutual aid, tactical skills.

  Adjusting his tunic with its two Orders of Lenin, our Division Commander Colonel V.A. Timofeev was first to take the floor: “We have analysed the combat operations of the regiments. It looks like we’ve lost more planes from the enemy’s anti-aircraft artillery fire than from their fighters. It happens this way because our crews make themselves ready to encounter with the enemy fighter planes, they know all their silhouettes, and the escort fighters help us properly during sorties. And yet we give in to the flak guns: the Sturmoviks are not always ready for their salvos. I reckon”, the comdiv5 continued, “it is essential the pilots study before each sortie the enemy’s anti-aircraft defences around the targets. To do this Headquarters and the Operations Department must prepare intelligence data for the future target areas.”

  Major P.T. Karev, acting as Regimental Commander after the death of M.N. Kozin, said that the escort fighters were always alert for the foe, beat off their attacks on Sturmoviks, and gave no quarter to the Messers or Focke-Wulfs. But there were times when they failed to guess the enemy’s intentions, engaged a diversionary group, and in the meantime another would pounce on the Sturmoviks with impunity…

  I was given the floor as well, and as an example I told about the combat sortie of a sixer I had led to smash enemy materiel and manpower in the area of PuŽawy. Whilst we were operating over the target making one pass after another, the escort fighters had been carried away in a dogfight against a group of Messerschmitts somewhere off to the side. We had already finished up and pulled away from the target when a pack of stalking Focke-Wulfs attacked us. We would have been in trouble if two La-5 fighters had not appeared. They struck at the Fokkers from above and attacked them with such determination that soon they shot down two of them, and two others trailed smoke and retired to their lines.

  “As a woman”, I pointed out, “I feel uncomfortable asking men not to abandon me. And it’s even more annoying when they desert me!”

  “You shouldn’t pretend to be poorer than you are”, Misha Berdashkevich whispered to me, when I’d taken my seat. “Do you remember how our fighters protected you over Taman? There was even an order distributed throughout the Army about ‘chit-chat in the air’, and the example they brought was: “Anechka!6 Don’t go too far…”

  Indeed, there was such a case. Back then I was leading a group towards the Choushka Spit and decided to converge on a target from the rear. The fighters’ leader Volodya Istrashkin thought I had got lost, and somewhat courteously, in the old style, started a conversation with me by radio…

  Our conference on the Count’s estate lasted for five hours, and then there was a concert of real artists. After much effort they’d been ‘acquired’ from our Army by the Head of the Division’s Political Department.

  Fear is typical of all people, but not all are capable of suppressing it. I had never seen dismay amongst my regimental comrades during combat, nor had I seen the traces of ordinary human weakness on the faces of pilots or gunners. They knew how to protect themselves from it with a smile, a joke, a song…So, the pilots had prepared an amateur concert for our holiday. Each squadron had worked out solo pieces. A song written in the 7th Guards Ground Attack Aviation Regiment back at Taman was particularly beloved in the regiment. The regimental navigator, Hero of the Soviet Union V. Emelyanenko, formerly a conservatorium student, had written music for it. He was a marvellous man, a superb pilot and a great commander.7 The refrain of the song was as follows:

  Hey, Ilyusha, friend of mine

  Let’s attack them one more time!

  But the Sturmoviks’ feast at the Count’s manor came to nothing. Already at mid-day the airmen of the division were beating off violent German attacks at the Magnuszew bridgehead on the other side of the Vistula south of Warsaw, where Chuikov’s Guards were containing the enemy’s onslaught. The support of Sturmoviks at the bridgehead was needed like air. Our 805th Regiment was assigned a mission to fly in echelons, in two groups. The order was to load our planes with anti-tank bombs.

  There were three of us at the CP: the Regimental Commander P.T.Karev, the zampolit L.P.Shvidkiy and I – the Regimental Navigator. “I will lead the first group of 15 Sturmoviks”, said the Regimental Commander. “Egorova will lead the second one after a 10-minute interval. All crews of the regiment will join. Which group will you fly with, Dmitriy Polikarpovich, mine or Egorova’s?”

  Shvidkiy stood silent for quite some time, and then forced himself to speak: “I won’t be flying!”

  We were stunned by his response, but the flight time was pressing, and the regiment commander just said angrily: “What kind of a commissar are you if you abandon your comrades in a hard moment, at a dangerous sortie?”

  We quickly left the dugout and saw a green flare already in the air – it signalled the take-off of the leading group. Karev rushed to his plane, and Shvidkiy quietly disappeared somewhere. Uneasily pensive, I sat on a stump, and to drive away ‘spiteful’ thoughts began to hum a song: Mishka, Mishka, where’s that smile of yours?

  I awaited my take-off with anxiety. It was to be my 68th or 70th combat sortie, taking into account only sorties in Sturmoviks. Oh, those minutes of waiting! They dragged on for hours. I always wanted to take-off straightaway after receiving a combat mission. It’s true what they say – waiting and chasing are worst of all.

  I walked towards my plane’s parking bay from the CP and from afar I noticed my gunner Nazarkina. I had not seen her smiling so happily for a long time: her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shining. Well, thought I, my gunner is gradually recovering from the shock she’s been through!

  The plane mechanic Gorobets reported the plane ready, and then made a covert nod to the side and whispered: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant, Sergeant Nazarkina has secretly stowed two anti-tank bombs with detonators in the rear cockpit…”

  “She’s gone mad, has she?” I burst out. “Clear the cockpit immediately!”

  I looked at my watch: there were three minutes left till the take-off. “She won’t let me come near her”, Gorobets approached me again. “She’s threatening me with the pistol…”

  I came up to Nazarkina. Dousya rushed to cover something with her hands like a broody hen with its wings, but I gently moved her aside and shoved my hand down to bottom of the cockpit. The bombs! Pulling out a kilo-and-a-half one, I handed it over to the mechanic, but when I was going to take out the other one Dousya said anxiously: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant! Let me have them. In a direct hit these little bombs’ll go straight through any tank: King Tigers, Panthers, Ferdinands. Don’t take them away! Over the target I’ll drop them by hand when there are no Fasc
ist fighter planes around and there’s no need to beat them off. After all, it’s tank attacks we’re flying to beat off. Leave them with me!”

  “Mechanic! Clear the cockpit immediately!” – I ordered…

  A green flare blazed up and curved in the air. Hurriedly putting on my parachute, I sat in the cockpit, turned the engine on, checked the two-way and taxied out. Through the intercom I heard Nazarkina’s voice – she was too cheerful for some reason. Why was that? Had Gorobets managed to pull all the bombs out from under her feet? I took off, and 15 Sturmoviks went into the air following my lead. The Vistula with islands in the middle of its course was visible ahead of us. On the right, as if in a fog, was Warsaw…Yesterday, coming back from a sortie, I had seen the city burning, engulfed by flames and clouds of thick smoke. And our pilot Kolya Pazukhin – a chap from a town with a poetic name, Rodniky8 in the Ivanovskaya Region, died in flames over Warsaw. Kolya was transporting foodstuffs and arms to the revolted people of Warsaw. A Polish pilot Major T. Wiherkewicz didn’t come back from the mission either. He had broken through the infernal flak barrage and dropped his load on a parachute but was shot down as he turned, and crashed with his plane on the scorched buildings of his dear Warsaw…

  The Polish airmen from the ‘Krakow’ and ‘Warsaw’ aviation regiments fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Soviet pilots. They did their best not to fall behind our aviators and fought courageously and skilfully. Many a time the fighter pilots from the ‘Warsaw’ regiment flew as escorts for the Sturmoviks…

  Now I was in the air, looking with sorrow towards Warsaw. I felt really sorry for the betrayed people of the city, sorry for their ruined capital, the former beauty of that old city.

  “Four Fokkers on the left above us!”, came Nazarkina’s voice. She was the first to notice the enemy’s fighters and shot out a flare towards them so everyone would take notice.

  Long-range flak guns blocked our group’s path with their fire. We took evasive action, but their shells exploded so close that it seemed that the splinters were rapping on the Il’s armour. Then AA tracers flew towards the Sturmoviks, like red balls. They looked so beautiful from a distance that it was hard to believe each of them meant death. Petr Makarenko was flying wingtip to wingtip with me. The ground fire was getting closer with every second. If you converge on a target directly you’ll face an even denser wall of fire, that’s why I made a decision to turn right. My wingmen followed me in the turn, and the powerful barrage was left to the side. But we had distanced ourselves from the target, and the enemy was just about to zero in again having made their adjustment. That’s why we now turned left and flew with evasive action against the curtain of flak. Looks like it’s time to attack! I start a dive. Now I had no time to keep my eye on my wingmen, but I knew that they were following me. Attack! We pounced on the enemy tanks with our rockets and cannon fire, pelted them with anti-tank bombs. The earth below us was on fire. In the heat of the battle I paid no attention to the enemy ack-ack guns, didn’t see the flak, saw no fiery traces from machine-guns.

  One more pass, then another…Suddenly my plane was thrown up as if someone had kicked it from underneath. Then another blow, a third one…It became hard to control the plane. It didn’t obey me, it was climbing up. I was now flying without taking any evasive action: all my efforts, all my attention were concentrated on trying to put the Sturmovik into the dive again and to open fire. I managed to do that, and I led the group again for another pass directed at the tanks. But my wingmen could see better the condition my plane was in. Someone yelled to me over the radio: “Get back to our lines!”

  “Apparently the plane is shot up”, I thought, and suddenly everything fell silent. Communications with Nazarkina vanished too. “Has she been killed?..” flashed through my mind. But the plane shuddered as in a fever: the Sturmovik wasn’t obeying the controls. I wanted to open the cockpit but I couldn’t. I was choking from smoke. My spiralling plane was on fire…I was on fire along with it…

  33

  “She died a hero’s death”

  T

  he pilots who had returned from the sortie reported that Egorova’s crew had been killed in the target area. As was done in such cases, they sent a death notice to my mum, Stepanida Vasilievna Egorova in the village of Volodovo in the Kalinin Region. However, this time death had missed me again: miraculously, I’d been thrown out of the burning Sturmovik. When I opened my eyes I saw that I was falling with no parachute canopy over my head. Just above the ground (I don’t remember how it happened myself), I jerked the ring, and the smouldering parachute opened up, although not completely…

  I regained consciousness with terrible pain engulfing my whole body – it was so strong that I couldn’t move. My head burned like fire, my spine hurt unbearably, as did my arms and legs, scorched nearly to the bone. When I half-opened my eyes with difficulty I saw a soldier in a grey-green uniform over me. A terrible realisation shot through me stronger than any pain: “A Fascist! I’m in the Fascist’s hands!” This was the one thing I’d feared most of all in the war. The moral pain was a hundred times more dreadful than fire, bullets, physical pain. Only one thought pulsated feverishly inside my head: “I’ve been captured!” Helpless, incapable of resistance! I couldn’t even stretch my arm towards my pistol! And the German set his foot against my chest and pulled my broken arm for some reason. Oblivion…

  The next time I came to my senses was from hitting the ground: the Hitlerites had tried to seat me in a vehicle but I couldn’t stay upright. I was falling as soon as they let go. Then they brought a stretcher and put me on that. As if in a dream I heard Polish. “Maybe the partisans have snatched me away?” the hope flashed through my mind. No, I saw the Hitlerites again and heard them conversing. “Schnell, schnell!” they were rushing two Polish medics, urging them to treat my wounds faster: a raid by Soviet aviation was on. Again a tiny ray of hope glimmered in me – our planes were around! I’d be happy if they hit this place where I was lying…

  The Poles gave me no medication, they simply bandaged me, deftly hiding all my decorations and Party membership card under the bandages. I had to gather all my strength so as not to let out a moan in front of the enemy…

  The Polish medics were conversing in whispers and I caught something about the Radom concentration camp. Then among the gaps in my memory there was an endlessly long shed, and when I came to my senses I found myself on the floor…

  “What have they done to you, the freaks? It’d be good to put some ointment on now…” I heard a young female voice.

  “Where would I get it from, this ointment? The Germans haven’t stocked medicines for us”, a male voice replied and asked straightaway: “And you, girl, who are you anyway, how did you end up here?”

  “I’m a medical orderly, Yulya Krashchenko. I ended up here from the Magnuszew bridgehead beyond the Vistula, just like you. A tank ironed out the trench I was bandaging wounded men in, and then the Hitlerite submachine-gunners took us prisoners…”

  “You know what, sister, I do know you. You’re from the 2nd Guards Battalion. Your commander, Captain Tskayev, is from my neighbourhood. Move over here closer to us, Orderly Krashchenko, let’s talk. We’ve examined a female pilot here, and found decorations under the bandages…We’d better take them off and hide them so as not to let the Fritzes have them. You do it, sister, it’s easier for you – the Fascists could accuse us of God knows what.”

  “I understand. But where can I hide them?”

  “Let’s put them into her burned flying boots – the Fascists won’t want them – they prefer new stuff”, someone else suggested.

  When I heard my native speech, a spasm squeezed my throat and the first word burst out of me with my first groan: “Wa-a-ater!”

  From that moment Yulia was with me all the time. The Hitelerites couldn’t drive her away from me with curses, nor with blows…I remember lying on a trestle-bed in some room of the shed, and a tearful Yulia sat next to me. Three men in rubber aprons, and with gauz
e bands on their faces, tore from my scorched arms and legs the bandages the Poles had put on me, tipped some powder over them and went away. As Yulia told me later, I began writhing in pain, dashing my head against the bed, yelling, losing consciousness…The Poles held in the Radom camp for participation in the Warsaw Uprising stood up for me. They began smashing windows and breaking everything indiscriminately, demanding a halt to the torture of the Russian pilot. Then these three ‘physicians’ appeared again and washed my burns of all they’d tipped on them before.

  On the second day they loaded us into a freight car and rode us somewhere. Apparently the frontline was getting closer – after all it was September 1944. “Us” meant me, Yulia, a barely alive soldier from a penal company and a battalion zampolit – a completely fit Captain. He dreamed of escaping, but there had been no suitable chance, and the Captain was taking fatherly care of the dying soldier. We, the POWs, occupied one half of the car: all laying on the floor. Huge bunks were built in the second half where lay, slept, ate, played cards, sang and told jokes two German soldiers and three Ukrainian Polizei1. The Germans behaved reservedly, but the Polizei lacked any mercy at all towards us, their compatriots.