Last Witnesses : An Oral History of the Children of World War II

“AND WHY AM I SO SMALL?…”

Sasha Streltsov FOUR YEARS OLD. NOW A PILOT.

My father had never seen me…

I was born without him. He had two wars: he came back from the Finnish War, and the Patriotic War began.^*1 He left home for the second time.

Of my mama I have kept the memory of how we walked in the forest, and she taught me: “Don’t hurry. Listen to how the leaves fall. How the forest sounds…” And we sat on the road and she drew little birds for me in the sand with a twig.

I also remember that I wanted to be tall and I asked mama, “Is papa tall?”

Mama replied, “Very tall and handsome. But he never shows it off.”

“And why am I so small?”

I was still growing up…We didn’t have any photographs of my father left, but I needed a confirmation that I was like him.

“You’re like him. Very much like him,” mama reassured me.

In 1945 we learned that my father had been killed. Mama loved him so much that she went mad…She didn’t recognize anybody, not even me. And as far back as I can remember, I always had only my grandmother with me. Grandmother’s name was Shura, and so as not to get confused, we decided I would be Shurik, and she Grandma Sasha.^*2

Grandma Sasha didn’t tell me any fairy tales, she spent the time from morning to late at night doing laundry, plowing, cooking, bleaching. Tending the cow. On holidays she liked to recall how I was born. Here I am telling you, and there’s my grandmother’s voice in my ears: “It was a warm day. Uncle Ignat’s cow calved, and thieves broke into old Yakimshchuk’s garden. And you came into the world…”

Planes kept flying over our cottage…Our planes. In the second grade I firmly decided to become a pilot.

My grandmother went to the recruiting office. They asked for my documents. She didn’t have any, but she had my father’s death notice with her. She came home and said, “We’ll dig potatoes, and you’ll go to the Suvorov School in Minsk.”^*3

Before sending me on my way, she borrowed flour from somebody and baked little pies. The military commissar put me in a truck and said, “You’re honored on account of your father.”

It was the first time in my life that I rode in a truck.

After a few months my grandmother came to visit me at school and brought me an apple as a treat. She asked me to eat it.

But I didn’t want to part with her gift so soon…

*1 The Soviet name for WWII was the Great Patriotic War (or Great Fatherland War).

*2 Shura, Sasha, and Shurik are all diminutives of the names Alexander and Alexandra.

*3 Suvorov Schools, founded in the Soviet Union in 1943 and still operating, are boarding schools for boys fourteen to eighteen years old, with an emphasis on military training. They give preference to boys from military families, particularly war orphans. The name comes from Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800), the last generalissimo of the Russian army, who was reputed never to have lost a battle.