Over Fields of Fire

it has run out of ammunition133… No, no way would I want to be aerial gunner in a Sturmovik.

However, Makosov started behaving quite actively right from his very first sorties. Spotting an enemy plane he would immediately shoot a flare at it, warning everyone of danger. When I was gaining in altitude after completing my pass over the target, Makosov would fire his gun to hit a target of opportunity on the ground. I knew that the tail of my plane was covered in a reliable way. Moreover, using an intercom set my air gunner was always reporting whatsoever he saw in the air or over the ground.

“Comrade Lieutenant”, I heard time and again now. “A flak gun’s firing from the woods on the right!” or “Comrade Lieutenant, six tanks are moving towards ‘Lesser Land’ from Novorossiysk. They’re shooting on the move!” And yet again: “Comrade Lieutenant, Sturmovik tail number ‘6’ is hit. It is loosing altitude, going down to the sea…”

It seemed nothing could escape the attention of my gunner. I was happy for his successes and used every opportunity to support or praise him. For completing 10 combat missions successfully and for damaging a Messer, the regimental HQ awarded Makosov the medal ‘For Meritorious Service in Combat’.

My air gunner always kept his heavy machinegun in combat-ready order. He always cleaned and lubricated it in time, performed maintenance check-ups and prevented any jams. Makosov would sit in the Sturmovik cockpit for hours and practise by targeting planes flying over the aerodrome. By that time, I had full confidence in him. I was fairly sure: in a difficult situation he will not get lost, will not let me down. Makosov never panicked, never got overexcited. He shot in a calm, business-like manner — and did hit his target. Over the Stanitsa Moldavankaya he managed to shoot down a Me-109, jointly with few other gunners. Soon, Makosov was awarded with another medal ‘For Valour’. During debriefings he was now being held up as an example for other gunners, but he invariably kept smiling the same way, showing the dimples on his cheeks and blushing. I noticed that our gunsmith and weapon/ammunition specialist girls started looking towards our Sturmovik with quite an interest — it was Makosov sitting in its cockpit…

I have to mention that all the girls serving in our regiment were the pick of the bunch — very pretty. Masha Zhitnyak, Yulia Panina, Masha Dragova, Varya Matveeva, Nina Gneusheva, Dousya Nazarkina, Lida Fedorova, Lyuba Kasapenko. Nina Piyuk, Katya Kozhevnikova, Nina Shcwetz, Katya Zelinskaya — they all had come from ShMAS134. All of them were locals, from the Kuban area, — it turned out that when we were based in the area the local Military Commissariat had sent them all to us as a bunch. The girls were supervised by armament technicians P. I. Panarin and N. A. Kalmykov, and also by our armament engineer B. D. Sheiko. The days when we were conducting missions in a rapid sequence were incredibly difficult for the girls. How many bombs and rockets they had to lug to a plane! And not just lug but lift and suspend them — and do so without any appliances. It was also their responsibility to load hundreds of cannon and machinegun belts between the sorties, and to fuel every plane scheduled for a combat mission. All that was so impossibly hard that for many years after the war they could not carry a child… Many male technicians would help the girls voluntarily: after completing their own duties.

At the same time, the arrival of the ‘best half of the people’ in the regiment had surely influenced our male contingent. Prior to the appearance of the girls many pilots of our regiment considered it fashionable to wear a beard. Although it might not have been a fashion but rather a superstition: a bullet will not find you once you have a beard! But once our pretty gunsmiths and weapon/ammunition specialists had arrived — all those beards disappeared overnight, as if they were gone with the wind. The pilots started shaving and changing their clothesmore often, and the technicians followed their example. Their usually oily and dirty overalls became almost snow-white due to washing in buckets of petrol. Some appeared ironed — these were placed under a mattress for a night.

The fact that Technician-Lieutenant Petr Panarin wasn’t indifferent to the armament specialist Masha Zhitnyak was noticed in the regiment straightaway. What could you do about it? — he had fallen in love with her at first sight. Petr was attracted to this quiet unhurried Ukrainian girl by her modesty, kindness, diligence, and without procrastination (lest the dashing pilots beat him to it!) he proposed. But… he was rejected. And after a repeated proposal Maria said as if cutting him off: “You, Comrade Technician-Lieutenant, think I came to the regiment to get married? I won’t hide that I like you, but there’ll be no wedding until the day of our Victory!”

Many years later, after the war, our former armament specialist Maria Timofeevna Zhitnyak (now her last name was Panarina) came to visit me in Moscow. She was living in the city of Chervonograd, close to Lvov. She was as always smiling and cordial as before, although the war and age had certainly left their mark on her. We were able to recall a lot during that encounter: how mistrustfully our regimental comrades treated the girls, how hard their life was at the beginning. Indeed, not everything went smoothly for the female armament specialists at first. And how hard it was for them… It is true that not everything went right in the beginning: many girls just did not know to use the tools, and their hands were covered with bruises. But nobody heard any complaints from them! Knowing it was not easy for many, the girls reconciled themselves to all the hard sides of frontline life.

Masha remembered how on the first bath day all the girls, like all the other soldiers, were issued with high- collared tunics and trousers. They had to make them over and adjust themselves individually. Nina Gneusheva — a modest, very pretty and proud girl born in Kuban — became our seamstress. On finding out about Nina’s talent, the male pilots, blushing and hesitant, began to ask her for makeovers, sometimes of their blouses, sometimes of trousers or something else. The Kuban Cossack girl managed to do everything, to hang bombs and rockets, to load cannons, and to carry out all tailoring orders.

The female gunsmith/armament specialists were issued English-made boots, which were nicknamed ‘Churchills’ — for their thick soles. They were issued together with puttees out of which the girls learned to make stockings. The latter had their ‘brand-name’ — zebras. The homemade stockings were so called for their low-quality dyeing — in stripes. Some would manage to procure acrichine from the regimental surgeon or ink from Ivanovskiy’s HQ administration department, dilute it with water and dip the puttees in it — and rush to wring them out, because the others wanted to dye their own ones. In the summertime the armament specialists did not wear cumbersome ‘Churchills’. Instead, they were making a splash wearing slippers self-made from plane covers. Guard duty was the only duty they served fully uniformed…

Guard duty deserves special mention. Standing guard was what frightened the girls most. It was especially hard in the territory of Poland and Germany: there, you had to watch out, to twirl your neck all the time! And as ill luck would have it, the Starshina Shkitin would place girls as sentries at the most remote guard-posts. He reckoned they would be the most vigilant sentinels guarding the aerodrome. Indeed, our beautiful armourers knew well how to handle submachine-guns and the strict Starshina trusted them with good reason.

Once Yulia Panina came to a meeting of the regiment Comsomol bureau, of which she was a member, with a bandaged neck. “What’s wrong with you, Yulia? Are you sick?” The bureau secretary Vasya Rimskiy asked.

“No”, Yulia replied, “I’m not sick. But I was on a guard duty last night. With fear, I turned my neck so much that I have hurt it…”

“Are you joking, Panina?”

“Not at all. It seemed to me all night that someone was crawling towards the planes and I was straining my ears and eyes so much that… now it hurts.” Everyone laughed.

“Everything will close up on the wedding day!” Zhenya Berdnikov concluded joyfully.

“You may well laugh. You’re the sterner sex but I often see you standing guard by the headquarters dugout. But we — the fair sex — stand with our machine-guns by night at the outermost plane parks…”

Generally speaking, the regimental and squadron Comsomol meetings usually occurred between combat sorties or in non-flying weather, late in the night. The agendas were such as: “All our strength for the destruction of the Fascist beast!”, “Strike at the enemy like the Comsomol crews of the Heroes of the Soviet Union Rykhlin and Efremenko!”, “Mutual help in combat is the Comsomol member’s law!”

Once, the pilot Bougrov came back from a sortie in plane so damaged, that it would have been better to tow it to a scrap-heap: such holes yawned on its wings and fuselage that a man might have easily fallen through many of them, while the rudders and elevators were barely holding on. After having a look at the machine, the regimental Chief Engineer Koudelin addressed Bougrov: “Tolya, my boy! I am an old aviation engineer. I’ve seen a lot in my life