rapturously as always. And he had to patch up holes and fix up the plane and its engine after almost every one of my sorties! Nevertheless he had always managed to make my machine flight-ready for the next sortie.
There were many Moscovites in our squadron but that was no wonder: after all, it had been formed in Lyubertsy74. Every morning our radio-operators were asked:
“Guys, what’s happening in the capital?”
Moscow was doing it hard: her most terrible days had arrived. The enemy stood at her gates, air-raid warnings were announced nearly every night. But the Moscovites faced the oncoming threat with fortitude. People of the most peaceful occupations: cooks and scientists, clerks and steel-makers, artists, engineers and confectioners were joining
After capturing Mariupol and Taganrog the Fascists began to advance on our Southern Front. We flew to the Army Headquarters and to divisions several times a day. The Hitlerites aimed to penetrate into the Shakhty district and from there to Novocherkassk and Rostov. And indeed they managed to press our troops up against Novocherkassk but then the troops of Kharitonov’s army, fighting to the bitter end, didn’t allow the enemy to move forward even a metre. Abandoning the idea of capturing Rostov from the North and North-East, where our 9th Army had stopped them, the Hitlerites decided to deliver a frontal blow on Rostov. On 21 November the Fascists took Rostov. The very same day we relocated to the Lotikov Shaft airstrip near Voroshilovsk…
In the middle of the night a messenger woke the pilot Grishchenko and navigator Irkoutskiy. They were ordered by squadron headquarters to fly to the 37th Army with a top-secret package. We decided straightaway that it was obvious some operation by frontline and army troops was being planned. The nights are dark in autumn, especially in the South — and our planes were completely unadapted for night flights. In spite of this Grishchenko and Irkoutskiy flew the route safely and recognised the village where the headquarters of General Lopatin’s 37th Army was located. They made several circles around the station but there was no sign of a landing strip — not even a lit torch. But no matter how long you are going to make circles there were orders to deliver the package at any cost and so Grishchenko slowed down, turned the ignition off and began to glide. They flew over a hut, then above something just as dark and at last the plane touched down and began taxiing. But the flyers were still sighing with relief when the plane at first abruptly rolled down, then suddenly up and at the same moment smashed into something. Grishchenko came back to his senses first and asked Irkoutskiy “Ivan, are you alright?”
“I am, but my hand hurts for some reason.”
“And my foot’s trapped, I can’t pull it out…”
At last they made it out of the broken plane and went to look for the Army headquarters. It was still dark and quiet in the village — not even a single dog began to bark. However, they found the headquarters, handed in the package and told of their landing. The flyers were walked to a hut where wounded men lay on the floor on straw. Grishchenko’s leg was badly grazed and Irkoutskiy had broken fingers. They remembered there was a dying young female medic amongst the wounded, injured on her buttocks… In the morning the army communications commander Colonel Boborykin ordered the smashed plane burnt. The guys were not censured for that flight but were not commended either.
Our troops began to advance and now Rostov was liberated from the occupiers. An enemy attempt to consolidate his grip on positions prepared beforehand was frustrated and the Red Army troops kept pressing the enemy westward. Boulkin’s squadron relocated to the Filippenko hamlet and the Front headquarters to the town of Kamensk on the Northern Donets river. I was very happy about that: all these months I’d been thinking with fear that my family might fall under occupation. My mum had written me that the Fascists were very close to our Kouvshinovskiy District. The Red Army liberated the city of Kalinin on 16 December. Torzhok hadn’t been held by the Germans but they had destroyed it completely. “So many churches, ancient cathedrals — they razed it all to the ground, those antichrists”, my mum wrote. She further advised that Konev’s headquarters76 had been located not far from our village and his officers were billeted at her place.
“They are so lovely and kind. I heat up the
In this letter my Mum prayed God to keep us, her children alive and to let the Red Army muster more strength and cleanse the Russian land of the evildoers…
The letters coming to the front were mostly encouraging. They wrote us from the home front that everything was going well with them, that they were provided with everything, that they were doing their best for victory over the bitterest enemy of humankind — Fascism. The most important message in the letters from the front was — one is alive, fit and giving the enemy hell. It was a sacred and just lie…
I received letters from Victor on the North-Western Front. Victor wrote that he was flying ‘small ones’ (that was what we called fighter planes during the war), that he had shot down nine German planes, that he had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner and two Orders of the Red Star. “When shall we meet again, Anya?” Victor asked, and answered himself, “After the Victory…”
I remembered for the rest of my life how a young radio operator burst into the squadron headquarters and shouted from the door, “Guys! The Germans around Moscow have been smashed!”
We, the pilots, began spinning in some fantastic dance. Revelry broke out in all the units. Everyone was laughing, singing, hugging each other — and tears were gleaming in people’s eyes… At last the Germans had stumbled! The victory near Moscow had not only military but also huge moral significance: all our spirits rose.
14. The Greenhorn
The winter campaign of 1942 was successful. The enemy was still very strong but the imperishable value of the first successes was that that they inspired us, instilling in us the spirit of belief in Victory. Those days this spirit was typical of all the troops on our Southern Front. Together with the troops of the South- Western Front they broke through the enemy defences at the Balakleya sector and formed the Barvenkovskiy Salient. Every frontline soldier was sweating on the success of the dashing raid by the two cavalry corps of Parkhomenko and Grechko on the Germans’ rear. In the winter cold, on the ice-crusted ground they spread panic in the Hitlerites’ camp with their sudden strikes. One encouraging dispatch after another was coming to Front headquarters via radio but suddenly the air waves fell silent. The commander needed to know exactly in which direction the corps could have moved after their last message had arrived. The commanders understood that the cavalry, exhausted in fierce combat and sleepless nights, needed rest. They had to be brought back, but how could it be done if the air waves were silent? “Let’s send a U-2”, The Southern Front Communications Commander General Korolev suggested.
A whirlwind was raging behind the misted windows but we — the Signals Squadron pilots — were up to the task… On one of those days of February when a blizzard had swept banks of snow all over the streets of the Filippenko hamlet I was called up to the squadron headquarters. They told me about the situation on our sector of the Front and ordered me to fly to the Barvenkovo Region where I would have to find Parkhomenko and Grechko’s cavalry corps and hand them over a package marked ‘Top Secret’. The Southern Front Communications Chief was to fly with me as far as Barvenkovo, but from there I would have to operate independently.
An angry wind was battering the machine. The engine was shivering as if in a fever and sometimes the wail of the wind drowned it out. All this was not a problem but how to break through the solid curtain of snow? It was
