The Witch of Stalingrad

by Justine Saracen

  When she rejoined Harry, he had more good news.

  “I’ve got us a ride to Kursk. The man in charge of transporting the current batch of T-34s invited us to travel on the train carrying them toward the front. I told him we’d be delighted. Should give you a few more great shots.”

  “Well done, Henry. You’re a credit to the profession.”

  The train left at dawn the next morning, and they took their place in the passenger car with the officers and medical personnel. The summer’s day was bright, perfect for photography, and when the train swung around a wide curve, Alex could capture most of the nearly hundred railcars. Each flatbed car bore two new tanks, and each tank carried three men riding, day and night, in the open air across the landscape.

  At the Kursk train station, Alex and Henry watched as the tanks rolled off the railcars and rumbled on without pause. “Ugly things, when you really look at them,” he remarked while she snapped photos. “Great, lumbering steel beetles. And the whole countryside around Kursk is covered with them, blasting the hell out of each other for a month already.”

  “A pestilence of panzer,” she added, taking the last shot. “Anyhow, I’ve seen enough. What about you?”

  “Agreed. I say we go back with the hospital train to Moscow. I’m ready for a hot bath, a good meal, and the kindness of a woman.”

  Alex glanced quizzically at him as they crossed the tracks toward the train painted with white crosses.

  “I meant my wife. That’s what keeps me in Russia, after all, the love of a Russian woman.”

  That’s what keeps me here too, she thought.

  They found seats but had to wait for several hours while a seemingly endless line of ambulances arrived and transferred their wounded on board. “And those are the lucky ones,” Henry muttered.

  They departed in the early evening, and as Alex stared out at the rugged landscape of the Urals, the rattle of the train wheels brought back the memory of her trip from Archangelsk to Moscow. She’d been clean then, devoid of lice and, for that matter, of any idea what the war would be like. How her world had changed since that day.

  She’d started to doze when someone came through their car and handed out copies of Red Star. The headlines trumpeted the ever-weakening German resolve and the certainty of victory at Kursk. Tired and filthy, with the taste of grease in her mouth, she scanned the first few pages. The number of fatalities wasn’t recorded, but the wounded were mentioned as “heroes of the Motherland on their way to our hospitals for care.”

  The second page held more good news. The air force, which was beginning to gain air superiority, gave several accounts of successful air battles with the tallies for the public’s favorite pilots. She scanned the column until she found Drachenko: eleven solo kills and three shared. Was she the only person in the Soviet Union who shuddered at the thought?

  *

  After a thorough bath at the Hotel Metropole Alex developed her film. She had a story George would love: the T-34, made by women. The tanks had breathtaking power, but Henry was right; they were ugly machines that crushed and smashed things, and blasted them away. She needed to work on something less hideous now. But what? She’d talk it over with Henry and the others at dinner.

  However, when she passed the desk on the way to the dining room, a small brown triangle of field post awaited her. She held it in her pocket, delaying gratification, and went back to her room to read it.

  Dear Miss Preston, or dare I call you comrade? I am happy to know you are in Moscow telling the world about our struggle. Here we continue to fight for the Motherland, inspired by the victories at Stalingrad and by the strength of our comrades and our leaders.

  It is possible that when my duties here are complete, I may join old friends and fly the planes we both love, so perhaps we will meet again on another airfield. I go happily where I am ordered in our common struggle.

  As always, I send my good thoughts to you and my good wishes for your continued stay in Russia.

  A simple message of patriotism, that was both exaggerated and sincere and would pass the scrutiny of any censor. She also took note of “the planes that we both love,” the irony of which would go unnoticed. Lilya hated the old U-2s and would fight kicking and screaming before she would accept flying in them again.

  Alex chuckled, and now she knew what her next project would be. A new article on the Night Witches.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Unlike her assignment to Major Kazar’s regiment, which General Osipenko had obviously hastened, the request for engagement with the night bombers moved slowly through the hierarchy of authority. Alex checked in first with George Mankowitz, then applied to the Press Department. Then she waited for three more weeks for agreement to filter down from the People’s Commissariat of Defense to the Night Bomber Aviation Division, and finally to Major Bershanskaya herself.

  By the time she joined the 588th air regiment, it was October, and they had moved forward to Volodarka, in the Ukraine. A series of trains and supply trucks finally carried her out to the air base. When she stepped off the supply truck, a young recruit she didn’t know met her and led her to a dugout nearly identical to the one at Stavropol. Apparently, Soviet field bunkers didn’t vary much.

  “How’s the food?” she asked the recruit.

  “Pretty good. The old-timers tell me it’s much better than before. Less kasha and more spam from America. But the mice get into anything that’s not in cans.”

  “Vishneva, I believe you’re on duty now.” Eva Bershanskaya stood in the doorway.

  “Yes, Comrade Major. I was just on my way.” The young woman saluted and slid past the commander at the entrance.

  “Nice to see you, Miss Preston. Will you walk with me?” Bershanskaya asked.

  “Uh, yes, of course.” Alex dropped her kit bag on the nearest free bunk and stepped outside the dugout, where the commander waited. She appeared wearier than before, and her uniform was rumpled.

  Alex felt a warm respect for the taciturn commander. Rumors had floated around that she never wanted the command position and had refused it at first, begging to simply be able to fly, but Marina Raskova, the woman who had persuaded Josef Stalin, had also persuaded her. She started off toward the airfield, and Alex fell in step beside her.

  “Do you still fly only the U-2s?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” They were out on the field now, strolling along the aisle between the planes. Most had their engine cowlings open and mechanics tinkering with their interiors.

  “I’m proud of my women,” Bershanskaya said. “Already more than a dozen are Heroes of the Soviet Union. They’re like sisters to each other. Sometimes more. Very often more. And each death kills a little part of us. We grieve but then return to work the next night. But now tell me the truth. There’s nothing new for you to photograph here. Why have you come back?”

  Alex thought for a moment. She didn’t want to lie to this woman. “I’ve photographed all over the front and in the factories and railroad stations, but my work was always impersonal. Meanwhile, the women I met and cared about from the 588th have been killed, one by one. Only Lilya Drachenko’s left now, and she hinted she might be assigned again to the night bombers. It was where we both started this war, and I suppose, like her, I feel an attachment.”

  Bershanskaya began strolling again. “So you’ve come back for Lilya. I’m not surprised. Many people love her, both men and women. But she’s close to very few. If she let you in, you’re very lucky.”

  The major’s candor put her at ease. “I know I am. And I’m worried. I haven’t heard from her in weeks.”

  Bershanskaya stopped walking and pivoted around to face her directly. “I’m afraid I don’t have encouraging news for you. The other women don’t know yet, but the commander of the 586th reported yesterday that she disappeared in battle.”

  Alex’s chest turned to stone. “Disappeared? What does that mean? Shot down?”

  “It means what it says. Another pilot saw her fly
into a cloud, and she never reappeared. She was in borderline territory, so they’ve sent out a search team to see if she was able to land. If they don’t find her or her plane in the next days, they’ll report her officially missing and the news will become public.”

  “And if they never find her plane?”

  “She’ll be suspected of desertion.”

  *

  Alex waited in the purgatory of uncertainty.

  Weeks passed, and still no news came. The official ruling of suspected desertion sickened her but at the same time gave her hope. As long as Lilya wasn’t found, she wasn’t dead.

  She gathered the women of the 588th around her like sisters waiting for news of a family member. When the night bombers were transferred to the Belorussian Front, she followed them, with only the faintest pretense of being a foreign correspondent. She used only a single camera now, photographing the women’s faces, and waited for news after the others had stopped, sensing, or perhaps only hallucinating, that Lilya was alive and near.

  She filled the time helping the armorers. The sheer pain of lifting the hundred-kilo bombs from their carts and sliding them into their cradles allowed her to shut down the part of her brain that tormented her. That part whispered the two equally monstrous possibilities: that Lilya was dead or that she was in the hands of the enemy.

  Then in November, after the last aircraft had made its final run and Alex staggered off the field at daybreak, Major Bershanskaya summoned them all together on the field.

  “I’ve just received a call from headquarters, and it is my sad duty to tell you that the search parties from the 586th have found Lieutenant Drachenko’s plane. It had crashed in what was borderline territory but now is in the hands of the Red Army.”

  A murmur of disbelief rumbled through the circle of women until someone called out, “What about Lilya?”

  The major clutched her hands, schoolmarm-like, over her waist, as if to prevent an escape of emotion. “They found the body of a woman near the plane. It was burnt beyond recognition, but they assume it to be Lieutenant Drachenko.”

  “No!” someone called out, and a dozen other voices echoed the despair.

  “I share your sorrow at the loss of our friend and comrade. We’ll keep her in our thoughts, along with comrades Budanova and Beliaeva, and all the others who have fallen, the next time we attack the enemy. That will be all, Comrades. Dismissed.”

  Alex stood as if riveted, unable to absorb the news, as if it had been delivered in an unintelligible language. Then, numbly, she followed the others off the airfield to the bunkers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sofija Kovitch shaded her eyes and watched the air battle overhead. The Red Army had pushed the enemy back a few days before, but the Fritzes never lost air superiority and had retaken the woods in front of her. As the daughter of Sydir Kovitch, the leader of a well-armed partisan band, she was confident that the German victory was temporary and that the Soviets would soon drive them out again.

  Her father’s partisans answered to the Red Army, though their strategies were decided locally. Most wore military uniforms, as she did, and it was a mark of how much they trusted her that they had given her a military pistol as well. She lacked only the boots but would snatch them off the next dead Fritz she came across.

  She tilted her head back, watching the six Junkers 88s in battle with a squadron of Yaks. They dove and swooped in their deadly pirouettes until one and then another of the Junkers exploded, and she pounded the air in cheer.

  But to her horror, four more Messerschmitts arrived and disabled one of the Yaks. Outnumbered, the remaining Russian craft fled. She watched the damaged Yak descend in a shallow curve and crash in the woods in front of her.

  Could she help, or was it too late? She ran toward the smoke and found the crashed Yak in a small clearing, one wing broken and lying on its side. The canopy was open, though, and as she rushed toward it, she could see no pilot. Had he parachuted? Or been thrown? She called out, “Where are you?” It was puzzling, but fire was creeping along the fuselage of the plane so she backed away.

  She turned at the sound of voices to see four Germans enter the clearing with rifles raised. Knowing the fate of partisans, she drew her pistol and shot at them, but at the same moment, the rifle bullets ripped into her chest.

  *

  Lying helpless in the brush, Lilya heard the woman calling. She struggled to answer, but all that came out was a weak groan. Moments later, she heard the men and then the gunshots.

  Her head pounded, and her vision was so distorted she could make out only unfocused patches of green overhead. She felt an excruciating pain in her chest with every breath and couldn’t move one of her arms without a jolt of agony.

  Through blurred vision, she could just make out the ring of German soldiers gathering around her, their rifles pointed at her head. In the last remnants of her consciousness, she was tortured with regret, and the faces of those she’d failed passed before her: her mother, Katia, Major Raskova, and finally, most cruelly, Alex. Then the darkness closed in again.

  *

  Lilya came to in breathtaking pain, rocking back and forth in the back of a horse-drawn wagon. Her eyes still wouldn’t focus, but she could make out the form of a man squatting next to her, a rifle laid across his knees. She was captured. Her worst nightmare.

  Every rattle and sway of the wagon sent a wave of fire up from her right arm and across her chest, and she was filled with shame. There was no dishonor in being shot down, but pilots who couldn’t escape were supposed to have the good grace to die. She, on the other hand, had become a pawn of the enemy.

  They’d gone to some trouble to carry her out of the woods, so obviously they planned to interrogate her. She was so weak and in such torment, she was sure she’d say anything to make it stop. Thankfully, she knew little that would be of any use to them.

  She moved in and out of consciousness as they rattled along, each time awakening to the same hellish fire and confusion. She couldn’t tell how long she’d lain in the wagon, only that she was desperately thirsty. “Water,” she begged over and over, but they ignored her.

  Finally, when her mouth was like straw and she couldn’t move her tongue, she heard someone approach the wagon. Rough hands pulled her by her feet and stood her on the ground, where she collapsed.

  Someone snarled at her, and she screamed as they yanked her up under her shoulders from the ground. The two men discussed something between them before dropping her onto a stretcher. They carried her into some kind of truck and laid her on the floor. “Water,” she begged again, but they walked away.

  She lay, able to do nothing more than breathe. It was perhaps better if she died. At least the Germans couldn’t use her. But two men finally came and stood over her.

  “He wants to know who you are,” one of them said in perfect, accent-free Russian. “Tell us and we’ll give you some water.”

  We? The Russian was on their side? She was barely conscious and wracked with pain and thirst, but she still had room for anger. She knew what questions would come first, and though she was allowed to give name and rank and branch of service, she wouldn’t even tell them that.

  Lilya Drachenko had been in the newspapers and was a celebrated name in aviation now, as Marina Raskova had been. What a coup it would be for the Germans to have captured someone with so much propaganda value. She had to lie.

  “Aleksandra Petrovna,” she croaked through cracked lips.

  “What regiment do you belong to?”

  “Water,” she repeated.

  Someone kicked her in the hip and shouted in German.

  “The 9th Guards.” She forced the words out from a raw and burning throat. That, too, was a lie. She had no idea where the 9th Guards were fighting. It would be just one more piece of useless information for them.

  Suddenly a cup of water was at her lips. Someone tipped her head so she could reach it, and she drank in desperate gulps.

  “Who is your commande
r?”

  “Major Smerdyakov.” She lied again, this time a bit more recklessly. Amazing how a drink of water had raised her spirits.

  “Smerdyakov? I never heard of him.”

  “Recently promoted from the ranks.” She continued the fantasy. If the fool had ever read Dostoyevsky, he’d have recognized the name.

  “That’s all for now.”

  The German left, but the Russian remained. “Stupid woman. Why are you risking your life for Stalin?”

  She knew now who this man was. Not by name, of course, but she recognized his argument. She’d seen the pamphlets that his pack of turncoats, the Vlasov Army, had dropped on Soviet soil exhorting people to rise up against Stalin.

  She refused to answer him, for it was the wrong question. She was fighting for the Motherland and her struggle had nothing to do with Stalin, even though his brutish face hung in every military office.

  “All right, then. Wallow in your pain. You brought it on yourself.” He made an about-face and jumped down from the truck.

  The tiny spark of hope she’d had hearing Russian flickered out. She’d have to help herself. To start, she had to assess her injuries. Gathering her strength, she used her good left hand to tap her way down her right arm. It seemed like a bone in her forearm was fractured, and the painful swelling in her wrist told her that was damaged, too. Then, at her right shoulder, she discovered the reason for the excruciating pain. Her flight suit was burned away, and the skin held a pattern of blisters and sticky open flesh. Only her leather flight helmet had kept the side of her face from burning.

  Why had she collapsed outside? Were her legs damaged? She moved her toes inside her boots and lifted her legs a few centimeters at both knees. No, thank God, no broken legs. It was simply pain and shock.

  She patted her abdomen. No pain there, though the lower part of her flight suit was wet. The faint smell of urine was probably her own, though her odor was the least of her worries at the moment. If they tortured her, she was done for. But perhaps it was her turn now, to follow Katia and all the others who had fallen.