reconnaissance sortie — to find out which troops were on the march — ours or the enemy’s… You couldn’t say it was much fun to fly in the daytime in a defenceless plane whose only weapon was the pilot’s revolver! Everyone knew the German aces chased our planes and it wasn’t a big challenge for a Messerschmitt to down a U-2, but their reward for this would be the same as for a shot-down fighter plane.
“Comrade Commander, what’s wrong with you? Are you alright?” I heard the voice of Dronov the mechanic. “You look awful…”
“I’m fine, what’s up?”
“They’re calling you to the presidium.”
The Order was presented to me by a member of the Frontline Military Council Leonid Romanovich Korniets: the very same General who had shown me by mimicry and gestures that I had to report the location of the Cavalry Corps of Parkhomenko and Grechko not to him but to the Front Commander.
17. A hooligan on the road
In May 1942 the South-Western Front troops began their advance in the direction of Kharkov. We, the airmen of the Southern Front Signals Squadron, were always abreast of events on the front line. We would be advised of the situation before a sortie and we would narrow it down, making flights either to this or that army, corps or division. The troops of the South-Western Front would have to destroy an enemy army grouping and liberate Kharkov. Two of our frontline armies — the 9th and the 57th — were supposed to work together with the South-Western Front. And on 20 May they ordered me to fly to the 9th Army with a top-secret package. I don’t remember why I had to fly alone. Usually we would fly with navigators, signals officers, special messengers or with someone else but this time I had taken off alone. I remember that approaching the town of Izyum I saw on the roads and simply across fields the movement of our troops. Many fires showed themselves in the Severnyi Donets Valley, near Svyatogorskiy and in Izyum.
Fires had always aroused in me unreasoning alarm and anxiety since childhood. “A thief will leave the walls at least, but a fire will leave nothing!” the people of our village used to say. It had stuck in my memory for the rest of my life how the harvested corn had burned. Before threshing the corn was usually dried in barns. The sheaves would be stacked on grates in covered bays and a large stone oven — a
Now there was a war: whole cities, our whole land, were burning but still I couldn’t get used to the fires. And now my heart thudded anxiously at the sight of the burning valley. And above me in the sky an aerial battle was raging. A couple of our I-16s were fighting against six Me-109s. The odds were not even but our pilots were skilfully avoiding the Messerschmitts’ fire, closing in for head-on attacks, and the Fascists, fearfully keeping their distance, couldn’t do much. Our guys obviously had the advantage. They shot down one Me-109: it crashed, and I must admit I was gloating and didn’t notice when a German fighter pounced on me like a black kite. A fiery spurt cut the air in front of my eyes. I wished I could dive into a ravine or a gully but there were only flat fields with loose piles of last year’s corn before me nearly up to the very horizon. On the right there was solid forest, on the left — the town. My machine caught fire: it immediately became hot and stuffy in the cockpit. The tail was burning — now it was going to reach me, the engine, the fuel tank and then… Having barely touched down I jumped out of the plane and tearing off the smoking rags of my overalls ran towards the woods. The German seemed to have gone berserk. He descended to contour level and turned the whole fire of his guns on me. In 1941 and also in 1942 the Hitlerites could afford this luxury — to chase a lone Russian soldier across the fields in a tank, to strafe someone with all cannons and machine-guns, diving from the sky… But I kept on running and falling over. At times I would fall down pretending to be dead and hiding my head under the corn stalks, arms and legs spread out. When the Messer went away to turn around I would jump up, clasp the secret package to my bosom and run again…
Having expended all his ammo the Fascist flew away. I was in a forest. It was quiet — there was no one around. And suddenly I wanted so much to lie in the glade, as in my childhood, to shut my eyes and switch off! Young foliage had already appeared on the trees — the spring was coming into its own. I had never been afraid of death but suddenly now I wanted to live so much! It would be bad to die in the spring. One’s life is much, much dearer in the spring…
Whilst I was on the run my plane had burned to the ground. The bag of mail and my leather jacket that were in the fuselage had burned too. What could I do now? How to find the 9th Army headquarters? Looking around I saw a telephone cable hanging on some tree branches. I followed it, hoping it would lead me to some command post. I had barely walked thirty paces when I met two soldiers who were winding the cable onto a reel.
“Where’s the CP?” I asked them.
“What do you mean the CP, the Germans are there!” they yelled without stopping. “It was evacuated long ago, everyone’s gone.”
“Where to?”
The soldiers didn’t know — their business was to wind the cable. Coming out of the forest I ran towards the road across a field — but the road was empty. Lone soldiers and small groups of horsemen moved however they could, staying away from the road. A truck racing past rode around me as I stood in its path with my arms stretched out. Then an
“And who are you?” I blurted out, but handed him my certificate. This certificate was quite impressive — issued personally to me it recommended all military units and civil organisations render all assistance to the presenter of this document in the performance of his duties.
“Where are you headed?” the General asked, more politely now.
“To the 9th Army headquarters.”
“Get in the car,” he offered and courteously enquired: “Where did you get burnt?”
I told him what had happened to me and suddenly… burst into tears — I don’t know whether it was from resentment or from pain. My burnt hands hurt really badly and to top it off that captain had stripped off the skin when twisting my arms and now they were bleeding.
“Don’t cry, girl” the General began to calm me down, “otherwise your face will smart from the tears. We’ll get you to 9th Army headquarters in a flash…”
But the “now” and “in a flash” are quite imprecise concepts in war. Only after three hours did we find the Army headquarters where I handed the package over to the head of the operations department. They swabbed my face and dressed my hands in the medical post. They fed me in the canteen and by evening they had sent me off to the aerodrome.
I got a fraternal reception in the squadron. Narodetskiy the Quartermaster even brought me sweets instead of the hundred grams of vodka we were issued with for sorties. He knew that I wasn’t drinking my ration and was giving it away to the mechanic or the pilots and he was trying to give me a treat for the occasion with sweets or something tasty. When we had been based near Voroshilovgrad and living in tents in the forest we didn’t do much flying. Narodetskiy invited me to go on an excursion to Voroshilovgrad once. Having had a look around the city we dropped into a supermarket and there I saw a wide-brimmed hat with a splendid spray of artificial flowers. I stood for a long while admiring it and then the catering officer, catching my gaze fixed on the straw wonder, whispered something with the sales-girl and she handed it over to me… The hat was hung on a nail in my tent. But once I was
