Over Fields of Fire

The train left. At the time it swung past the last traffic lights in Smolensk I was approaching the obkom51 building. The winter dawn was only beginning to blue the white walls of the houses of the ancient city and the obkom doors were still locked. Having knocked a while at the entrance doors and feeling badly chilled, I set out jogging down the street. I ran up to the announcement board and back. And I did so several times until a pleasant warmth flowed through my whole body. Time went by and the day was beginning. Now right by me the first tram rumbled past, the first truck honked. And the door to my dreams opened… I burst into the obkom together with the first visitors. I stuck my head into one room, then another — no, that wasn’t it.

“Where will I find your Secretary?” I asked in a peremptory voice some weedy chap with spectacles proceeding importantly along the corridor with a brief case. He glanced at me in wide-eyed astonishment: who was this wanting “Himself”? But, detecting determination in my face and look, he asked no questions but said simply:

“Over there, around the corner there’s a door padded with black leatherette…”

A small chubby secretary blocked my way through this door with her chest but then either my appearance or look or my considerable height made her let me through to the door to my dreams. Seizing the opportunity I resolutely crossed the threshold and straight from the entrance, afraid of being stopped, blurted out in a rush “I need a job and accommodation. And as soon as possible!”

A young man sitting at a large desk raised his head a bit and looked at me through his spectacles in astonishment.

“What exactly is your problem, comrade?”

“My problem can’t wait…”

Terribly agitated, and confused because of it, I began to tell about myself: the underground, the aeroclub, the flying school, my brother… I talked without concealing anything, like in the confessional. The secretary listened to me in silence and I saw a real concern and involvement in his look. It seemed to me that he understood he had before him a person who had been deprived of her life’s work. Not just a girl but a Comsomol member who had mastered the complicated craft of flying. A major war was just round the corner, industry had been growing at an unprecedented pace, the army had re-armed and there was a desperate shortage of trained pilots. The obkom secretary knew all that perfectly. Listening to my confused story he was more and more surprised at how they could without any reason remove a student-pilot from flying at a time when flying personnel was so badly needed, when the OSOAVIAHIM had no time to train students for the flying schools. When the pre-army training program was strained to the limit! “What kind of documents have you got on you?”

“Here you are”, I laid my passport, Comsomol membership card, red certificate — the citation I had received from the Government for the construction of the first stage of the underground — and the certificate that I had completed gliding and flying training in the aeroclub.

Reading the documents, the secretary was questioning me, ringing someone, calling someone to come around, and I was sitting on a couch and… crying.

“Well, will you be able to train our guys in gliding?”

“Of course I will!”

“Excellent. You’ve got the right papers.”

Even my breathing stopped!

“Well, cry-baby, let’s go for lunch”, I heard his mocking voice.

“Thanks, I’m not hungry.”

“Let’s go, let’s go”, he pulled me by the arm.

After lunch, seeing my empty purse, he lent me 25 roubles till my first pay.

“It seems you were interested in work and lodging?” There was craftiness in the secretary’s voice. “Whilst you were crying here we recommended you to the Smolensk flax works as a bookkeeper. You’ll be balancing the accounts. And you will organise a gliding school there. There is a go-ahead, youthful bunch there. Shoot off to the personnel department now. I have made all arrangements. As soon as you settle in go to the aeroclub and see the commissar — I’ve heard there is a training detachment for those who have already completed pilot preparation. How many brothers do you have?” the secretary asked suddenly.

“Five.”

“Well now, how rich you are in brothers, and I have none! If you’re gonna write about all your brothers you’ll use up too much paper. Is that clear?”

“Thanks for your advice!”

“Show all your “credentials” at the aeroclub and request they accept you into the training detachment. Should any questions arise, don’t be shy, come around…”

“Thanks”, sobbing through my nose, I muttered, and shot off to the flax works thanking my stars: what a lucky girl I was to come across good and kind-hearted people!

On the same day I was employed as a spinners’ salary clerk, and by night-time I had been lodged in a dormitory in a room where the best shock worker, Antonina Sokolovskaya, lived. And I was accepted into the aeroclub’s training detachment and I began to fly again. What a joy it was — to rush to the aeroclub after work. A lorry would be already waiting for us there and we would ride in it to an aerodrome located a fair way from the city…

Well into autumn we sat exams on the theory and practice of flying before the State Board and were disbanded pending special orders. I had no hope of getting a referral to a flying school. After all there were five other girls in our detachment, hereditary natives of Smolensk, and I was a newcomer. Therefore I decided not to attend the aeroclub anymore and started getting ready for an aviation institute. An aviation one and nothing else. If I failed to become a pilot at least I’d be near the planes. Once upon a time my brother Vasiliy had insisted on my studying… “Once upon a time”… And only a year and a half had passed since I bade farewell to Moscow, the Metrostroy, the aeroclub, my comrades, Victor, my brother. Somewhere up north Vasiliy was doing his term “incommunicado”…

Mama had written me that with the help of kind-hearted people she had done up a petition to our fellow- countryman Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin52 — trying to convince him of Vasen’ka’s53 innocence. Mama had had no response and then decided to come to Moscow herself. “Katya with my grandson Egoroushka walked me to the waiting room of the President’s office and then left”, my mum wrote. “There was a long queue, a lot of people had turned up. My turn came. I thought Mikhail Ivanovich would be there himself but looking at who met me I found no goatee. I expected the assistant would walk me to our countryman but he only said: ‘The Chairman of the Supreme Soviet doesn’t receive people on such questions…”

I continued to work at the flax factory. Twice a week I trained glider pilots, attended courses in preparation for tertiary study. One evening on my day off I popped into a cafe, sat at a table and ordered an ice cream.

“Egorova!” Someone called from behind me. I turned to the voice and, seeing the aeroclub commissar, came up to his table. He introduced me to his wife and daughter and seated me next to them.

“Why aren’t you attending the aeroclub?” The commissar asked me.

I expressed my concerns and he told me, “You should after all, yesterday we decided to grant you the only female assignment to the Kherson aviation school.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, ‘Kokkinaky’54! And turning to his wife he explained with a laugh, “The guys gave Anya that nickname and I’ve been calling her that!”

“That’s fine, call me that, I even like it”, I replied frankly. “After all, the Kokkinaky brothers are famous test pilots and record-breakers!”

“Tomorrow take the referral from the aeroclub headquarters, resign from the factory and go to Kherson as fast as possible. Consider that you’ll have to pass exams there on general secondary school subjects as well as special disciplines. The competition will be hot, get ready!”

Indeed in Kherson there was a great flood of graduates from the country’s aeroclubs. They came from Moscow and Leningrad, Arkhangelsk and Baku, Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Minsk, Tashkent and Dushanbe. It was not a military school but OSOAVIAHIM one. Only girls were being accepted in the navigating division and mostly