Over Fields of Fire

obey the controls anymore, the list gradually disappears and now, having drawn a half-circle on the ground with the left wing and propeller my Il stops — there’s no more fuel…

People mobbed the plane but I was still sitting in the cockpit with its closed canopy, in a kind of stupor. Sweat poured down my face, my back and hands were wet… Captain Karev jumped up on a wing. “Climb out, why are you still sitting? I wanted to welcome you with flowers but there aren’t even any florist shops in Borisoglebsk. You may count on a bouquet from me!”

I got down on the ground and the first man I saw was the teacher of aerodynamics from the Kherson aviation school. It appeared that my alma mater had been evacuated to Borisoglebsk and merged with the local fighter pilot school where Victor Koutov, Louka Mouravistkiy and other Metrostroy guys had studied before the war… That same day the mechanics replaced the prop, fixed up and painted the wing and my Il-2 took its place in line with all the regiment’s planes, looking no different from the others.

In the morning we were on our way to the front. We topped up the fuel tanks in Tikhoretskaya and headed towards the end point of our route, Timashevskaya, for service in the 230th Ground Attack Aviation Division of the 4th Aerial Army. The stanitsa106 of Timashevskaya was called in Kuban ‘that one’: it was right there, where a woman lived seeing off nine of her sons to the front: Alexander, Nikolay, Vasiliy, Filipp, Fedor, Ivan, Ilya, Pavel and the youngest, Sasha who was born in 1923 and would become a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1943, posthumously. None of her sons came back home…

Our regimental staff had already arrived at the spot and quickly prepared us lodgings in a school. All the rest of us were looked after by the BAO (Aerodrome Services Battalion). Me they billeted in a hut not far away from the school where the flyers lived, hosted by a lovely young woman whose husband was at the front. Doctor Kozlovskiy as usual did his best to organise a Russian bath for us. But this time it was not in some hovel. A large panel truck arrived, parked near the river, pumped up some water, heated it up, and those who wished went there to steam, strictly observing a schedule set up by the regimental Chief-of-Staff and the Doctor.

23. The skies over Taman

It didn’t take long to get us into operation. We studied the operations area, familiarised ourselves with the intelligence data and, as the deputy comesk of the 2nd Squadron Pasha Usov liked to say, “we were off”. The newly-appointed Chief-of-Staff of the regiment Captain Leonid Yashkin, appointed to our unit in place of the departed Captain Belov, summoned all the flying personnel to the headquarters dugout for a briefing on the operational situation in our sector of the front.

To start with he advised that he had arrived from the Academy without graduating from it, and before that he had been Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the 366th High-speed Bomber Regiment. Before the war Yashkin had served as a junior commander, and had a Leningrad working-class background. His father used to work at the ‘Red Nailmaker’ plant and perished during the Blockade of Leningrad. Telling us about it Yashkin began to run the fingers of one hand through his unruly fair hair and wiped a tear off his cheek with the other… Leonid himself had been a worker at the ‘Red Nailmaker’ in the past, and his sister Anastasia was a medic at the front.

Getting up from the table Captain Yashkin pulled down his blouse as if shaking off the hard memories, straightened his belt and the loaded holster on it, put on a businesslike look and began his report: “Developing the advance in the South our troops have cleared the Soviet land of Fascist vermin. They have advanced hundreds of kilometres and liberated many areas of the North Caucasus, the Rostov District, part of the Ukraine and reached the Azov Sea… Their plans to capture the Caucasus oil and conquer the Black Sea coast and its ports have led the Hitlerites to complete destruction and a retreat from the North Caucasus in the direction of Rostov and the Taman Peninsula. Now, fearing a breakthrough of Soviet troops, the enemy has built a heavy defence line from Novorossisk to Temryuk. There are concrete pillboxes, dug-out weapon emplacements, anti-tank and anti-personnel fortifications, trenches with communication lines, dense landmine fields, a large amount of field and flak artillery. Because of the numerous water obstacles the Germans have called this strongly fortified position ‘The Blue Line’. According to their plan, it is supposed to cover their retreat to the Crimea.”

The Captain went on with his report but I became pensive… Suddenly I recalled Lermontov’s story Taman. I was fond of Lermontov107. Before the war Victor Koutov had presented me with a book of his verses, and currently it was striding with me down the roads of war…

“…In order to create a threat against their flanks”, the voice of the Chief-of-Staff was coming from somewhere distant, returning me to reality, “and to prevent the German Fleet using Tsemesskaya Bay, on the night of 4 February troops sent from Gelendzhik landed there. They captured a bridgehead called ‘Lesser Land’. The Germans have been trying all possible ways to annihilate the bridgehead. So, fighting doesn’t die down there day or night. Thus, we will be helping our landing party to wipe out the Fascist scum on the Taman Peninsula…”

Straining my memory I recalled our history teacher telling us that Taman was colonised by the Greeks a thousand and a half years ago, then settled by the Khazars, Mongols, Genoese, Turks… Suvorov had built a fort there.108

“We have a mission. The squadron commanders are to stay for the briefing”, Regiment Commander Kozin entered the room with these words and unfolded a map on the desk.

We left the cramped quarters but stayed together, waiting for the decision: what if any of us went on a combat mission? “Maybe I will be included in the fighting group?”, I thought shyly. Everyone was excited — both novices and ‘oldies’, but tried to conceal it. Pilot Rzhevskiy told us a joke about a daughter who asked her father to tell her all he knew about steam engines, which had just come to existence. Her father talked a long time, showed her a picture, and then asked his daughter: “Well, do you understand everything?”

“Everything, Daddy! Just show me please, where they harness the horses…” The airmen laughed. A short brawny fellow from Rybinsk, Volodya Sokolov ran up to me and, putting on a serious face with difficulty, said:

“Anyuta, let’s swap heights!”

“Let’s do it, Volodya. I love high-heeled shoes so much but feel shy of wearing them because of being tall. But how shall we do it? And what will I get for the difference — after all I am 170 centimetres tall and you’re only 160?”

“Sokolov, Egorova, Vakhramov, Tasets, Rzevskiy, up to the commanders!” This was an order from the Chief- of-Staff. Everyone forgot all about jokes and ran into the dugout.

We were proffered not a straight flight route but a kind of zigzag one. “We’ll avoid the enemy’s flak guns. It’ll be better that way. Stay in the formation, do what I do”, the navigator Karev, our leader, said and showed us on the map who was to fly where. My position was wingman to the right of Petr Karev.

What I was thinking about before my first combat sortie in a Sturmovik, it’s hard to say. There was no fear. There was a kind of satisfaction: look, they’ve included me in the first flight group, now I must not disgrace myself — after all, I am the only woman amongst so many men, and what men — Sturmovik pilots!

A quartet of LaGG-3s from a fraternal fighter regiment based on the same aerodrome as we were, was to escort us. There were five regiments in our 230th Ground Attack Aviation Division: four ground-attack and one of fighters. The Division was under the command of a Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Semyon Grigorievich Getman.

Here we were sitting in the cockpits of our combat planes and waiting for the signal — a green flare. My eyes slid over the instruments, my fingers ran over (as if to get the feel of them) the numerous switches and handles — I was checking the correct setting of their positions. My mechanic Rumskiy was here, next to the plane. He had made the plane ready for a combat sortie long before but now he wipes clean the long ago cleansed and shiny reinforced glass of the cockpit, then sets straight a parachute strap on my shoulder and looks at me as if to ask: “What else can I do for you?..”

“Thanks, friend. I need to be alone for a little while and concentrate, to collect my thoughts”, I thanked my mechanic, and looked at Karev’s Sturmovik standing ahead of me to the left. The group leader was quiet. He put his hand on the cockpit sides and seemed to be singing. “Doesn’t the coming mission really worry him in the least?” I thought with astonishment. But my thoughts were interrupted by a green flare