“How will I go without a certificate? I would immediately be taken again, and placed somewhere once more!”
“We do not provide any certificates! If you want to go to your regiment, I advise you to come to a checkpoint at the road. You could then ask them to give you a lift to a proper place.”
“You have been taunting me major — and now you are laughing? Can’t you see: I can hardly walk! And who would get me into a car without a document? My regiment is in this sector — so give me a horse or a carriage. Or give me some certificate and a lift to the checkpoint — I beg you for Christ sake!”
The major had softened and did me a favor. He made a certificate with my whereabouts, one saying I had passed the check-up. Following that he ordered to get me on a carriage, bringing me to the checkpoint. There, I was advised where the headquarters of the 16th Aerial Army was located. They then put me onto a passing vehicle.
But from the Army personnel section I was immediately transferred to the Army-level SMERSh. “We will send an inquiry to the 34th Rifles Corps of the 5th Shock Army where they checked you out”, they told me. But the room I was placed into had all the utilities, and I was fed in the officer’s mess. The SMERSh chief’s wife brought me magazines and books. Some more women visited me, Army HQ officers, the pilots… They congratulated me on my return ‘from the world beyond’, I received many gifts. A whole pile of various things accumulated in my possession, and I remember someone joking: “So, Comrade Egorova, you’ve been to hell, now paradise awaits you…”
And one day Captain Tsekhonya came to see me. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his first or parental name but I will never forget his kindness! He had served in our 805th Ground Attack Regiment as an Adjutant in the 3rd Squadron. That was what they then called the position that is now called ‘Squadron Executive Officer’. As Deputy 3rd Squadron Commander I used to curse him over all sorts of ‘trifles’ although they say that there’re no trifles in the Air Force. But he was such a sluggish chap that I used to ‘push him’ a bit. Tsekhonya would not get angry at me (or would just pretend not to), but either way he would not repeat his mistakes. And now, having found out I was alive and that I’d been found, he came to visit me. The captain brought me a gift of some beautiful dresses and said: “I put together a parcel for my wife, but I found out you were alive and I’ve brought it to you…”
“What do I need dresses for?” I said apprehensively. “You’d better send it home to your wife, they are in great need after all, but those are useless here. Probably the quartermasters will supply me with a uniform blouse and a skirt?”
“You need treatment, Annochka”, Tsekhonya said affectionately and… burst into tears, staring looking for a handkerchief in his pockets…
Having received my letter, they reported from the Regiment to my Division: ‘Senior Lieutenant Egorova is alive and is on our sector of the front’. The division commander Colonel V. A. Timofeev then ordered our regiment
I was sitting on a bench in the staff department of the 16th Aerial Army, waiting to be called. My crutch that assisted me in walking was next to me, there was also my straw handbag with the Soviet Air Force emblem and my initials, ‘A.E.’ This bag had been woven for me by the airmen — POWs of the Kustrin camp (currently it is stored in the Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation). Shvidkiy was first to notice me. Leaping out of the car, he rushed towards me with his arms flung open and nearly knocked me over! And I for some reason failed to recognise him straightaway: short, in a fur-lined flying suit and flying boots (it was still chilly) and an ear-flapped hat on his head, he was just like a bear cub! The surname Shvidkiy172 corresponded pretty well to the lively character of Dmitriy Polikarpovich. He quickly kissed me, sobbed through his nose, and ran to arrange documents for me so as to take me to the regiment immediately.
“No, no, don’t rush…” I told him.
“No, I’m going all the same, I’ll get you out of here!”
“The SMERSh here have still got me.”
“What SMERSh?”
He started making a noise, cursed, then ran away to draw up the documents. A group of submachine-gunners accompanying the
During those same days my mum received a letter from me — it had been sent when I was still in the camp, by the tankers who had liberated us. Having received the letter, she read it several times, crossed herself and decided she was losing her mind. After all, there had been a death notice, pension had been given her instead of my pay, a reliable fortune teller had visited her and, finally, there had been a funeral in the church and an entry in the church commemoration book for the peace of soul of the ‘Warrior Anna’! “I’m going mad,” mum finally decided, crossed herself once again and headed to her neighbour’s. There she began to ask, handing the letter over to the boy: “Tolyushka, read this! I seem to be imagining things…”
It seems when they brought my death notice to mum, she was prostrated by grief, but refused to believe in my death. Some of the locals told her confidentially that there was a very reliable fortune teller who charged a lot, but told true fortunes and only true… Mum was warned that the fortune teller’s services would be dear, but mum collected some bric-a-brac and some money, and wrote a note to her elder daughter in Kouvshinovo, where the latter worked and lived with her family: “Manyushka! I need you badly for a day, take a day off from work and come around and stay the night”.
With difficulty Maria got permission to be absent from work and came to Volodovo by night. “My little girl, go to Spas-Yasinovichy. Our last hope is the fortune teller. Whatever she says we will go with.”
And Maria headed off at first light in the morning — 30 kilometres one way and as many back — all on foot. She had to do it in one day, for on the next day she had to be at work for the morning shift. The daughter carried out mum’s instructions, but the fortune teller divined that I wasn’t among the living. It looks like she didn’t pay her enough! Generally speaking, it’s rare for a fortune teller to divine bad news and not instill hope in a person. And my sister, instead of sparing mum with a white lie passed her the fortune teller’s ‘truth’. We had had a tradition in our family — always tell only the truth to mum no matter how hard it is…
After such news mum fell seriously ill again. And on top of that the Kalinin Region Military Commissariat had assigned her a pension instead of the pay mum had been getting from me. After that her faith that I was still alive was ruined completely…
Later, about five years after the war, I was called to the Noginskiy District Military Commissariat, where I was registered. Here they gave me, against a receipt, a writ to read, from the Kalinin Region Commissariat, in which they demanded a debt be recovered from me to the sum of three thousand roubles, allegedly for wrongful payment of pension to my mum over a period of five months. In case of non-payment they threatened to take the matter to court…
“I won’t pay”, I said then to a major — the head of the Commissariat’s 1st Department.
“Nobody asked them to assign my mother a pension instead of my pay.”
But then this idea entered my head: “However, let the Kalinin Region Commissariat exact my unpaid bonuses for combat sorties successfully carried out from the Air Force. Take as much as you need out of it, and send the rest to my home address!”
“Write a memo!” — The major ordered. I did. But more than half a century has gone since then, and not a peep out of them!
After more than a month of illness, mum made it to the church with difficulty and arranged with the priest to read the Orthodox burial service over me for the peace of the soul of the fallen ‘Warrior Anna’. By the way, the commemoration record — a booklet with a cross on its cover, in which there are records of prayers for my health, and separately, for my repose — is still kept in my desk. In the box for ‘repose’ is written ‘Warrior Anna’, and then (angrily!) the record is crossed out in a different sort of ink, by mum’s hand…
After the ‘funeral’ there was a wake. Only old women gathered for it: there were no young people at all in the village. Aunty Anisya — mum’s sister — told me about this wake later. She was a wonderful character! Whilst my mum was strict, truthful in everything, Aunty Anisya was a mischievous and merry jester. Sisters they were, but polar opposites. My Aunt had worked at the Kouvshinovo paper factory from the age of twelve — she’d bound notebooks. She married a seaman from the Baltic Fleet, her countryman, but he was killed during the Kronstadt
