coming back from a mission and what did I see?… our pet Drouzhok87 — a dog travelling with the squadron since we were at the Tikhiy farmstead — in that hat! My brothers in arms had cut holes in it for his ears, tied it on firmly with twine and the dog was rushing about in that stylish apparel, barking. Of course, the pilots were hiding from me in the tents… Then they laughed and Kravtsov scolded me: “That’s for taking presents from the Quartermaster!
Now, when I had returned alive, although with burns on my face and arms and in scorched boots, everyone was happy.
“Don’t feel bad about the plane, Egorova. The main thing is that you are in one piece and you delivered the orders to the troops…” Malikov the squadron engineer soothed me. “And you can always get another plane…”
Of course you could always get another plane. But how bitter and hurtful it was to be shot down and unable to avenge it. The pilots were saying new equipment was coming to the front: Petlyakovs, Yaks, Lavochkins… Every plane was a dream! But I had been greatly impressed by another machine. Only once or twice had I seen it in flight but remembered it always. A small monoplane of classic shape, its wings were slightly swept back. If you looked at it from aside it might seem a torpedo was flying. Legends were circulating about this plane… It flew swiftly just above the very ground and climbed up to the sky like a hawk! The plane was manoeuvrable, with a good field of view, well-protected. There was a lot of talk about it. Once I heard a pilot describing it in glowing terms: “It doesn’t break off into a spin during an uncoordinated turn, on the straight it flies steadily even hands-free. And landing? It almost lands by itself. In a word, it’s as simple as a stool. It won’t let you down in a dogfight and will knock a ground target for six. To cut a long story short — it’s a
However, a dream is only a dream, but again I had to fly a U-2 to the 6th and 57th Armies surrounded by the Hitler’s troops. Down there our troops were short of ammo, food and fuel, and there were a lot of wounded men. Attempts to break through the encirclement had come to nothing. The armies suffered heavy losses in men and materiel. Due to reverses in the Barvenkovo-Kharkov area the situation had become quite grave. We were flying a lot as always — and the Fascists pilot were hunting us as before. We were getting our share from the ground as well and we pilots were in trouble.
Having lost their machines, Serezha Spirin and Victor Kravstov returned to the squadron. A badly wounded Vanya Sorokin was sent to hospital. It had been five days since Sborshchikov with his navigator Cherkasov had flown on a mission and not returned…
Naum Sborshikov was a heaven-born pilot! Before the war he had worked as a pilot instructor and taught more than forty students to fly. I’d known him from the times of the Ulyanovsk aviation school where we studied in the same section of the class. Then our paths had diverged but when I arrived at the front and the squadron he welcomed me like one of the family. By nature he was a private, quiet man, but he protected me as much as he could and helped me with everything. When Sborshchikov didn’t come back I couldn’t accept his death for a long while and kept waiting. When five days had gone by everyone stopped waiting — even his plane’s mechanic. I also had little hope for his return and when no one could see it tears would unexpectedly well up in my eyes. I felt sorry for Cherkasov too. An always joyful, smiling fair-haired man of no great height, in his faded blouse and then- fashionable canvas boots — looking at him it was hard to imagine how much suffering had fallen to his lot… He had volunteered to defend Republican Spain and flew in a bomber as navigator. During one of the combat sorties the plane was shot down. The pilot and the navigator were captured by the Fascists and after long interrogation and torture both of them were sentenced to death. But the Soviet Government managed to protect them and just before the War they both returned to the motherland.
“I was born in a shirt89”, Cherkasov liked to repeat with a laugh.
How I wanted to believe that the one “born in a shirt” would soon join us with the latest joke he had thought up, at which even gloomy Sborshchikov would laugh. And they came back! They came back completely unexpectedly when we had all given up waiting. Naum’s head was bandaged so that only his eyes were visible through the chinks. There was no boot on his right leg and it was wrapped in something as well, his blouse bore rusty blotches all over it. One of Cherkasov’s arms was bandaged slung on a belt and he was leaning on a big stick with the other…
18. Pandemonium
It was June 1942. The troops of the Southern Front were threatened with encirclement. The enemy had occupied the Donbass and entered the great curve of the Don River, by this move forming a threat to Stalingrad and the North Caucasus. Large masses of troops and materiel had concentrated before the Don river fords. Cattle and tractors were driven to the same crossings. Carts loaded with goods and chattels with children sitting on top waited for their turn as well. This was at night time. At dawn incessant raids by German aviation would begin. Our flak guns would fire near the fords but there were not enough of them. There were hardly any planes in the air with red stars on their wings, so the Hitlerites first bombed, and then with German pedantry strafed the crowds of people from low altitude. It is painful to recall what went on at those crossings. Women yelling, children crying, cattle bellowing… Pandemonium!
We were in retreat with our troops. Falling back to the Don we kept changing airfields one after another. Everyone was getting extremely tired, literally dead on his feet: we were getting a lot of missions. There was no time for rest, no place to eat — and sometimes even nothing to eat. Lunch cooked at an old aerodrome would arrive at a new one, and sometimes would not find its way to us at all. We slept anywhere, in cockpits and on plane covers under the wings. The moment you dozed off they would yell: “Board your planes!”
One of those days Potanin — a pilot from our squadron — was ordered to fly reconnaissance: to determine where the enemy’s mechanised columns had advanced to and what their strength was; to find out where the troop and materiel trains were and in which direction they were moving; to locate concentrations of Hitlerite troops and estimate their numbers. With Potanin went Belov as a navigator, a man straight out of architectural institute. Soon the pilot and the navigator noticed the Hitlerite tank and motorised columns moving south-east to the Don, towards its great bend. Our troops were in retreat and the German air force was on the rampage — bombing the roads crammed with refugees.
Having completed the reconnaissance Potanin and Belov turned back. They flew camouflaging themselves far away from roads and settlements. But the Fascists too were advancing sideways, in large and quite small detachments and groups. One such detachment attracted the attention of the crew by its strangeness — about 40 -50 men in camouflage cloaks. Potanin thought they were our troops not knowing in which direction to move, and decided to show them the way. He made a steep turn above them, exiting it to the south-east, then another one — and suddenly the whole group shouldered their submachine-guns and opened fire at the plane with tracer bullets. “Anything can happen on the front”, Potanin decided. “Our troops might have strafed us by mistake”. But it turned out that it was German paratroopers who had fired at the U-2… The navigator fell silent and when Potanin glanced back Belov was pale and sitting with his head dropped lifelessly against the side of the cockpit. Anxiety for the life of his comrade prompted Potanin to land as soon as possible and give him first aid. He landed his plane right there in a field but by then no assistance was needed. Belov was dead…
During those hard days of our retreat, not far from Novocherkassk, we picked up a little kid of about three years of age. In nothing but a shirt, dirty, hungry, all covered with grazes, he couldn’t say anything but the word “mum”, whom he was calling incessantly, and his own name, Ilyusha90. Ilyusha was by now unable to cry and just sobbed. Approaching soldiers told us that recently a string of carts had been smashed by German aircraft and that they had seen this boy by his dead mother. And then when the Fascist vultures swooped again everyone had scattered in all directions. The boy had apparently run away too and so he had survived.
We didn’t know what to do with him or whom to leave him with. We had to fly on but Ilyusha grabbed me by the neck and it seemed no force could tear him away from me. And then I decided to take the child with me. “Have you lost your mind? The kid needs care. What can you give him? Do you know where we’re going to stop next?” the pilots shouted at me. But I clasped Ilyusha to myself even harder and ran to the village. Coming towards me I found an old woman with a walking stick. Shielding her eyes with her hand she looked long and closely at the child and then began crying and wailing, “Ilyushen’ka, my grandchild!” I handed the kid over to the old woman and rushed towards my plane in tears. And then suddenly everything became so unbearably painful and distressing! And for this
