Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 (Soviet Memories of War) Read online

  Suddenly I felt a sharp push, a flash as bright as lightning and then, darkness, and in the darkness cries…I had received a heavy electric shock…I came to my senses in the shaft precinct: I was being carried somewhere. Noticing an ambulance I got scared, broke away from the hands carrying me and dashed off onto the piles of gravel…

  I spent three weeks in the Botkinskaya hospital and when I got back to the pit I found out that Andrey Dikiy had died. He had snagged a bare electric cable with the hooks of the reinforcing rods. The death of our workmate shook us all…

  After discharge from the hospital I wasn’t allowed to work and the shaft committee6 offered me a place in a floating holiday home. I refused and decided to see my mother in the village. I hadn’t written her about my visit but when I got off the train at the Kouvshinovo station both my mother and my sister Maria – my godmother – were there to meet me.

  “How did you find out that I’d be coming?” I asked my sister. Maria explained it simply, “Mum had some sort of dream, then she came over early in the morning and said: “Let’s go to meet Annoushka7 – she’ll be coming today”. And you know our mum – she’s like a commander – if she gives an order you carry it out without arguing!”

  Mother stopped Maria, addressing me: “My girl, why have you grown so thin? And you’re so pale…”

  “I’m trainsick”, I explained, “you know how winding the railroad beyond Torzhok is, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, God forbid”, mum said. We got into a cart and went to Volodovo…

  My holiday flashed past imperceptibly and now I was at the shaft again. From September I’d been studying at the Metrostroy workers’ faculty – sometimes in the mornings, sometimes in the evenings – in shifts. We worked six hours a day, never sparing ourselves no matter what. Sometimes we stayed in the shaft for two shifts in a row. Once, having worked the evening shift, I stayed for the night. I remember that we were binding fittings in the tunnel. My arms grew terribly tired, lifted all the time holding up the wire-cutters. And it was muggy and hot in the tunnel and I was desperate for a sleep, especially by morning. Someone, curled into a ball, had fallen asleep on a step of the scaffolding. And suddenly, as if on purpose, the head of the shaft Gotseridze and the Narkom8 for Railways came down underground. Noticing the sleeper they stopped.

  “Why are there children in the shaft?” The Narkom asked sternly.

  “They are Comsomol members”, Gotseridze answered.

  “Send them up top immediately!”

  They would have too, had we not mutinied. Standing up by fair means or foul for our right to work in the shaft we added years to our age. It was harder for those who were not tall enough. In a week it was all sorted out – we were tying fittings again but doing our best not to catch the bosses’ eyes.

  There was such an atmosphere on our shaft that everyone rushed to the pit-face with a kind of joy, with pleasure. It was a blessing – to go to work cheerfully and to consider yourself useful and necessary to the people. To be conscious of the fact that something done by you, by your hands, would remain in your dear land! Nowadays, so many years later, no matter how many times I ride through the ‘Red Gate’ Metro station it seems to me to be the most beautiful. And when they say there are better ones I get angry. My Comsomol youth is set firm in this station, in the cold stone…

  What can I say, we, the youth, had amazingly high morale back then. We always wanted to do something, to learn something. In the beginning Tosya Ostrovskaya and I passed tests to get a “Ready for work and defence!” badge9, a “Ready for medical work in defence!” one10, then for the “Voroshilov marksman”11 and even this wasn’t enough. We joined a choir, and began to go to Sokolniki12 for roller-skating. Tosya skated well but I had already smashed my elbows and knees but stubbornly kept getting up from the asphalt, kept practising and at long last – hurray! – I learned how.

  4

  Out of the pit and into the sky

  O

  nce in the shaft lunchroom I read a recruiting notice for the Metrostroy aeroclub glider and flying groups. Only recently the Comsomol’s IX Conference had put out the call: “Comsomol members – take to the air!” Once we were visited at the Metrostroy by some field editors from the Comsomol’skaya Pravda newspaper promoting it. At the same time our own paper – Udarnik Metrostroya1 – reported that the Metrostroy aeroclub had been granted territory for an aerodrome not far from the Malye Vyazemy station, 4 U-2 biplanes and 3 gliders. Future airmen and parachutists were invited to pull up stumps and build a field aerodrome and hangars for the planes and gliders. Well, if they need stumping we’d do the stumping! To be honest, I’d secretly dreamed of flying for a long time, the way people dream about far countries, alluring but unattainable. And now, having read the recruitment notice I plucked up my courage and made the first step – I headed to the given address – 3, Kuibysheva Street.

  I found the building I needed but was afraid to go in. I had already read all the posters, the wall newspaper, the notices hung in the corridor, but still couldn’t find the guts to approach the door marked “Entrance examination”.

  “Who are you waiting for, young lady?” A serviceman in a flyer’s uniform asked me.

  I couldn’t see his face: my eyes were fixed on a gold-embroidered badge on his sleeve – the Air Force emblem…Many years later POW airmen in the Kostrinskiy concentration camp would present me with exactly the same emblem. They braided a handbag from the straw they slept on and embroidered the Air Force emblem (an airplane propeller) on it with my initials: “A.E.” – Anna Egorova – and passed it to me in secret…But back then I began to say, stammering, that I longed to join the aeroclub’s flying school and had even brought an application.

  “An application is not enough”, the airman said. “You need references from the site, from the Comsomol organisation, a medical certificate, an education certificate and a birth record. When you collect all the papers, come with them to the credentials committee. The committee will decide whether you’ll be accepted or not.”

  Having thanked the airman, and inspired by making a start, I dashed outside and running at full speed rushed towards the Red Gate, to the pit. The Comsomol committee approved my decision but in the brigade…

  “What’s got into you?” Vasya Grigoriev gloomily commented. “You’re better off going to an institute to study – let blokes do the flying.”

  “And this weakling wants to be a flyer! She hasn’t got over her electric shock yet!” Tosya Ostrovskaya declared.

  And her my bosom friend! We even slept together, so to speak – our beds stood next to each other in the dormitory, we worked in the same brigade, studied together at the workers’ faculty. Even our skirts and blouses were ‘interchangeable’: one piece for both of us. One day she wore skirt and blouse and I wore a dress, the next day it would be the other way around. Tosya dreamed of becoming a doctor but I hadn’t decided yet what to do and we used to argue a lot because of this. Running ahead I’ll say that Antonia Sergueevna Ostrovskaya would become a doctor and spend the whole war at the front as a surgeon. But back then she was keen for me to go to medical school together with her.

  But our foreman settled the argument:

  “She’s wiry, she can take it. Let her join!” he concluded and gave me a reference.

  Now I would have to go before a medical commission, and not just one but two. We had many qualms: we were spooked about certain twists and pitfalls supposedly invented by the doctors for those wanting to fly. But I was pleased to find no twists or pitfalls during the commission. Ordinary doctors in ordinary offices listened to our chests while tapping them, spun us in a special armchair to test our inner ears and if there were no shortcomings wrote: “Fit”.

  To tell the truth, only 12 out of 20 came for a second examination, but it all came out well for me. The doctors all wrote the one most wonderful word in the whole Russian language – “fit”. Now only the credentials committee was left.

  And then one day, havin
g finished night shift in the shaft I had a shower, changed clothes, had breakfast in the shaft canteen and went to the credentials commission. It was situated in a former church in Yakovlevskiy Lane near the Kursk train station. Now there were classrooms and aeroclub offices here. They didn’t call me up for quite a while and I (after all it was after night shift!) fell asleep sitting on a wooden bench. But as soon as I heard my surname I jumped up and not yet fully awake, rushed into the office. I was supposed to appear before the high commission in a military manner and report according to all regulations, but all I said was:

  “It’s me, Anya2 Egorova, from shaft 21.”

  All those sitting at the large table burst out laughing together. The stream of questions was endlessly long: I was asked about my parents, brothers, sisters, my work, and on geography…

  “Determine the longitude and latitude of the city of Moscow”, I remember someone from the meticulous commission suggesting.

  I approached a map hanging on the wall, then for quite a while I led my finger along the meridians and parallels and finally gave the answer. Everyone laughed again: it turned out that I had confused longitude and latitude.

  “She’s just flustered”, a Comsomol representative put in. “She’s a crack worker.”

  “Well, if she’s a crack worker…” An airman drawled. “Tell us, girl, which group exactly do you wish to join?”

  I understood I had to stop “bleating”, and pull myself together, and start talking properly, sensibly – otherwise everything would be ruined: they’d throw me out and never call me back. I gave the deepest sigh and said “I want to be a pilot!”

  “Ooh, what a smarty she is, and the Comsomol swore she was flustered. Not just anywhere, but straight to flying!”

  Someone growled from behind the table “It’s a bit soon, she’s the wrong age, she should wait another year.”

  How extraordinary: they wouldn’t take me as a gold seamstress because of my age, wanted to kick me out of the shaft because of my age…And the same again when I fraudulently added two years to my age, again I wasn’t good enough because of my age?

  “For the time being you’ll be on a glider…”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You don’t know? Strange…It’s a flying machine. Well, how can I explain it to you more simply: it’s a plane with no engine…”

  “So that means that I’ve been dreaming of an engine in vain?” burst out from me. I approached the table and began to talk very fast, addressing really only the airman:

  “Gliders are for gliding, a plane is what I need…Please understand – I long to fly…”

  “This year gliders are what you’ll fly, if you like it we’ll transfer you to an airplane group. Next!”

  Shutting the door behind me I collapsed on a chair kindly moved up by someone. Questions poured on me from all sides: “How was it in there?”, “Where are they sending you?”, “Are the questions hard?”

  We studied theory all winter. It was hard to combine work and studying at the workers’ faculty and in the aeroclub. But Tosya and I even managed to go to movies and sometimes even dancing. Our shaft was under the patronage of the Theatre of Operetta and we were often provided with tickets to shows. The actor Mikhail Kachalov was our idol and I even fell in love with him, trying to attend performances he acted in and to sit as close to the stage as possible.

  In early spring we began to go to Kolomenskoye village for practice. It was said that this was where a serf called Nikitka, having made wings for himself, jumped from a high bell-tower. We would take off from a high bank of the Moscow river and hover on our gliders. Of course, by today’s standards everything was done in a very primitive way. The US-4 glider was set up on the steep bank and anchored with a steel rod. The trainee would sit in the cockpit and the others would go down the slope, take hold of the ends of the elastic straps attached to the glider and at the instructor’s command “Pu-u-ull!” stretch them out so as to shoot the one sitting in the glider cockpit as if from a slingshot.

  In order to stay in the air for 2 or 3 minutes and spend the rest of time pulling on the gliders’ elastic straps, having worked a shift in the shaft, all summer I would go to Kolomenskoye every day. By autumn in the pit, by now an inclined shaft, the congenial smell of warm moisture, paint and lacquer reached our nostrils. The smell of finishing works, a sure sign that the whole job was close to an end awoke a pleasant feeling in our breasts. The sensation of something festive and thrilling accompanied us when we walked on the almost ready station platform. But the walls were still bare and heavy crates with electric equipment were still being carried down one after another. We, yesterday’s fitters, were now busy with revetment – it was a common practice for the Metro of that time. People wanted to build the Metro from start to finish and would master several interrelated trades…

  In October 1934 a test train of two red wagons rode the Metro. What an exultation that was! We shouted “hurray!”, sang songs, hugged, danced, ran after the wagons. My first ride in a Metro train left an indelible impression on me. It was such a big deal underground on 6 February 1935 when the builders did a ‘fly-by’ of all their 13 stations! And on 15 May 1935 the Metro was open for public use. The Moscow Comsomol organisation was awarded the highest Government decoration, the Order of Lenin, and a big group of the Metro builders was also awarded with orders and medals. For us the Metrostroy had become a great school of fortitude, character building and tempering.

  5

  Getting ready

  “Y

  ou’ve done enough digging in the ground, it’s time to come to your senses. Go study if you want but in the meantime I’ve made an arrangement – you’ll work in the editorial office of the Trud1 newspaper. The position is nothing special but you’ll be among clever and educated people. Hopefully they will influence your partisan personality.”

  So my brother declared, and took me to the Palace of Labour, to Solyanka Street, where the editorial office was located. And I began to read letters from rabkors2 deciding to which department they should be delivered. The work was interesting but I missed the Metrostroy’s enthusiastic people. That was why, after four months of ‘torment’ at the Trud, I fled to take part in the construction of the second stage of the Metrostroy, to the ‘Dynamo’ shaft 84-85. Now I started work as a rock-breaker and rock-drill repair mechanic, and at the same time as a voluntary librarian in the shaft’s trade union committee. I had already graduated from the workers’ faculty and the glider school – I had got my secondary education, becoming a gliding instructor.

  In the flying club we studied flight theory, aerial navigation and meteorology, the ‘Flight Operations Manual’ and the equipment of the U-2 plane. By the springtime we had begun to go with an instructor to an aerodrome in Malye Vyazemy for aerial training. We would get on a steam train (there were no electric trains back then) at the Byelorusskiy train station and it would take us an hour and a half to get to Vyazemy. From there it was a kilometre’s walk to the aerodrome through the woods along the Vyazemka river.

  Our aerodrome! It was already waiting for us beyond the village of Malye Vyazemy where there was a large field surrounded by woods. Hangars, offices and residential quarters had been built there – and all by the hands of the Metrostroy students. We, the students, prepared ourselves for flying with a help of a small book in a blue cover. It was titled ‘VVS RKKA3 Flight Training Course”, or simply KULP. It was sternly drilled into us that this book had been written in the blood of flyers. It contained directions for the flight student for studying and mastering flying skills, and “general advice”.

  Let’s take, for example, clause 5: “Cultivate in yourself military discipline both on the ground and in the air, orderliness, politeness at work and in private life, constant attention even to small details, accuracy, punctuality, swiftness in action, and especially boldness within reason when resolving of a given problem”. Very practical advice!

  Back then we learned the pages of this book, re
markable from any point of view, almost by heart. Here if you please is another of its clauses: “Don’t lose courage after temporary failures: on the contrary, after failures you have to show still more perseverance, persistence and will, to work still more to overcome difficulties, you should not become presumptuous in case of success, nor allow yourself to slacken your attention, fall into laxity or ridicule your comrades. You should remember that during summer practice a serious and prudent approach to each sortie and exercise regardless of his personal qualities, flying skills and record, is required of every pilot. Infringement of this rule will inevitably eventuate in a breakdown or an accident, observance guarantees stable accident-free high-quality work”.