Night Witches

by Kathryn Lasky

  “I am ashamed of myself. I did nothing to stop it.”

  “That’s not important. You did not take part in it. Some kids just did it because their friends did. But listen to me. This isn’t school. The Nazis are not mere schoolyard bullies. Go … go now. This city will be an ocean of flames in another week. It’s bloody and will get bloodier.”

  “But where should I go?”

  “Go wait for the steamer. Get as close to the river as you can, close to where the troop and supply-ferry jetties are. Soon, before the sun fully rises. You’ll be a difficult target.” He has taken off the knapsack and, cracking the magazine of his rifle open, begins to shove cartridges in. He moves and braces himself against the edge of the blown-out window. “Climb out here and run. I’ll cover you. Though it seems quiet now.”

  I look at him. You’ll cover me, I think. And if I get shot by a Nazi sniper you’ll use my body for a barricade? I know that the Red Army soldiers often use bodies as barricades. The tops of trenches are stacked with bodies—bodies and sandbags. “Go, Valya.”

  I am shaking so hard I think I hear my own teeth chattering. “I don’t think I can do it. I’m too scared.”

  “You’d be crazy if you weren’t scared. Just go. Please!”

  I look at him once more before I go. “Thank you, Yuri Yurovich Vaznov.”

  “You know my full name, my father’s name?”

  “Yes. I saw it on the attendance list in Grosnov’s math class.” I swing my leg over the remnants of what had been a windowsill, over the bloodstains from my mother’s torn throat, and dash into the empty street.

  I don’t look back. There’s no looking back. But I can’t help wondering if I’ll ever see Yuri again. Yuri, the boy who knew my name and whose name I never spoke aloud until last night.

  As I slip from the window into the early dawn studded with flashes of gunfire, I cannot help but think of another window from my childhood, a window far, far away from here, in London. This home was occupied by a family named Darling. They had three children: Wendy, John, and Michael. One cold winter night, the nursery window blew open, and a boy named Peter flew through it to search for his lost shadow. He was accompanied by his fairy companion, Tinker Bell. Peter enchanted the three children with his tales of Neverland. He quickly taught them to fly and they all flew out the window, then set a course for the second star to the right and straight on till morning.

  Now, as I tear through the city, there is no tinkling of bells, no fairy language, just gunfire. I see my shadow sprinting across rubble. Shall I lose my shadow like Peter Pan? It stretches out ahead of me as I leap over a body dressed in camouflage. The head is still in the split helmet. So this is the other duelist. Otto, the Nazi sniper, I think as I sail through the air like a broad jumper. The sound of panzer fire and heavy artillery gnashes the dark. Second star to the right? If only I could fly.

  It takes me ages to get through the maze of streets as I make my way to the waterfront. Many of the streets are clogged with tank units. Others are engulfed with flames. But I have to get to the waterfront. I have to get on that steamer and out of the city. Then I’ll somehow figure out where the airfields are. They’re outside of Stalingrad, and I doubt they could be more than fifty kilometers. After all, the fuel load on the biplanes is limited. They can’t fly too far from their base. I’ll find them. I will. I smile to myself. Like Yuri, I’ve stopped believing in impossible.

  I finally arrive on Gvardeyskaya Street, a short distance from the jetties. It is being heavily bombarded from both sides. The German Stukas screech horribly overhead, their black tails with the broken crosses cutting against the pink dawn. Like schooling sharks, their shadows mass over the city. The east side of the Volga River has become a huge Red Army mustering ground for men, supplies, and the batteries of the latest weapon, the Katyusha rocket launcher. It’s named for a popular, romantic wartime song, but when the rockets are launched, there is a deathly scream.

  But the German Sixth Army is not to be deterred so easily, and they keep pouring their own bombs and rockets into the city. I hop between the trenches that the neighborhood militias have built, the top edges stacked with sandbags and dead bodies, and race down an alley that gives me a clear view of the railroad station. I catch a blurred glimpse of the famous dancing-children statue. They are still frozen in their joyful dance around the crocodile—taunting it, I suppose. No one has ever really explained the story to me. Something about a crocodile who was coaxed into devouring a pirate. But now the crocodile has come right into our city. And yet these children cast in metal still dance while I run for my life.

  I’m dashing down the street when something pulls me literally off my feet, down into the trench.

  “Comrade Baskova!”

  “Anna!” I cry as my eyes fall on the familiar face of my classmate. She played water polo for our local team and was high-ranking in the school division of the Komsomol.

  “Come with me. We need you for a gun crew.”

  I wonder who we is. Her neighborhood Komsomol unit? Or is she in a unit of the NKVD? If so, I need to be careful. I can hear people crawling around in the trench, which seems to be several hundred meters long.

  “I can’t,” I say, shouting to be heard over the gunfire. “I’m heading to the docks. I need to get on the ferry. I have to find …” I trail off as Anna pushes me along the trench to an area where it widens to make room for two antiaircraft guns with their barrels resting over the embankment. Six young people are manning them.

  “I can’t do this,” I repeat. “I know nothing about guns.”

  “You’ll learn. Mikhail, show Comrade Baskova how it works.”

  A boy no older than twelve comes up to me. He is wearing an ushanka earflap hat with a red star on the front, but the rest of his clothes are ragtag remnants. His face is grimy and he smells of smoke. He begins speaking with a weary voice that does not match his youthful appearance. “This is an M1939, a 37-millimeter antiaircraft gun. The largest antiaircraft gun we use in Trench 301.” I stare at him, uncomprehending. Not one of the people in the trench is in the Red Army. Most aren’t even old enough. Yet here they are, operating deadly weapons.

  Mikhail continues. “This side wheel controls the elevation. We have just switched targets from the Stuka bombers over the city to the panzers. Look at them out there!” He points over the trench. In the distance, I can see three tanks advancing. “Like they’re going for a Sunday stroll, eh? Watch this.” He presses his eye against a scope, turns a wheel that lowers the elevation of the barrel, then fires. A moment later, the tank is blown to smithereens. I hear Anna give a whoop. “No more walk in the park,” Mikhail says. “Watch me. See, you turn this wheel to lower or raise the barrel.”

  This is all happening too quickly. My chest fills with anxiety that has nothing to do with the gunfire. “I can’t stay here. I need to get to the docks.”

  “What?” Anna snaps. “What’s important? What’s more important than this battle?”

  “I’m getting out. On that ferry. I’m joining the Night Witches.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Anna scoffs while Mikhail’s eyes dart back and forth between us. If indeed they are NKVD, they could shoot me right here for desertion, or for being a traitor. A coward. But I’m not a coward. I want to fight. I want to fly!

  “My sister is a Night Witch. I also fly, and I’m going to join her.” I cringe as I hear how stupid this sounds. But I shove my doubts aside. I don’t care what other people think. I’m going.

  A look of disgust sweeps across Anna’s face. “You know I can report you to the NKVD for refusing to serve.”

  “You wouldn’t,” I say, glaring at her. She was a hall monitor, and now she’s threatening to report me to the NKVD?

  “I would. Then they’ll shoot you as a collaborator.” Her eyes are like ice.

  I shut my own eyes for a moment as I envision hundreds of thousands of German troops—a virtual sea of Germans—between me and Tatyana. What choice is there but
to join in and begin killing them one at a time? “All right,” I say quietly. I’ll get out of here eventually. I’m not sure exactly how. But I’ll do it. I’m not spending the rest of the war in a trench.

  “Up two degrees, left one degree,” Mikhail barks. He’s standing on a step, but it’s not quite high enough. He still has to stand on tiptoe in order to press his eye to the scope. But his aim is excellent. When his left foot strikes the fire pedal, he always hits his target, bringing the lumbering panzers to their knees like huge prehistoric behemoths. Men, or pieces of men, go flying. Mikhail remains unfazed, an unlit cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth.

  I do the best I can, taking orders as I try to wrap my head around the surreal situation. After four hours we are given a break. A new crew comes in and we crawl down the trench to the “lounge.” A euphemistic name for a part of the trench that’s a little wider. The ceiling is somewhat higher, so we sit on old ammo crates. There is a picture of Mickey Mouse wearing an ushanka specially cut for his big ears. On another wall there is a dartboard with a picture of Adolf Hitler. In the center of the room is a “table” made from a box that’s covered with a flowered cloth. There’s a candle shoved in an empty vodka bottle. The homey touch is wasted on me, however. I just want to be in a cockpit and not stuck underground with candlelight and a steady supply of vodka.

  Mikhail lights up the cigarette and offers me one.

  “No, thanks.”

  Anna arrives carrying a bottle of vodka and three metal cups. It is the cheap kind, the kind that my father never drank. Anna pours a minuscule amount into a cup and hands it to me. “We operate under the same rules as the Red Army. One hundred grams of food a day. Plus I managed a bit of sausage.” She draws out her knife, and just as she does, a rat suddenly appears and grabs one end of the sausage. Anna lunges at the thief and comes back with both the rat and the sausage impaled on the blade. “Na Zdorov’e!” Anna and Mikhail both cheer.

  She scrapes off the rat and the sausage. There is, of course, blood on the sausage. Anna opens the bottle of vodka again and pours a bit out to wash it off. “A gram or two for our friend. May your blood be cleansed with our good Russian vodka.” She looks at the label. “Well, second-rate vodka.” She laughs and the others join in. But I am too numb to laugh. In the span of a few hours, the dreams that had buoyed my spirits this morning seem to be slipping from my grasp.

  “Hear! Hear! As it says”—Anna points the cup toward the words carved in the trench wall—“NOT ONE STEP BACK.” That was the order direct from the Kremlin when the Nazis first reached the Volga. It became officially Order No. 227, designed to destroy retreat mentality. Order No. 227 stated that “panic-mongers and cowards” were to be destroyed on the spot, and that anyone who surrendered was a traitor to the Motherland. So that is what we drink to. The vodka burns as it goes down my throat. I keep my eyes locked on the words inscribed on the wall. Not One Step Back. God give me the courage, I think. One Nazi at a time. Somehow I’ll get out of here. I refuse to spend the war underground, tethered to a machine gun.

  By my next shift I have learned quite a bit about this group in Trench 301. They are mostly young women, girls like Anna. A large number of them are part of an antiaircraft regiment that distinguished itself in the defense of a tractor factory two weeks ago. They were brought into the city to fight in the trenches my mother and I dug in early August as part of the neighborhood militia.

  They are making a difference. I have seen it in the short time I’ve been here. The Germans’ panzer line has pulled back. I convince myself this is just a slight detour, that soon I will be on my way to join my sister and the Night Witches.

  Under the leadership of our small commander, I learn how to work the gun, how to love the sound of a good hit, the thrill of the fragments of a tank exploding into the air. I am no longer crouched in the remains of our apartment building, cowering from the bombs. I am crouching in Trench 301 behind an antiaircraft gun, and my sister is in the air over Stalingrad in her U-2. We are both mastering the implements of war and Nazis are dying.

  It is getting dark again. Anna crawls into the lounge and announces that there is ice on the river, “just a thin skim of it.”

  Mikhail mutters a curse word I’ve never heard a child say. “It’s bad if the ferries can’t get through.”

  “It’s bad for the Nazis too,” Anna says. “They don’t have winter gear. Oh, that reminds me.” She pulls out a ushanka earflap hat from her jacket and hands it to me.

  “Where’d you get that?” Mikhail asks.

  “From a fellow near the old clock factory. He won’t be needing it anymore.” She delivers this news placidly. I adjust the chin strap of the dead man’s hat. It’s strange to think that this strap pressed against the skin of someone who was alive hours ago. It’s hard for me to believe that less than a year ago, my main concern in life was being able to go skating with Irina without our older sisters. War changes everything. War was never supposed to come this close.

  I wonder what Tatyana would think if she knew I was wearing a dead man’s hat. I know it doesn’t make me more grown-up, really, but it means I have been close to danger. If she saw me in this hat stained with the blood of a Red Army lieutenant, she wouldn’t tease me. She would not treat me as a baby. I’m a soldier. Not just her little sister.

  Anna is still talking about the man who wore it.

  “It belonged to Comrade Lieutenant Vladimir Dudonov. He was killed in a mortar attack near a German fuel depot, The Night Witches are out there raising hell. Look south. See that huge burning in the sky?”

  “Yeah?” Mikhail says as I nod.

  “That’s the biggest Nazi fuel depot. They hit it an hour ago.”

  Just an hour ago, I think—not hours ago. One hour ago this hat was on Comrade Dudonov’s head. How long will it last on my head?

  Mikhail begins to wonder aloud. “I don’t know how they do it. How those Night Witches sneak up so quiet on a target like the fuel depot.”

  “The U-2s are equipped with noise and flare mufflers. So they can approach undetected,” I say. Both Mikhail and Anna look at me with surprise.

  “How do you know all this?” Anna asks.

  “I told you. I’m a pilot. And I’m going to be a Night Witch.”

  Anna raises an eyebrow and snickers. “I think I poured you too much vodka.”

  I feel rage kindling in me, just as it used to when Tatyana toyed with me. But Mikhail and Anna are not my siblings. They have no idea of my skills, capabilities. So I quell the rage and look at them steadily. My voice is even, almost toneless. “You thought I made that up about joining the 588th? I didn’t. I know how to fly. I was in the aero club. My father is a major in the air force. I learned to fly in a U-2. They were our training aircraft.”

  “Look, there’s one now!” Mikhail points to where we blasted the last panzer.

  “There’s two,” I say. “No, actually, three … see the other ones?”

  “They’re flying right through the Nazi defense lines,” Anna gasps. “And the searchlights have pinpointed them!”

  Two of the U-2s peel off and a Messerschmitt 109 starts to give chase to the third plane. I watch breathlessly, and can almost feel the stick in my hands as I pull it sideways to slide off from the trace bullets. Slow. Slow. Cut the speed to ninety kilometers, I silently coach the pilot. She’s doing it! The pilot is easing back on the acceleration until the little plane is flying way beneath the stall speed of the Messerschmitt that overshot her. Meanwhile the other two U-2s release their bombs. Seconds later another target is hit. The tortoise wins again and the hare is helpless. “Holy mother!” Anna whispers. “They got another big ammunition dump. Glorious!”

  The three planes head in a new direction, and I can tell they’re scrambling to switch positions. They take turns decoying the Nazis as they dive, slide, and slip through the latticework of the searchlights’ beams that slice the blackness of the night. Then one flies off directly into the killing light to a
ttract the enemy. It’s a bold, taunting move—Hey, hey, you can’t catch me! So the enemy gives chase while the other two Night Witches drill in on the target and release their bombloads.

  It is relentless. It seems as if every three or four minutes new witches fly out into the night. I could do this. I know it. It’s as if I’m up there in the cockpit. I feel that stick in my hand. I smell the sizzle of the tracer bullets. That’s where I belong: up in the sky, not in this trench turning the wheel of this gun. I feel like I’m beating on the windows of the sky. Let me in, let me in! I am Wendy trying to crash into Neverland. Let me in! Let me in!

  “No wonder they say the Germans are getting no sleep,” Mikhail says.

  “But how do they do it? How do they sneak up through all the flames, the fire, the tracer bullets?” Anna asks.

  I’m not sure if she’s referring to logistics or to courage, so I answer, “It’s a decoy strategy. Three planes set out. One peels off and begins to fly crazily to get the attention of the enemy while the other two close in on the target. They both approach from a high elevation, then throttle back the engine to idle and slide into a steep dive, then fly low and drop the bomb before the enemy on the ground knows what’s happening.”

  “So they fly with no lights?” Anna asks.

  “None.”

  “What about parachutes?” Mikhail asks.

  I shake my head. “No, nothing. It’s an open cockpit, all fabric and wood. There’s a compass and a navigator in the rear with a map but no radio. A five-cylinder radial engine with one hundred horsepower. Bomb racks and a light machine gun sometimes. That’s about it. But that means the stall speed of the aircraft is half that of a fighter plane, and the German fighter plane can’t fly slow enough to stay with them.” My voice grows softer and softer, until it seems as if I am talking to myself. I am in a kind of waking dream.

  Anna leans forward. Her face is large, with somewhat indistinct features that seem to blend into each other. “You know all this from being in an aero club? Even though there was no war to fight then?”