orphaned Ilyushka too (how many of them were there on the wartime roads!), and for the misspent years, and for myself… I loved kids so much, I wanted so much to have my own big family — many naughty little boys, mop- headed girls! The war had crossed out and ruined all such dreams… I remembered Victor Kroutov often. I hadn’t heard anything from him for five months already. He was fighting somewhere on the North-Western Front. During those minutes when I was alone with my reflections the thought “is he still alive?..” would weigh heavily on my soul. I kept trying to convince myself that letters not arriving were the fault of the field mail. But I’ll be patient, I’ll wait until they come… At those moments I cursed myself amidst tears for being such a fool before the war: I had loved him to distraction for a long time, since the
Everyone in the squadron — both pilots and mechanics — treated me well. Some ‘suitors’ appeared as well but I managed somehow to talk to them not tete-a-tete but in front of others — that way it was easier to fend off an ‘attack’ and let it be known that nothing was going to come of it. It wasn’t easy, of course, to be a single woman in a group of men. Sometimes I wanted so much just to talk to someone heart to heart. But one stern word — War — held me back and cowed me…
We flew over to an airfield previously prepared near Cherkassk but there was no headquarters, no canteen nor any fuel. Our land transport was a roundabout route via Maikop, Tuapse, Tbilisi and Ordzhonikidze because the straight road to Grozny had been cut by the enemy. Senior Lieutenant Listarevich had been appointed Land Transport Commander and Lieutenant Irkoutskiy Commissar. They left on 18 August 1942 — on Air Force Day itself — but we didn’t feel like celebrating at this hard time of retreat. And our ‘base’ caught up with the squadron only on 30 October when the Front headquarters was already in Grozny. Thus when we had landed and turned off the engines, we gathered by the Deputy Squadron Commander Pen’kov’s plane and began to think what to do next. We saw an ageing woman coming from the settlement we had landed near. She greeted us, looked us over and said “Do you have anything to eat, maybe you’re hungry?” And without hearing an answer she suggested straightaway “I’ve cooked a bucket-size pot of
After a tasty lunch we decided to pour the left-over petrol into the tanks of one plane and fly to look for the rear services of our squadron. I happened to fly with Cherkasov. Again under our wings there was land enveloped by smoke, burning houses, burning unharvested wheat, corn, sunflowers. People were moving in carts and on foot, with parcels, with cows on leashes. It was painful to watch and even more painful to know that you couldn’t help them.
Only five days later, somewhere near Pyatigorsk, at last we found our headquarters. Here they read out ‘Order 227’, a stern order whose meaning boiled down to: “Not a step back!” As a rule the order numbers were remembered only by staff officers. But even now this one, Order number 227, will be recalled by any war veteran if asked about it. It was said in this order that we had to defend every position, every single metre of our soil to the last drop of blood. Those who reckoned that the territory of the Soviet Union was big enough and we could retreat even deeper into it, to lines more suitable for defence, were condemned. The order obliged us to declare a resolute war on cowards, panic-mongers, infringers of discipline. To comply with this demand meant to save the motherland, to defeat the enemy.
Units raised from the troops to maintain order played a paramount role, but an ‘amusing incident’ took place as well. Between Pyatigorsk and Nal’chik the Fascists again shot down Serezha Spirin’s plane, which was flying to locate the 17th Cossack Cavalry Corps. The August heat was on, and the pilot had taken off in just light overalls, leaving his uniform with his papers back at the aerodrome. He was shot down, the plane burned up, the pilot was injured too. Firing on the ground didn’t give him a chance to lift his head. Spirin crawled. When he reached our lines he was immediately arrested as a deserter. No matter what he tried to say to vindicate himself nobody would believe him. Fortunately, a Front HQ liaison officer, with whom Spirin had flown to the fighting units many a time recognised him. The speedy court martial was postponed, and Commissar Ryabov flew off with confirmations and papers to pick him up.
The front line was changing several times a day. We had to fly all over the North Caucasus. The enemy Panzer units had already forced a crossing over the Kuban in the Armavir Region and captured Maikop and Krasnodar. The Germans had occupied nearly all the mountain passes, taken Mozdok and small bridgeheads on the right bank of the Terek River. It was difficult for us to understand the situation that had developed in the North Caucasus in August 1942. I remember getting an order to locate the headquarters of the 58th Army, again with the same navigator Cherkasov, whom I made a flight from Nal’chik to Grozny with. We found the Army and handed mail over to the Front headquarters but how much we went through during that flight!
I returned from the mission tired, despondent from all I’d seen, angry. I handed the plane over to Dronov and rushed to squadron headquarters. Now behind me I heard the mechanic’s bitter words addressed to the engineer, “Again like a sieve! How I’m going to fix it and what with, I have no idea. There’s no workshop yet…”
Calling in at the command post to report to the Commander of Task Implementation I saw the returned Kolya Potanin and Victor Kravtsov were already reporting. The quiet and sober-minded Potanin didn’t look himself. Always well-kempt and tidy, now he was in a burnt uniform, his face smeared with oil and blood, hair scorched. He was reporting to the squadron commander Major Boulkin and to the executive officer Listarevich about what had happened and asking to be transferred to combat aviation. The following had happened to Potanin: he had been sent with important cargo to the Ardon area, to our units surrounded by the enemy. Many years later Chief Marshal of Aviation Konstantin Andreevich Vershinin — the former commander of our Aerial Army — wrote in his book “The 4th Aerial” about those flights: “Many brave men flew to encircled pockets in the daytime as well”. It seems you couldn’t say it clearer. At daytime, in a defenceless plane, into a surrounded area… The pilots despatched foodstuffs, ammo, medical supplies, other cargo to the troops… That day Potanin, having completed the mission, was transporting a badly wounded man out of the pocket. On the way back he found himself under ground fire and then under fire from Fascist fighters. No matter how well he manoeuvred, how he tried to escape the shells targeted at him, his plane was shot up, caught fire and fell into brush. Potanin managed to leap out under from the burning debris, then, rolling on the ground he put the fire on him down and rushed to save the wounded navigator, but he was already dead…
“I want to smash the bastards!” His eyes sparkling, clear and limpid as the sky, Nikolay was arguing with the squadron commander. “I can’t do it this way any more. They hit us and we hide in the bushes!.”
The
19. “You want to go to a penal company?”
It was a frightening and difficult time back then, in the autumn of 1942 in the North Caucasus. All fighting men from Private to Field Marshal seemed to be at breaking point. None of us had received any letters for a long time: the field mail had got lost somewhere. How was my mum, how was Victor, where were they? Were they alright? “Of course, they are alive and well!” I would reassure myself: “It’s problems with communications!” In the left breast pocket of my blouse there were my Party membership card and two photographs — my mum’s and Victor’s, and a very tiny one of Yourka. Mum was as usual in a headscarf and looking at me with sorrow. But Victor, on the contrary, was laughing jauntily, slightly throwing back his curly head. He was in uniform. There were three cubes and ‘birds’ on his collar patches. Yourka was in a white shirt with a Pioneer scarf92 on the photo. They hadn’t wanted to accept him in the Pioneers because of his repressed father until the
