Over Fields of Fire

Gorobets approached me again. “She’s threatening me with the pistol…”

I came up to Nazarkina. Dousya rushed to cover something with her hands like a broody hen with its wings, but I gently moved her aside and shoved my hand down to bottom of the cockpit. The bombs! Pulling out a kilo- and-a-half one, I handed it over to the mechanic, but when I was going to take out the other one Dousya said anxiously: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant! Let me have them. In a direct hit these little bombs’ll go straight through any tank: King Tigers, Panthers, Ferdinands. Don’t take them away! Over the target I’ll drop them by hand when there are no Fascist fighter planes around and there’s no need to beat them off. After all, it’s tank attacks we’re flying to beat off. Leave them with me!”

“Mechanic! Clear the cockpit immediately!” — I ordered…

A green flare blazed up and curved in the air. Hurriedly putting on my parachute, I sat in the cockpit, turned the engine on, checked the two-way and taxied out. Through the intercom I heard Nazarkina’s voice — she was too cheerful for some reason. Why was that? Had Gorobets managed to pull all the bombs out from under her feet? I took off, and 15 Sturmoviks went into the air following my lead. The Vistula with islands in the middle of its course was visible ahead of us. On the right, as if in a fog, was Warsaw… Yesterday, coming back from a sortie, I had seen the city burning, engulfed by flames and clouds of thick smoke. And our pilot Kolya Pazukhin — a chap from a town with a poetic name, Rodniky163 in the Ivanovskaya Region, died in flames over Warsaw. Kolya was transporting foodstuffs and arms to the revolted people of Warsaw. A Polish pilot Major T. Wiherkewicz didn’t come back from the mission either. He had broken through the infernal flak barrage and dropped his load on a parachute but was shot down as he turned, and crashed with his plane on the scorched buildings of his dear Warsaw…

The Polish airmen from the ‘Krakow’ and ‘Warsaw’ aviation regiments fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Soviet pilots. They did their best not to fall behind our aviators and fought courageously and skilfully. Many a time the fighter pilots from the ‘Warsaw’ regiment flew as escorts for the Sturmoviks…

Now I was in the air, looking with sorrow towards Warsaw. I felt really sorry for the betrayed people of the city, sorry for their ruined capital, the former beauty of that old city.

“Four Fokkers on the left above us!”, came Nazarkina’s voice. She was the first to notice the enemy’s fighters and shot out a flare towards them so everyone would take notice.

Long-range flak guns blocked our group’s path with their fire. We took evasive action, but their shells exploded so close that it seemed that the splinters were rapping on the Il’s armour. Then AA tracers flew towards the Sturmoviks, like red balls. They looked so beautiful from a distance that it was hard to believe each of them meant death. Petr Makarenko was flying wingtip to wingtip with me. The ground fire was getting closer with every second. If you converge on a target directly you’ll face an even denser wall of fire, that’s why I made a decision to turn right. My wingmen followed me in the turn, and the powerful barrage was left to the side. But we had distanced ourselves from the target, and the enemy was just about to zero in again having made their adjustment. That’s why we now turned left and flew with evasive action against the curtain of flak. Looks like it’s time to attack! I start a dive. Now I had no time to keep my eye on my wingmen, but I knew that they were following me. Attack! We pounced on the enemy tanks with our rockets and cannon fire, pelted them with anti-tank bombs. The earth below us was on fire. In the heat of the battle I paid no attention to the enemy ack-ack guns, didn’t see the flak, saw no fiery traces from machine-guns.

One more pass, then another… Suddenly my plane was thrown up as if someone had kicked it from underneath. Then another blow, a third one… It became hard to control the plane. It didn’t obey me, it was climbing up. I was now flying without taking any evasive action: all my efforts, all my attention were concentrated on trying to put the Sturmovik into the dive again and to open fire. I managed to do that, and I led the group again for another pass directed at the tanks. But my wingmen could see better the condition my plane was in. Someone yelled to me over the radio: “Get back to our lines!”

“Apparently the plane is shot up”, I thought, and suddenly everything fell silent. Communications with Nazarkina vanished too. “Has she been killed?..” flashed through my mind. But the plane shuddered as in a fever: the Sturmovik wasn’t obeying the controls. I wanted to open the cockpit but I couldn’t. I was choking from smoke. My spiralling plane was on fire… I was on fire along with it…

33. “She died a hero’s death”

The pilots who had returned from the sortie reported that Egorova’s crew had been killed in the target area. As was done in such cases, they sent a death notice to my mum, Stepanida Vasilievna Egorova in the village of Volodovo in the Kalinin Region. However, this time death had missed me again: miraculously, I’d been thrown out of the burning Sturmovik. When I opened my eyes I saw that I was falling with no parachute canopy over my head. Just above the ground (I don’t remember how it happened myself), I jerked the ring, and the smouldering parachute opened up, although not completely…

I regained consciousness with terrible pain engulfing my whole body — it was so strong that I couldn’t move. My head burned like fire, my spine hurt unbearably, as did my arms and legs, scorched nearly to the bone. When I half-opened my eyes with difficulty I saw a soldier in a grey-green uniform over me. A terrible realisation shot through me stronger than any pain: “A Fascist! I’m in the Fascist’s hands!” This was the one thing I’d feared most of all in the war. The moral pain was a hundred times more dreadful than fire, bullets, physical pain. Only one thought pulsated feverishly inside my head: “I’ve been captured!” Helpless, incapable of resistance! I couldn’t even stretch my arm towards my pistol! And the German set his foot against my chest and pulled my broken arm for some reason. Oblivion…

The next time I came to my senses was from hitting the ground: the Hitlerites had tried to seat me in a vehicle but I couldn’t stay upright. I was falling as soon as they let go. Then they brought a stretcher and put me on that. As if in a dream I heard Polish. “Maybe the partisans have snatched me away?” the hope flashed through my mind. No, I saw the Hitlerites again and heard them conversing. “Schnell, schnell!” they were rushing two Polish medics, urging them to treat my wounds faster: a raid by Soviet aviation was on. Again a tiny ray of hope glimmered in me — our planes were around! I’d be happy if they hit this place where I was lying…

The Poles gave me no medication, they simply bandaged me, deftly hiding all my decorations and Party membership card under the bandages. I had to gather all my strength so as not to let out a moan in front of the enemy…

The Polish medics were conversing in whispers and I caught something about the Radom concentration camp. Then among the gaps in my memory there was an endlessly long shed, and when I came to my senses I found myself on the floor…

“What have they done to you, the freaks? It’d be good to put some ointment on now…” I heard a young female voice.

“Where would I get it from, this ointment? The Germans haven’t stocked medicines for us”, a male voice replied and asked straightaway: “And you, girl, who are you anyway, how did you end up here?”

“I’m a medical orderly, Yulya Krashchenko. I ended up here from the Magnuszew bridgehead beyond the Vistula, just like you. A tank ironed out the trench I was bandaging wounded men in, and then the Hitlerite submachine-gunners took us prisoners…”

“You know what, sister, I do know you. You’re from the 2nd Guards Battalion. Your commander, Captain Tskayev, is from my neighbourhood. Move over here closer to us, Orderly Krashchenko, let’s talk. We’ve examined a female pilot here, and found decorations under the bandages… We’d better take them off and hide them so as not to let the Fritzes have them. You do it, sister, it’s easier for you — the Fascists could accuse us of God knows what.”

“I understand. But where can I hide them?”

“Let’s put them into her burned flying boots — the Fascists won’t want them — they prefer new stuff”, someone else suggested.

When I heard my native speech, a spasm squeezed my throat and the first word burst out of me with my first groan: “Wa-a-ater!”

From that moment Yulia was with me all the time. The Hitelerites couldn’t drive her away from me with curses, nor with blows… I remember lying on a trestle-bed in some room of the shed, and a tearful Yulia sat next to