Over Fields of Fire

problems…

There were changes in the regiment: an order was issued for the appointment of “the Regimental Navigator Major Karev Petr Timofeevich as Deputy Commander of the 805th Ground-Attack Aviation Regiment, Lieutenant Egorova Anna Alexandrovna as Navigator of the same regiment”. I was still a Lieutenant but this was a lieutenant- colonel’s position! This promotion horrified me and I rushed to the commander “to sort it out”. Not long before, Kozin had visited his family somewhere in the deep rear. Upon his return he showed me a photo of his daughter. Wide-open trusting childish eyes, very similar to her father’s, two plaits, a kerchief tied under her chin, looked at me from the picture. “The heiress!” Mikhail Nikolaevich said laughing.

We loved our commander very much. A gallant pilot, fair to his subordinates and strict in moderation, he carried in him so much vivacity, joy, sincere gaiety! ‘Batya’ (Daddy) was what we called him between ourselves in our friendly collective. He sang with us, danced, shared griefs… Showing me the photo of his daughter Mikhail Nikoilaevich confided: “You know, Lieutenant, when my wife found out that there was a female airman in the regiment, she became jealous.”

“Let her be like that. It’s good sometimes”, the regiment zampolit141 Dmitriy Polikarpovich Svydkiy, appointed to replace the fallen Ignashov, laughed then.

It seemed, after Ignashov, who had won great respect in the regiment for his tactfulness, after his kind treatment of people and his fidelity to principle, that the new zampolit would find it hard to gain people’s confidence and win the same level of fondness and respect from the personnel. But time went by and Dmitriy Polikarpovich, while still a combat flyer, won many people over. He had a marvellous feature — he knew whom to say an encouraging word to, whom to rebuke, whom to praise. And he would do all that at the proper time without delaying till tomorrow, and somehow inconspicuously and tactfully. And flying combat sorties with one or another group and frequently finding himself in difficult situations, Shvidkiy certainly knew the aspirations and the mood of the airmen.

Debriefing of combat sorties had changed its character after Shvidkiy’s arrival in our unit. Whereas before we had spoken mostly about the accuracy of our strikes now we began to talk more about the pilots’ actions, their fortitude, initiative, battle tactics. Dmitriy Polikarpovich paid a lot of attention to combat camaraderie and cohesion. Our new zampolit liked to repeat Suvorov’s words “Perish yourself but rescue your comrade!” — how that was to reverberate around in the regiment I will tell of later…

But in the meantime I had to talk to the Regiment’s Commander about my new appointment and I walked down into the headquarters dugout. “Comrade Commander, may I address you?” I pronounced, saluting according to the regulations.

“You may”, Kozin nodded in agreement and glanced at me somewhat reproachfully.

“What have you appointed me Regimental Navigator for? I won’t handle it. I’ll be a laughing stock! There’s Berdashkevich, the 2nd Squadron Commander, there’s Soukhoroukov, Vakhramov. It’ll be handier for them to be Navigator of a male regiment!”

“Have you said your piece?” The lieutenant-colonel asked brusquely. “Then about turn and march! Double- quick to carry out your Regiment Navigator duties. And don’t bring this matter up to me again.”

Now in my new capacity I ran training with the flying personnel: sometimes I would direct an ‘attack’ by radio from the bombing range observation tower. My duty was to make sure everyone had their maps in order. During preparation for a mission I had to make a meticulous study, tell the airmen how we’d be flying, where the targets would be, what we were going to bomb. That’s preparation for a sortie too. I began to like the navigator’s duties a bit too, they grew on me. After all, I had graduated from the Kherson Aviation School as a navigator, when working in the Kalinin aeroclub I used to teach aerial navigation for several hours a week, I had done a navigator’s course in Stavropol. In a word, knowing about my navigator’s ‘classes’ and taking into account my combat experience the regimental commanders had not appointed me for the position by an accident. Apart from that I was promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant.

So, here I was standing on the tower, and there was such a wonderful panorama around me! The planes were taxiing over the green carpet of the airfield, from the Poltava side the American ‘Fortresses’142 were taking off to bomb the common foe. A small river was visible not far off, one of Peter the Great’s redoubts towered just nearby, and skylarks completely filled the sky…

The telephone rang. I took the receiver and heard the voice of the flight controller:

“Get ready, taking off shortly!”

The radio-station’s engine under the tower began to work. I took the microphone, blew into it for convention’s sake and spoke: “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! ‘Birch’ here! Do you hear there?”

“‘Mignonette-2’ here”! ‘Mignonette-2’ here”! I hear you loud and clear. Request two hundred…”

‘Mignonette-2’ was Major Karev’s callsign, and two hundred was permission to carry out bombing and ground attack. I’d always wondered why Regimental Signals Commander Matyshenko gave the men call signs like ‘Mignonette’, ‘Violet’, ‘Lilac’, ‘Volga’143. And once he gave me the call-sign ‘Hawk’ — enough to make a cat laugh!

A group of Sturmoviks was already over the training ground — it made a circuit and steeply dived on a target. The pilots carefully caught the targets in their gun-sights and shot short bursts at the scattered dummies, then dropped bombs and circled to gain altitude. Karev, Mignonette-2, calmly gave orders and carefully watched every pilot’s work.

“Khoikhlin! Reduce your diving angle…”

“Ageev! Don’t fall behind…”

“Tsvetkov! Slow your plane down or you’ll shoot ahead of the group.”

“Well-done, Kirillov!”

The voice of Mignonette-2 flew over the training ground and, seeing Karev’s painstaking work with the young pilots, I involuntarily thought of that steadfast man with deep respect, remembering my flights with him over Taman. I have never seen a bolder and more gallant flyer over the battlefield than Karev.

After repeating the pass, Karev’s group retired towards the aerodrome.

“Birch, Mignonette-17 here, Mignonette-17 here…” A different voice was heard now from the microphone. “Permission for two hundred?”

“Granted!”

And suddenly I heard: “Birchie, are your teeth bothering you?” I did indeed have a toothache. I was standing on the tower with a bandaged cheek, but I furiously cut off the insolent son of the airwaves: “Mignonette-17, mind your own business! Reduce your angle!”

But the pilot didn’t obey and dropped his bombs diving at a steep angle.

“Mignonette-17! Stop acting willfully! Otherwise I’ll shut the down the range!”

“Roger”, the pilot replied gaily and closed in for another attack. You had to admit, he attacked the target deftly, but then he left the range descending, hedge-hopping, leaving a Ukrainian song behind him:

You played a trick on me,
You’ve gone and let me down,
You’ve gone and turned me,
From a boy into a clown.

By now I knew the pilot was Lieutenant Ivan Pokashevskiy. That fellow with the broad face and mop of dark hair and mischievous grey eyes had stood out among the newcomers. He was out of uniform: on top of an old- fashioned blouse and civilian trousers he had a wool-lined jacket, worn, seasoned jackboots, an ear-flapped cap set on the back of his head — just about to fall off… Ivan told us he had been shot down in combat and taken prisoner. When the Fritzes were taking the POW airmen to Germany he and two of his comrades broke a hole in the wagon floor and at night time leaped out of the moving train. They then ran into the woods where they managed to find the partisans. Pokashevskiy fought alongside the partisans for seven months and was even awarded the Order of the Red Star. Then the airmen were transferred to Moscow and assigned to aviation units, and thus Ivan found himself in our regiment. When his father learned his son was alive (he and his mother had received the death notice