Over Fields of Fire

We were on our way to attack the enemy reserves near the City of Chezm. On the radio I heard the voice of our group leader, Regiment Commander Kozin: “Egorova! On the right there are disguised artillery pieces in the shrubs. Strafe the scum with your cannons!”

I made a steep right turn, switched the plane to diving, pinpointed the target and opened fire. And at the same moment German ack-ack went to work blocking our way. “Vakhramov!” The commander ordered, ignoring the call-signs. “Give it to the battery with your rockets!” This was an ordinary combat operation. On the road near Chezm there was a mechanized column: armored cars, tank-cars, trucks and tanks…

“Manoeuvring, guys, manoeuvring…” The leader reminded us and led into the attack from a turn. “Aim well and fire!”

Strips of smoke stretched from the ground towards our machines — it was the small-calibre guns that had opened fire, and quadruple-barrel flak guns began chattering. I’d have liked to turn a bit and send a couple of bursts at them, but an armoured car loomed in my gun-sight too alluringly. And it would have been too late — we had already rushed past them.

We closed in for the second pass having lost our group’s rearguard, Victor Andreev. A guy from Saratov — reticent, unsmiling but kind-hearted and respected by all as the best ‘hunter’ in the regiment — he used to fly as Volodya Sokolov’s partner. Volodya had not come back from the previous ‘hunt’: a shell hit his plane, and the Sturmovik, chopping the trees with its propeller and cutting them down, fell into the forest behind enemy lines. And today we’d lost Andreev…

We gained altitude for bombing. There were more and more black bursts in the sky, but paying no attention we dropped our bombs. It was time to pull out of our dive but the leader continued his rapid rush towards the ground. Suddenly there was a volley of flak, and Kozin’s plane seemed to stop in the air. Something blazed up for a second, and his Sturmovik crashed in a midst of enemy vehicles. A huge pillar of fire shot up…

It is hard to convey in words now the state that engulfed us in those moments. We were violently throwing ourselves into one pass after another. It seemed there was no force that could stop us! Only after expending all our ammunition did we leave the battlefield — and no more shots came at us from the ground. The crews came back without any coordination, one at a time. We felt bitter guilt inside — we had failed to protect our Batya… We were met gloomily at the aerodrome — the fighter pilots had already despatched the terrible news by radio. Usually the plane mechanics greeted us delightedly, but today, with tears in their eyes.

The Regimental Commander’s mechanic sobbed violently, and not knowing how to make himself busy was throwing about the caponier tools, blocks, plane covers and whatever came into his hot hands. Men moved spontaneously from all stations towards the Regimental CP. The Chief-of-Staff came out of the dugout, stepped up on a shell crate lying nearby and said: “Comrades! The Regiment’s Commander would not be pleased with us. Where’s your combat spirit? Where’s the battle readiness of the regiment? A terrible war is on! We can’t forget about it. I ask you to disperse to your places. The airmen of the 3rd Squadron — stay for a combat mission assignment. We will avenge our dead: Mikhail Nikolaevich Kozin, Victor Andreev and our other comrades who have made the supreme sacrifice for their motherland”…

Our assumption that conditions would be quieter than over Taman had not been justified. On the second day after the death of the Regiment Commander, Ivan Pokashevskiy was killed together with his aerial gunner, Hero of the Soviet Union Junior Lieutenant Ivan Efremenko. It was a reconnaissance flight. Pokashevskiy’s brother Vladimir had fallen ill and hadn’t flown that day. The observers from the guidance station told us later that a lonely Sturmovik with the inscription ‘To the Pokashevkiy sons — from their Father’ across the fuselage leaped over the frontline just above the ground, made a steep climb and disappeared behind the lower edge of the clouds. Enemy flak guns struck, the shooting was heard to move away from the frontline into the depths of the German defence and then die away. Some time elapsed, and the pilot transmitted that he had seen camouflaged self-propelled guns and tanks in such and such a quadrant — and that the enemy was obviously drawing up his reserves. Soon all the enemy arms rattled again, pouncing at the Sturmovik coming back from scouting. The pilot gave as good as he got — he dived, and then his cannons and machine-guns worked furiously, the rockets left from under his wings like thunderbolts.

They began to worry at the guidance station: why the pilot had engaged in combat?

“Vistula-5, finish up!” They transmitted to Ivan’s radio, and suddenly saw the Sturmovik begin a slow (like that of a wounded man) turn towards its lines. The tip of his left wing was bent up, there was a huge hole in the right one, and the rudder had been torn off together with the antenna which was now dangling behind the tail. Pokashevskiy’s plane was descending lower and lower — Ivan was trying to drag his machine over to our side. He made it over the frontline, and immediately his plane crashed on the ground, with a thunderclap…

Group after group of Sturmoviks took off that day to destroy the enemy tanks Lieutenant Pokashevskiy had managed to report on. The first sixer was led by Victor Gourkin with the aerial gunner Berdnikov. Prior to the sortie he addressed the airmen:

“Let’s avenge the death of our comrades-in-arms — the two Ivans. Death to the Fascists! To your planes!”

Ivan Soukhoroukov led a group of the same size, following Gourkin, and I led the third one to attack the tanks. We destroyed the Hitlerites’ tank column, and every pass we made in that battle was dedicated to the memory of our comrades, who had made the supreme sacrifice for the liberation of the land of Poland…

32. Poland

The 1st Army of the Wojsko Polskie156 which had been formed on the basis of the Tadeusz Kosciuszko157 1st Polish Division, was initially raised in May 1943. The Polish National Liberation Committee was formed in the Polish City of Chezm, which we used to fly to for strafing and bombing. Following the liberation of the cities of Lublin and Dwblin our 6th Ground Attack Aviation Corps was given the honorary title ‘Lublinskiy’, while the 197th Ground Attack Aviation Division (which included our 805th regiment) — ‘Demblinskaya’.

One of Hitler’s death camps, Majdanek, where a million and a half women, children, elderly people and POWs had died, was located in Lublin. Delegations from many units visited Majdanek, and so did representatives of our regiment. We saw with our own eyes the gas chambers, in which the Hitlerite butchers had been exterminating people. I remember us entering long barracks and standing petrified: piles of children’s footware of different sizes lay in front of us, ladies’ handbags from the mothers killed with their children… I couldn’t hold back the sobs, and I wasn’t alone… When we returned to the regiment a meeting was summoned. At first all honoured the memory of the dead with a minute of silence, then my comrades made short speeches calling for the ruthless struggle against the enemy!

After completing the operation our regiment relocated. Now we were based near the Polish town of Parczew. The hostess of the apartment in which Dousya and I were billeted, Pani Juzefa, met us every day with a jug of milk. On the spot, on the doorstep, she would pour a glass for each of us and ask us to drink it. Then the host would appear — a tall and proud Pole in homespun clothes — and would also insist we drink it. It was impossible to refuse, the more so when our hosts treated us to big lumps of cottage cheese.

Once I came back from the aerodrome alone, and my hostess met me with frightened eyes: “Matka Boska!158 Virgin Mary! Where is Panenka159 Dousya?” she exclaimed in alarm.

“Dousya is delayed at the aerodrome. She’s the orderly at headquarters today”, I lied, trying not to look at the Polish woman.

Pani Juzefa began to blow her nose into her apron and hurriedly wipe her eyes, and crossed herself. As for me, I rushed out of the house — my heart was so unbearably heavy: that day Dousya Nazarkina did not make it back from a flight…

It so happened that our commissar (as we, in the old style, called our zampolit Shvidkiy) had flown on a combat mission in my plane, and taken my aerial gunner. The pilots with whom he had