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

1. Led astray by a rainbow

I’d made my choice — I was going to be a professional pilot! Nothing else would do! One cannot split oneself into two halves, one can’t give one’s heart to two passions at once. And the sky has a special claim on one, completely engaging all one’s emotions…

I remember the send-off as a bright sunny festival, although the day was quite likely to have even been overcast. But… my friends’ smiles, laughter and jokes — all this so dazzled me and so turned my head, and my joy, overfilling me, so fogged my vision… When the train had taken off I, by now on the carriage platform, stared ahead for a long time, blinking with half-shut eyes, failing to make anything out…

In Ulyanovsk, I rushed straight from the train station to the Venets1 — the highest spot above the Volga. And such an inconceivable space opened up before me from up there, such an expanse that it took my breath away! Here it was before me — the mighty Russian river that had given Russia the bogatyrs2… And what a wonder, above the Volga covered by young December ice, a rainbow began to shine. It threw its multicoloured yoke from one bank to the other across the whole blue sky — and this in the wintertime? Yet maybe I had just imagined it? But I was already laughing loudly, sure that it was a rainbow, and that it was a sign of luck. Again just like back at the Kazan train station in Moscow, waves of joy were coming from my chest and their splashes were curtaining the horizon with a rainbow mist. It had been no easy ride — exams passed brilliantly, approval given by a nitpicking medical board — and I had been enrolled as a flying school cadet!

…We had already been issued with uniforms: trousers, blouses with blue collar patches, boots with leggings. It seemed I had never worn a better outfit in my life although it was obviously a bit big for me. In a word I liked everything in the school from reveille and the physical exercises up to marching with a song before bedtime. We studied a lot. I did well in the classes. But once… I still see that day as a terrible dream.

“Cadet Egorova! The school commander’s calling you.”

When I entered the office and reported as one should, everyone sitting at the table met me with silence and just stared at me gloomily. I remember standing at attention and waiting.

“Do you have a brother?” I heard someone’s voice, and answered:

“I have five brothers.”

“And Egorov Vasiliy Alexandrovich?”

“Yes, he’s my elder brother.”

“So why have you concealed the fact that your brother is an enemy of the people3?”

For a moment I was taken aback.

“He’s not an enemy of the people, he’s a Communist!” I shouted in anger, wanted to say something else, but my throat dried up straightaway and only a whisper came out. I could no longer see the faces of those sitting in the office and heard little — only my heart throbbing stronger and stronger inside my chest. It seemed that my brother was in trouble and I knew nothing about it… From somewhere I heard, like a sentence:

“We are expelling you from the school!”

I don’t remember leaving the office, changing into my civilian clothes in the cloakroom, the gates of the flying school shutting behind me. They had taken the sky away from me… That rainbow had led me astray… I hadn’t found happiness… And again I found myself on a steep river bank, but this time not up on the Venets but far out of town. I searched through my pockets, found my passport, Comsomol4 membership card, a small red certificate with the Metro emblem on the front — the Government’s token of appreciation for my participation in the first stage of the Moscow Metro construction. That was all I had.

In agonising torment and anxiety I decided to go to see my mother in the village. There, in my native land of Tver I would be always understood and supported. But I suddenly thought: I haven’t even got a kopeck — not even enough for a passage ticket. And then I headed for the City Comsomol Committee…