A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II

by Anne Noggle

  I was born on December 31, 1923, in the town of Vitebsk in Belorussia. When at school, like every Soviet youngster, I actively participated in the socioeconomic life of the country. But in 1939 the N x VD (secret police) arrested a group of schoolchildren in our town, all of them age fifteen-I among them. There were two girls and seven boys in that group. The people who arrested us were vigilant hawks of the Stalin regime who spared nobody to curry favor with their governors. They totally ignored child psychology and completely lacked an understanding of a child's fantasy. They were uneducated and ignorant, ready to find anyone guilty of never-committed crimes; perhaps even newborn babies who appeared to cry non-Stalinist tears! They converted the whole great country into a big concentration camp of lifeterm inmates. They would turn people into programmed robots stuffed with slogans and cheers for the great Stalin.

  My story, or rather the story of my group, is only one tiny, modest example of how this evil machine operated. The boys who fell under suspicion and were jailed were just like boys all over the world who like to read lots of science fiction, adventure stories, thrillers, and travel novels. Under the spell of world-famous literary characters, three of them decided to run away from their homes and rode to Odessa on their bicycles. Of course they were found and brought back to their parents. After that they wanted to intrigue the girls and seem mysterious, and they began signing any messages or notes to their friends as 3+X. Several years passed. This childish game was forgotten, and no one even thought of it again.

  On the eve of May I (May Day), celebrated in our country as the Day of International Solidarity of Workers of the World, I was summoned to the secretary of the Regional Komsomol Committee to report on the May Day preparations at my school. When I left that committee one of the members asked me to accompany him to meet his friend, who had allegedly returned from the Far East. I consented; we climbed the stairs, the door opened, and ahead of me lay an N K V D office. I still remember the man who played that evil trick on me and so dramatically affected my life. His name is Vasilij Korsakov. He asked me to repeat the information I had just told the committee about the May Day festivities at school, about my schoolmates and their grades, and about our after-school activities, when out of nowhere came a question about the 3+X group.

  I explained to him the meaning of 3+X and the origin of this boyish game. Then I was allowed to leave, but several months later, all of us were arrested. We were accused of founding an anti-Soviet, subversive, underground youth organization in the territory of Belorussia. I was included in the group because we were close friends, and we spent our free time together. We were all sent to the central prison in Minsk, capital of Belorussia, where I was held for six months in solitary confinement.

  By the time we were brought to trial a new secretary of the Regional Komsomol Committee, Ponomarenko, was appointed. He easily understood that we were innocent and did what he could to soften our sentences. We were tried by the regional court behind closed doors. We were sentenced, according to Article 58, for counterrevolutionary activity and anti-Soviet propaganda. At the trial it became obvious to everybody, including the jury, that the accusations had been fabricated. That nightmare affected me and changed my future dramatically. Mariya Veitzer, the other girl, and I were released, and I returned to my native town, but the boys were not released. I was expelled from the Komsomol, and I was looked upon as a spy and an enemy. If anyone had sympathized with me they would have had to conceal it so as not to fall themselves under suspicion of the

  I returned to school and completed ninth grade; then I moved to live with my aunt in Smolensk, where I didn't have to hide from people. But in December, 1938, my parents called me and said that the group had again been arrested and put into prison, because the verdict hadn't satisfied the In my youth I had a strong belief that the state as governed by Stalin had nothing in common with the evil people who performed such injustices on innocent citizens. I thought Stalin was being deliberately deluded by enemies who paralyzed the whole country with a spy network. Stalin himself, I believed, was not involved in it and did not know about the Soviet concentration-camp system. We believed that if only Stalin could learn of the crimes of the spy machine, he would punish them severely. Ours was a boundless faith and an unbreakable love of Stalin-our God, as we symbolized him. Even after being imprisoned I only desired to prove that I was a genuine Soviet girl, honest and loyal; a real patriot who loved her motherland dearly and was ready to give her life for it and for Stalin. My faith was boundless. Now that we all know the real truth about what happened during those times-the system that caused it, the horrors and crimes committed during Stalin's reign, the millions of people victimized and murdered-I cannot perceive how shortsighted we were, how Stalin managed to charm and hypnotize the whole country. It's beyond my understanding.

  To continue my story, I was restless staying with my aunt and couldn't stand the idea of just waiting to be arrested again by the The trial was in Minsk, and I went there with the idea of surrendering myself, but my uncle wouldn't allow it. He believed that I must go to Moscow to prove to the Central Party and the Komsomol that I was innocent and had committed no crime. On the night train I shivered with fear that at any moment the NKVD would board the train and arrest me. In Moscow I hurried to Pravda, the Communist newspaper, to tell my story, to plead my case, and to beg for their intercession. They listened, then called the Central Komsomol Committee in pretense of helping me. In truth, they were closely connected to the and were busy fabricating big lies for the party. Never thinking of the consequence, I even left my aunt's address with them.

  I returned to Smolensk to continue with my studies. Two months later agents intruded into my aunt's apartment while I was at school, searched it inside out, grabbed some family photographs, and left me an order to be in their office that day. Again I was to be arraigned with the group before the Supreme Court of Belorussia, also behind the closed doors. I asked the Central Komsomol Committee to send a representative to the trial, which they did. But it was a sham; they only pretended to help my case. In the end, all but one of us were released. One boy was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for anti-Soviet propaganda. This was because once, at school, he said that collective farms in this country, in the period of agricultural reconstruction of the 192os and 1930s, had been conducted against Lenin's general plan of agricultural rejuvenation.

  Later I moved to Moscow and attended courses in Morse code. I tried to be readmitted into the Komsomol. I wrote many appeals and knocked on many doors, but in vain. The war started, and I attended a special class to prepare to be flown behind enemy lines and work with the partisans. Upon completion I filled out a questionnaire; one of the questions asked if I were a member of the Komsomol, and if not, what was the reason. For the whole period of Soviet rule it was obligatory for all young people from the ages of fourteen to twentyeight to be Komsomol members. I answered that I had been expelled. We had been informed by the selections board that if we were accepted as volunteers, the risk of being killed was ninety-nine percent-one percent would survive. I did not hesitate a second in my determination to go to the front. When I was summoned before the board for the final determination, I was rejected. The reason was my expulsion.

  My parents had left our native land of Belorussia and walked to somewhere in the Volga River region as the Germans advanced into our country. I decided to try to find them, and luckily I did. But my grandparents were killed by the fascists in their village during the first days of German occupation, for they shot all the Jews on the spot, irrespective of their age. They were old and sick and could not think of abandoning their home to walk long kilometers to somewhere else-they preferred death.

  I returned to Moscow and renewed my efforts to be reinstated into the Komsomol and thus be eligible to volunteer for the front. The Komsomol then summoned me and told me my appeal would be granted if I went on a special mission behind the enemy lines. Those terms sounded as though I had committed a crime and were expiating my gu
ilt, so I couldn't accept them. In despair I wrote to Lavrentij Beriya, chief of the By a miracle my letter was read by a general, a very honest man, who believed my story. He placed me before him and interviewed me. He told me that I should never ever mention that I had once been expelled from the Komsomol. He then supported me, and I was able to join the Komsomol. After that I became a ground radio operator stationed at one of the Moscow airdromes.

  But I had a burning desire to be a flight radio operator and requested a transfer. Soon I was sent to take a brief training course, and in 1942 I was assigned to the Loth Guard Air Transport Division as a flight radio operator. Our division was stationed at Vnukovo airdrome near Moscow. We flew behind the front line to the enemy's rear, dropping medicine, food supplies, ammunition, and weapons to the partisans who conducted subversive activities on enemy-held territory. Sometimes we dropped paratroopers deep into the rear. At the front we dropped oil barrels for our tanks and trucks, and on other missions we landed at the front to carry the badly wounded to the rear so they might survive. Occasionally we were attacked by fascist fighters. When we flew to the besieged city of Stalingrad to drop supplies and bring out the wounded, we were escorted by fighters even though our Lisunov Li-2 aircraft was equipped with machinegun turrets.

  In Belorussia, in 1943, the partisans were waging the so-called Rail War. They blew up the tracks so the German cargo trains could not deliver supplies to their troops. We delivered supplies to these partisans hiding in the dense Belorussian woods. We dropped the cargo at night. They would signal us from the ground with identification fires, and the code changed each night. One night it might be fires laid in a triangle, another night a cross or rectangle. We talked with the land forces through radio. It often happened that German intelligence intercepted the partisan code and laid out fires of similar shapes to trap the Soviet transport aircraft. But we outwitted the Germans; we had auxiliary codes in addition to the fires. The partisans would shoot up a signal flare of a certain color, and the aircraft would respond with a prearranged answering signal color-only then did we drop the cargo.

  I had many experiences in the war that made my heart sink. But one is especially unforgettable. On one mission, when we were about to drop supplies to the partisans, we were very unexpectedly attacked by a German fighter. The aircraft commander asked me to check why the tail gunner was silent. I rushed to the tail compartment and saw that the turret and machine guns had been hit and were unusable. The right fuel tank was leaking and flaming. The fighter made another pass on the right and attacked the pilot's cabin. The commander could hear the bullets bouncing off the armor plate in back of him where my station was located and thought I had been killed. But I was still in the rear of the plane. I ran to the commander to report that we were on fire. We were flying at only 200 meters, and he started to climb so we could bail out of the aircraft. But our parachutes were all piled into the tail of the plane, and it was on fire. Our only chance to survive was to land the plane in the area of the partisan fires beneath us. While the pilot struggled to control the aircraft, we were throwing weapons, ammunition fuses, and detonator cargo out of the plane so it wouldn't explode when we landed. The pilot, our commander, called to me to help him hold the aircraft, and I saw that he was wounded in his chest and right arm. Our copilot became so frightened he left the cabin and cowered near the back of the plane. I couldn't help hold the control stick-it was beyond my physical capacity-so I dashed to the flight engineer for help, but he was on the floor, bleeding from six bullet wounds. Our commander was barely conscious but still managed to control the aircraft as we bellylanded. My life flashed before my eyes in an instant. My last wish was that everyone who had made me unjustly suffer in my youth for crimes never committed would learn now that I was dying for my fair motherland.

  We touched the ground-we were safe! When we belly-landed I opened the hatch and pulled the flight engineer out of the cabin. The navigator and tail gunner had already jumped out and helped me lower the engineer to the ground. Now I can hardly give an account of how I energized myself to drag our commander through the hatch, but I did. I was the last to quit the plane. When I felt myself firmly on the ground I heard the commander's order to crawl away from the plane. We might be on enemy-held territory, for we hadn't had time to signal the partisans on the ground. The fuel tanks blew up, and the whole plane was burning. Then the men who were not wounded went into the forest to reconnoiter. Our commander wanted us to leave him because he was so badly wounded, and he had his pistol ready to shoot himself if the fascists came. I didn't obey him and stayed with the wounded. I was in despair, for I didn't know how to stem the bleeding of the chest wound. I remembered that I always had many handkerchiefs in my greatcoat, because in the daytime when we were not flying I passed the time embroidering them. I used them now for bandages, pressing them against the chest wound. The flight engineer was also bleeding. I tore his high boot with a knife and bandaged the wounds with his foot wrapping.

  In about an hour the crew returned with a partisan, a horse, and a cart. We loaded the wounded onto the cart and made our way to a village controlled by the partisans. The wounded were carried into a hut, and the surgeon extracted splinters and bullets from their bodies. There was no anesthesia, so he used pieces of ice to freeze the area. The partisans radioed to the their headquarters in Moscow that we had crashed, and two weeks later, two small aircraft were sent to ferry us out. Before we left we were visited by the secretary of the underground Komsomol. Our commander praised my courage and selfcontrol, and the secretary turned to see me. His dismay and astonishment showed on his face when he recognized me as the girl whom he had arrested and expelled from the Komsomol!

  While awaiting the rescue aircraft, the navigator and I returned to our burned aircraft to search for the Order of the Red Star, the award our pilot commander had been wearing when we were forced to land. He valued it highly and mourned its loss. It was nowhere to be found at the aircraft site, but we did find, to our horror, that we were in the middle of a mine field! Later, when in a Moscow military hospital, surgery was performed on our commander, and when they entered the wound, they extracted the medal from his chest! It had deflected the bullet from his heart and saved his life.

  Our flights to the landing strips behind the lines in the Crimea were very risky. The partisans built short strips in the mountains where they were hiding, and fog and overcast made it difficult to locate these rocky fields. They could not light fires at night because they were visible everywhere, and in the daytime German fighters loitered over them. On one such mission we searched five days to locate the small landing strip. When we finally landed to take out the severely wounded, we packed the aircraft to capacity, for the men would die there if we could not fly them out. On each trip we would carry thirtyfive or forty people, our maximum load. We had no nurses on board, and we attended them ourselves as best we could. It was impossible to take a breath in the passenger compartment, for the bodies were decaying and stinking. On one mission one of our engines quit over the Black Sea, and we were forced to turn to an auxiliary field. It took forty minutes to get to that field, and all the way there we realized we could crash any minute-it seemed like an eternity.

  Many of our missions lasted for two or three days. My crew always granted me the best conveniences, while they nested in worse. Moreover, they cared not only about my comfort but also about my long braid I couldn't bear to cut. Each time we were stationed near a small rivulet, pond, or lake, my crew would bring me several buckets of clear water to wash and rinse my thick, long hair. I gave them my ration of vodka and cigarettes, and they gave me their chocolate. They never dirty-mouthed in my presence; they treated me in a most gracious manner. And in their presence I never gave way to emotions, no matter how grave the situation. Every day we saw such grief, death, and destruction that my thoughts merged into one desire-to liberate my motherland from the fascist barbarians. On board the aircraft I felt sheltered and protected. My plane was my home; I stood on the flo
oring of the plane as if on the land.

  In 1944 the war was moving toward its end. We were flying to the Belorussian front, where the Germans were vehemently resisting, for they were losing superiority on all fronts. They threw the main German air forces to that front. On those missions we were attacked again and again, and on each flight we returned with bullet holes in the fuselage. I feared each flight. But when my commander transferred me to Kiev to another crew I sobbed for several days. Not only was I losing my crew but I would never cross the front again, because I was being assigned to domestic duty behind the front. No longer was I defeating the enemy; I was assigned to fly with the Ukrainian government within Soviet-held territory. My commander made this decision to transfer me because he felt that he bore responsibility for my life. Once I had saved him when I pulled him out of a burning aircraft, and now he was saving me from a wild bullet. My younger brother lost his life at age eighteen, in 1944, and now my commander was forcibly preventing me from losing mine. Soon I quit flying completely. I entered the Military Academy of Foreign Interpreters but was soon transferred to a civilian college, the Linguistic University, for I was expecting a child.

  I majored in Italian and Spanish, then completed postgraduate courses and defended my dissertation. For ten years I taught Italian at the University of Foreign Economic Relations. Later I translated feature films for Mosfilm. Then I moved into film production, where I am now managing producer for joint Russian-Italian films.

  Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army

  Olga Lisikova, transport pilot

  I completed flying school in 1937 and was assigned to Aeroflot, operating on the Leningrad-Moscow line. Our aircraft was the P-5, difficult to fly, especially for a newly trained pilot. It could only carry 50o kg, and the flight lasted three to four hours. We flew at low elevation so there was often turbulence, and we had few instruments in the cabin.