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

35. The SMERSh

I am careful with my memory — generally I try not be carried away by recollections. Memory is memory and life is life. Nevertheless, I have to tell my grandchildren and great-grandchildren the truth. That truth that when the fighting near Küstrin had died down and the rear lines had caught up, all of us survivors, now ex-prisoners of the Küstrin camp, were ordered to walk to the city of Landsberg — for a check-up. I could barely walk, but there was a horse-driven waggon on the road, and Doctor Sinyakov talked a coachman into giving me a lift to the nearest town, to where the soldier was heading. Georgiy Fedorovich told me to wait for them by the first building at the entrance to the town. The soldier helped me: he lifted me off his wreck, took me to the proper place, helped meto sit down. But I didn’t have to wait long. As soon as I had sat down on a bench, an officer with a sabre and two soldiers with submachine-guns on both his sides came up to me. “Who are you?” I explained: “Doctors are coming to pick me up shortly. They will assist me in getting to the town for a check-up”. “You know, we should feed you! You must be starving!” I thought it was a bit strange. He was behaving in an unpleasant, affected way. And he also had quite a ‘professional-looking’ face. And they lifted me up under the arms, took my straw handbag and off I strode through the prostrate German town. The dashing officer was in front of us, and the two soldiers were holding me under the arms… I plodded along and the tears were running… I was wearing the jacket ‘cut to the latest Warsaw fashion’, that gift from the British POWs. On the jacket were my two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star, the medals ‘For Valour’ and ‘For the Defence of the Caucasus’: the Party membership card was in my breast pocket. My hair, singed by the fire, had just begun to grow out and that was why I’d covered my head with the warm scarf — it was a gift from the Yugoslav peasant from the Banat province — Zhiva Lazin.

So I walked through the town — in such a uniform, slippers made of trenchcoat smooth woolen with red stars on the toes, escorted by a ‘guard of honour’. “Soon you will have a dinner and everything else!”

I was brought to a commandant’s office — to a Soviet officer who was a town major. Without hesitation, with no particular formality or interrogation of a ‘suspicious person’ he ordered me shoved into a vehicle, and then under a reinforced escort carried to the SMERSh Counter-espionage Section of the 32nd Rifle Corps of the 5th Shock Army. There I was ‘billeted’ on a trestle-bed in the watch-house and brought some kind of thick broth. Hitlerite POWs were downstairs in the basement, and I, thank God, was not with them but above them. As airmen say, I ‘had an altitude gauge’…

The very first night two soldiers with submachine-guns took me for an interrogation. I had to walk up a very steep stairway to the first floor of the building adjacent to the watch-house. My legs were not very responsive, the thin skin that had just appeared on the burns was cracking. The crooks of my arms and knee-joints were stinging and bleeding. But if I tried to stop — a soldier would push me in my back with his submachine-gun…

I was led into the room which was lit brightly. The walls were covered with paintings; a large carpet was placed on the floor. There was a major sitting behind the desk. He had benevolent looks — but he started by taking away my awards and the Party membership card. For a long time he did now allow me to sit: all that time he spent studying the items with such attention — using a magnifying glass. I thought I was just about to collapse but held on by drawing on some remaining strength, and kept asking for permission to sit down. At last the Major gave permission. I thought that no force would tear me off the chair now! But no, the ‘benevolent’ major suddenly barked:

“Get up!”

I sprang to my feet. And so they started, the questions rained down upon me: “Where did you take the decorations and the Party membership card from? Why did you give yourself up? What was your mission? Who gave you the mission? Where were you born? Who is your contact?”

The major kept asking me these and other questions in that order or mixed up, right up until morning. Whatever I said, he shouted the same thing: “You’re lying, you German shepherd!”

This was to go on for ten nights in a row! They escorted me to the toilet. Food was brought to me once a day at the same place — the watch-house, on the trestle-bed… I was snubbed with the dirtiest words… My name was forgotten: I now was ‘the Fascist Shepherd’.

I cannot forget how after the war was over I told about my ‘stay’ with the SMERSh to Petr Karev — the former commander of our regiment. It was the first time I ever talked to somebody about it — and I was crying almost hysterically And then Petr yelled:

“And you did what?! Why didn’t you remind him about flying reconnaissance missions in 1941 — on an unarmed U-2?! When in the same year your U-2 plane was set on fire, shot down by the German fighters — but being scorched with fire, you delivered the orders to our troops! And wasn’t it ever worse? All you have passed through? We took Kovel, Lutsk, Warsaw… Why didn’t you, a Sturmovik pilot, throw something at the mug of that scoundrel rear trooper!?..”

Karev angrily axed the air with his hand and suggested: “Let’s drink, Anya Egorova. Let’s have our ‘frontline 100g ration’!”

On the tenth day of my stay with the SMERSh I ran out of patience. I rose off my trestle-bed and without saying a word moved towards the door. . I made it to that wide stairs and rushed to the first flour — straight for that major.

“Freeze, you whore! I’ll shoot!” That was a ‘fine hint’ a guard gave, rushing towards me. But I kept going up the stairs almost at a run. Where did I gain the strength for that? I think in the 18th century the Englishman John Bradman remarked: “Beware the anger of a patient man”. How right was he…

I flung the door open and from the doorway shouted (or was it that it only seemed to me that I was shouting?): “When will you quit taunting me?.. Kill me, but I won’t let you taunt me!”

I came back to my senses lying on the floor on the carpet. There was a glass of water next to me, but no one was in the room. I quietly sat up, drank the water, somehow dragged myself to the divan standing by the far wall, and sat down. Then the door opened and Major Fedorov entered. By that time I already knew his surname.

“Have you calmed down?” he asked politely.

I didn’t reply.

“Nine days ago the former POWs of the Küstrin ‘SZ’ camp — the doctors — were looking for you. They wrote all they knew about you. How you were captured, how you behaved and how they’d been treating you. They requested you be allowed to go with them to the Landsberg camp for a check-up, but we couldn’t do that then. It looked too suspicious — to preserve your decorations in such a hell. And moreover — to keep the Party membership card! To cut it short, you are now free to go. You are considered as being checked. If you want, stay with us and we will find you a job…”

“No, no”, I said hurriedly. “I wish to go back to my regiment. It is somewhere around there, fighting in the same sector…”

“You are free to go wherever you want”, snapped out the major.

“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 Zampolit D. P. Shvidkiy to mount an ‘expedition’ to search for me. And now we were to meet…

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 Küstrin 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 zampolit approached too, then our aerial gunners, dressed in fur flying suits. They mobbed me, greeted me noisily, interrupted each other telling me the regiment news and only one man stood aside and, not hiding his grief, wept, while repeating: “And my Dousya was killed…” I looked closely at the crying man and recognised the aerial gunner Serezha whose death Dousya had bewailed so much. She had been stowing anti-tank bombs in the cockpit before her last sortie so as to avenge Serezha’s death…

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 rebellion173. All that Aunty Anisya had left from him was an enlarged photo of the dashing seaman and their two kids — Kolya and Panya, who she had had to raise on her own. With the years the pain of his loss had begun to pass away, and Anisya had acquired her cheerful character again.

After all my misfortunes I had at last arrived at mum’s in the village of Volodovo… We were sitting with our arms around each other, with my Aunty at the table covered by a festive homespun white tasselled tablecloth. A samovar polished with brick dust to a glitter close to gold — as it had seemed to me in my childhood — was boiling on the table. This samovar was the ‘medium’ one. It was called that because we had three samovars at home, presented by the priest Gavriil — mum’s uncle, brother of my Grandmother Anna. The first samovar was the biggest — a bucket of water would fit into it; the medium one contained half a bucket, and the smallest five glasses. Mum used to boil it up quickly early in the morning, and first of all drank tea from it. The big one would be heated up with charcoal beforehand, and only when the whole family was together. It was especially good at home on Saturdays. The banya174 would be heated, and at the beginning, when the heat was highest, the menfolk would bathe, and after that the womenfolk. After the banya we would drink tea till we sweated. On the table there would be dishes of soaked red bilberries, cranberries and whortleberries…

We had a lot of fiction literature at home. Where had those many books come to a remote village from? That same priest Gavriil used to bring them to us kids, as presents, and a lot of books had accumulated at our place. He used to tell us a lot of history, geography, knew plenty of verse. I remember Father Gavriil advising us what to read. And now, in 1945, when with my Aunty I sat at the festive table laid in honour of my ‘resurrection from the dead’, and when mum had come out of the kitchen bringing plates of snacks, Aunty announced loudly (so mum would hear it):

“And now, my little niece, I’ll tell you how your mum held your wake. I won’t tell a lie”, my Aunty began. “There was plenty of food on the table, there were wine glasses, and she went and took the decanter from the locker, poured each of us a full wine glass, and put the decanter back in the locker, and then turned the key around to lock it up!”

“What you’re saying is not true, Anisushka!” mum beseeched.

But Aunty Anisya, giving me a wink, went on: “What do you mean, not true? It’s the truth, the plain truth!”

Mum was distressed, having failed to understand another of Anisya’s jokes, but Aunty kept clowning, and so cheerful, so warm was it in my soul after all I had been through, that now I can’t convey all this, I can’t find the right words…

Here is another episode from that distant time. When mum had received a message from me, and the neighbours had confirmed that she hadn’t lost her mind and that her younger daughter Anyutka was alive, mum put on her holiday clothes in celebration and headed to the District Military Commissariat.

Later the military commissar would recall that visit: “A babushka175 came in agitated — and went straight to me. ‘Sonny’, she says, ‘get me rid of this accursed pension!’ I begin to question the babushka, ‘what’s your surname, who are you, who is the pension for’, but she kept on about the same thing: “Get rid of the pension, and that’s it!’ At last I sorted out what was what, gave her a seat, gave her some tea — and she left, pacified…”