Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45

37. Where are you now? My regimental comrades

In Germany, in the city of Cottbus, despite all the doctors’ prohibitions, I gave birth to a son whom we called Petr. After the delivery I was sick for a long time, couldn’t walk — apparently my unsuccessful landing with the parachute that had failed to fully open had taken its toll. In Cottbus Professor Molitor warned me — I had spinal injuries in the sacrum area. I was happy about one thing: the boy was healthy.

In a year my husband was called to Moscow and we headed for the Soviet Union by train. In Moscow, in the Air Force Personnel Department Timofeev was offered a General’s position, as Commander of the Aviation Corps in… Kamchatka. He said that he couldn’t move there because of his wife’s illness. “We can’t offer you anything else!” the head of the Personnel Department cut him off. A medical examination followed, my husband had wounds from the time of the Civil War — and we both became pensioners. I was a disabled ex-serviceman, and he had become a pensioner per ‘order #100’.

We had no place to live, and with difficulty we settled in the outskirts of Moscow, in Obukhovo near Monino: we wanted to hear the roar of planes’ engines if nothing else… In Obukhovo I gave birth to another son — Igor — and again ‘unauthorized’. I say ‘unauthorized’ for the doctors had banned me form bearing children most strictly. But I hadn’t turned to them any more, right up until the delivery. Before giving birth to Igor I had taken fright and requested admittance to the maternity hospital of the town of Elektrostal: its doctors saved both me and my child. I also have to thank Kalistov, the Director of the 12th Plant, who obtained some medication for me from the 4th Central Medical Board with which the 12th Plant was in partnership…

I had no communications with my regimental comrades: our 805th Order of Suvorov Berlin Ground Attack Regiment177 had been disbanded.

And then one day, not believing my eyes, I saw two Captains in Air Force uniform in front of me. They were Andrey Konyakhin and Leva Kabisher. My God, there was so much talk, so much news! It appeared that when our regiment had been disbanded many airmen had stayed in service. Konyakhin, Kabisher, Makarenko, Tarnovskiy, Mazetov found themselves in the Moscow Military District. Their unit took part in aerial parades and major manoeuvers.

“And how is Makarenko?” I kept questioning my comrades.

“He’s alright. He married Katya — an instrument mechanic. Do you remember her — she served in our 3rd Squadron — a serious girl? By the way, during your last sortie, when we were flying onto the bridgehead across the Vistula, Makarenko seemed to see something white, similar to a parachute just above the ground near the target. Our guys got it hard then! Karev was shot up and barely landed on an island in the middle of the Vistula river, south of Warsaw. That evening he turned up with his gunner right in Meljanuw for our festivities — the Air Force Day celebrations. But that celebration was a very sad one. I remember the Comsomol deputy of the Division Political Department showing your leather gloves that you’d thrown to him before the sortie. He had invited you then for the first dance in the manor-house that evening. You thanked him, threw him the gloves and said: “It’s gonna be hot today…”

That day from Andrey Konyakhin and Leva Kabisher I found out about the death of several comrades-in-arms whose fate I had not known. Pavel Evteev — our regimental singer and bayan player had met his death — the regiment was bereft without his songs, without his warm-hearted music. And his regimental comrades would keep Pasha’s bayan for quite some time after that, carefully carrying it from one aerodrome to another…

“Well, and how are things between you and the Party?” my friends asked me after all the stories. “We’ve heard you managed to save your Party membership card.”

“Yes, I did. But it was taken away from me in our Division Political Department when I returned from the camp. I’d been in captivity for five months, and, of course, no membership fees had been paid for those months. Some instructor took away my card from me and gave me a reference instead. I gather the card was sent to the Central Political Department without being cancelled.”

“And what about Dyachenko, the head of the political department — was he present during this ‘procedure’?”

“No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t in the department then. He had no time to deal with that matter — he was taking his ‘honeymoon’ with a typist from the department”, Konyakhin entered the conversation. “He’d become totally shameless! He’d left a wife and three kids in the Ukraine, and here he was courting…”

“Well, what happened then with your Party business? Tell us.”

“Listen to me and I will…

Upon arrival in Moscow I applied with that reference to the Central Political Department of the Soviet Army. They didn’t find my Party membership card there and recommended looking for it in the Political Departments of different branches of the forces, including the Air Force. I wrote lots of letters and finally found my Party membership card in the Moscow Garrison Depots and Construction Political Department, somewhere near the Manège178. I came and showed the reference given to me in the Political Department of the 197th Ground Attack Aviation Division. They received me politely and amicably. I was in military uniform with Senior Lieutenant’s shoulder boards, my decorations and my walking stick…

‘Yes, your party membership card is kept here. I’ll hand it over to you now!’ A man from the Political Department moved to a safe as he said it. ‘By the way, in which hospital were you treated?’

‘I was in captivity…’

The officer’s face became stern, he slowly opened the safe and locked it straightaway: ‘I’m not giving you the Party membership card! Apply to the Party Commission.’

‘Which one? Why?’

‘We don’t have POWs, we have traitors! Leave the premises…’

I went out. I felt so bitter, so insulted… I walked by the Kremlin wall, sat on a bench in the Alexandrovskiy Garden. There was a roaring in my ears… Then I seemed to calm down, but the tears kept falling. I couldn’t stop them at all, I was shivering as if in a fever, my teeth were chattering… I remember a militia man179 came up to me and asked: ‘What’s happened? Are you alright? I’ll call an ambulance now!’

‘No, no’, I replied. ‘Help me get home…’ Thus, in a militia vehicle, I made it to my home at Arbat Street, 35. Ekaterina Vasilievna saw me, began to wail, put me to bed, gave me some powders to drink and I fell asleep…”

“And what happened next?” Andrey Konyakhin asked impatiently, clenching his fists. “What happened next?”

“Next? Two days after my visit to the Moscow Garrison Depots and Construction Political Department I was urgently summoned by telephone to the Moscow Military District Air Force, which was under the command of Vasiliy Stalin180. Why ‘urgently’? Because Vasiliy Iosifovich had written with his own hand on my letter to the Military Disctrict: ‘I think Egorova is right’.”

“And what happened after that?”

Here my husband begged: “Guys! Let’s change the record. It’d be better for you to tell what’s happened in your lives after the war, for Anna is getting upset telling you all this, and you’re grinding your fists into the table yourselves! Everyone’s nerves are at breaking point since the war…”

“You’re right, Vyacheslav Arsenievich”, Kabisher said. “It’s not easy to relive that abuse with her.”

But I decided to finish my story about the Party membership card… “So, there was no decision after the Party Commission in the Moscow Military District. The Party Commission of the land forces was inquiring into it, and were at a loss.”

“And then what?”

“Then there was a Party Board session in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, chaired by Shkiryatov — the head of Party Control. We were living in Obukhovo by then. The Board consisted of thirty men, if not more. In front of me the Chairman advised this Board that I had parachuted from my plane to the Germans… with a mission [from them]! I stood up and shouted: “Lies!” Everyone looked at me as if at a sworn enemy… In a word, they decided in the Central Committee: ‘You will receive a verdict in the Noginskiy District Party Committee at your place of residence’.”

“And what was the verdict?” My comrades asked in one voice.

“It was clear ‘Refusal of reinstatement as a Party member’. But I was pleased even with this verdict. They might have put me behind bars! They could have done anything… And I had already had two kids then.”

“And after that you sat as quiet as a mouse?”

“No, not at all. A year later I wrote another letter to the Party Central Committee, although all my friends and acquaintances were talking me out of it. ‘What do you need all this for?’ my husband was saying too. ‘Take care of your health, to raise our sons!’

And then they summoned me to the Party Central Committee again. There was another Party investigator this time — KGB Colonel Leonov. He received me very civilly: seated me on a couch, sat down next to me, showed me photographs of his two daughters, asked me about my husband and children. And then he began to question me on how I had found myself in German captivity.

‘Is it all really true?’ The Colonel wondered then. ‘Just yesterday an airman was sitting here and telling me he was as clean as a new pin, and at that time in my desk there were documents that discredited him.’

‘I am confident, Comrade Colonel, that in your desk there are no documents discrediting my name!’ I said sharply.

‘Alright, you may go now. Now wait to be summoned to the Party Board of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.’

This time the Party Board was very formidable — about twenty-five men. My thanks to Colonel Leonov: he reported everything honestly. And such was the verdict: ‘Taking into account her services to the motherland, she may join afresh in accordance with standard procedure’. Finding out about such a resolution of my case, people began to send and bring me recommendations: Dyachenko, the former head of the Political Department of the 197th Division; the Chief-of-Staff of our 805th Ground Attack Regiment Colonel Yashkin; the senior surgeon of the local hospital in Obukhovo — a Communist since 1917 who had done 10 years in the camps as an ‘enemy of the people’ and been exonerated during Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’; Leonov and many others… But I was obstinate again and didn’t want to join the Party afresh. And on top of that the Poles sent me the ‘Silver Cross of Merit’ which I had been awarded in May 1945. The Awards Department of the Ministry of Defence found me and handed over their debt — the Order of The Great Patriotic War, 1st Class…

The kids grew up healthy, but I was sick very often back then, so my ‘menfolk’ learned to do everything themselves at home. Igor would go shopping, Petya would do the housework and cook lunches. Vyacheslav Arsenievich had already written two books: ‘The Sturmoviks’ and ‘Comrades Airmen’.

“After the XX Party Congress181, I wrote to the Party Central Committee again”, I went on. “I requested justice be done. They replied very quickly with a phone call: ‘Your letter has been received. When will you be able to come and see us?’ I replied that my son had a cold and I was unable to come for now.’

‘Write down our phone number. When you have a chance to come — give us a ring, we’ll order you a pass.’

On the second day I couldn’t restrain myself and rang them up myself. “Come to Moscow”, they answered, “to the Staraya Square, 4”, and they gave me the entrance number, telling me the floor and the office…

I went. They received me very civilly again, but I kept my ears pricked. First they asked me about home, family, how my medical treatment was going, enquired about many other matters. Then they asked a short question: “Do you feel hard done by?”

“It would be quite an underestimation to put it that way…”

“Well, Comrade Egorova Anna Alexandrovna, we will be reinstating you as a Party Member… You will have to come to the Party Board once again.”

“No, I won’t do that! There have already been two trials, a just one and an unjust one!” — and I told them about Shkiryatov’s ‘Star Chamber’.

“It’ll be a formality”, they said gently. “There will only four or five people. A verdict in your presence is required — and that will be it.”

“Alright then, I’ll be there.”

When I arrived and saw in reception the former head of the Political Department of the 197th Ground Attack Division Ivan Mironovich Dyachenko, by whose orders his deputy had taken away from me my Party membership card, I felt ill at ease. But I saw that for some reason Dyachenko’s hands and legs were trembling. I began to calm him down as best I could, and at that moment they called us to the Boardroom.

As they had told me, only five people were present from the Board, and two of us. The Chairman of the Board Shvernik asked Dyachenko to explain how Egorova had managed to preserve her Party membership card in the Hitlerite hell and then he had taken it away from me.

Ivan Mironovich stood up and began to say confusedly that a mission had been set up, that Egorova had led into action 15 Sturmoviks escorted by 10 fighters… The Chairman interrupted him and demanded: “Keep it short, answer my question!”

Dyachenko began to talk about my sorties again, but at that point Shvernik stopped him loudly:

“Enough! You may go.”

Ivan Mironovich went out, and Shvernik, addressing the Board members, said that he had spoken to Marshal S. I. Roudenko in whose Army Egorova fought in the last stage of the war, and the latter had given me a good reference: “Egorova fought honourably!” And he went on:

“Comrade Egorova, we reinstate you in the Party. Your length of service is preserved. You will be paying your dues from the day the Noginskiy raikom182 of the Party hands over your new Party membership card. Unfortunately we are unable to have it done by the October celebrations — only five days are left…”

After the meeting with my comrades-in-arms Captains Andrey Konyakhin and Leva Kabisher I began to receive letters from my regimental comrades. Our former commissar Dmitriy Polikarpovich Shvidkiy sent me a letter as well. He said he was living in Kharkov, worked at a tractor plant and was looking for the document in which he and former head of the Corps Political Department Colonel Tourpanov had recommended I be awarded the Golden Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. Then the commissar ‘reported’ that they had already written to many authorities and even to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. At the end of the letter Shvidkiy asked me if I had seen the movie ‘Clear Sky’, directed by G. Choukhray, and advised me to be sure to see it, for this movie was about my fate and that of people like me.

In those months I got many letters form my regiment comrades, and they all advised me to see ‘Clear Sky’. “What kind of movie is it?” I thought and at last went to see it. I remember watching it and weeping, and my sons, sitting next to me, were urging me in whispers so as not to disturb the other viewers: “Mummy, stop crying. It’s only a movie, those are actors…”

In those days the Literaturnaya Gazeta journal published a piece ‘Egorushka’ written by Leonid Kashin. The editor of the magazine Starshina, Soldat told me on the phone that a Polish writer Janusz Przmonowski had arrived in Moscow and brought me a letter from Warsaw. The writer was eager to see me, and on the next day Lieutenant-Colonel Souvorov from the Starshina, Soldat magazine and Janusz Przymonowski sat at the table in our apartment. Przymonowski spoke excellent Russian. He asked me in detail about the war and was surprised that I fought in a Sturmovik: “It’s far from being a ladies’ plane! And to lead men into action? Unbelievable…”

And the letter Przymonowski had brought for me was from a Polish writer Igor Neverli. There was a photocopy from a West German magazine Deutche Fallschirmjäger (‘German Paratrooper’). Neverli addressed me:

A former officer of Hitler’s army had written in the Deutche Fallschirmjäger magazine:

Our Parachute division was relocated from sunny Italy to the pandemonium of the Eastern Front. We had a terrible experience under the hammer of Russian aviation that day. More than once I needed something at the dressing station, and there I witnessed the following:

They had brought a Russian pilot from the frontline in a medical cart. The guy looked badly maimed in his burned, torn flying suit. His face was covered with oil and blood. The soldiers who had transported him told me the pilot had bailed out of a burning plane and landed near their position. When they took off his helmet and flying suit, everyone was astounded: the pilot turned out to be a girl! All present were amazed even more by the behaviour of the Russian pilot who made no sound when pieces of skin were removed from her during treatment… How was it possible that such inhuman self-restraint had been fostered in a woman?

Thus, many years after the war, I found out a bit more about that tragic day of my life — and that was a view from the enemy’s side…

On 7 May 1965 a phone call resounded in our apartment. I took the receiver and quietly, so as not to awake my sleeping sons, said the usual: “Listening…”

“Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!” the excited voice of the poet Gilyardy flew through the lines.

I asked, laughing, “Why are you celebrating so early in the morning, Nikodim Fedorovich?”

I heard in reply: “Annoushka, turn on the radio! They’re broadcasting the Decree conferring on you the title of Hero…”

Then another call resounded… In a word, I was being congratulated by comrades-in-arms, public organizations, schools, editorial staff of newspapers and magazines, in which pieces about me and my brothers in arms had been published at different times. I will always remember the lines of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR conferring on me the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union: “For exemplary fulfilment of combat missions on the fronts of the struggle against the German-Fascist invaders during the years of the Great Patriotic War and for displays of valour and heroism during that…” I read the words of that document, and before my eyes I saw my regimental comrades who had gone forever into the inferno, roaring formations of Sturmoviks, the troubled years of my youth…

“What are they taking girls at the front for?” I heard the voice of Borya Strakhov, and it seemed that he stood in front of me on the aerodrome with field daisies in his hands and smiled boyishly, shyly and so brightly and joyfully. And after him the Sturmovik pilots rose in my memory: Pashkov, Andrianov, Usov, Stepochkin, Zinoviev, Tasets, Podynenogin, Pokrovskiy, Rzhevskiy, Mkrtoumov, Groudnyak, Balyabin…

The terrible years of the war have long gone. Our children have already become men and grandchildren have grown up. How fast the time goes by… Recalling the past battles and my frontline friends I think about their courage and nobility, their high sense of duty, contempt for death and the lofty feelings of frontline camaraderie, and more — their love for the motherland. There’s none better than her in the whole world!

I dedicate this book to those who didn’t return, and those who survived, and who passed away after the war — my dear comrades from the 805th Berlin Ground Attack Aviation Regiment. And forgive me, my comrades, that I didn’t see everything, haven’t remembered everything, haven’t written about everyone…