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

8. Fate plays with human life

I had been banished from the sky in the Ulyanovsk flying school and my dream had been ruined. The rainbow had led me astray… The Secretary of the City Comsomol Committee where I had applied, stood silent for a long while. Then he rubbed his hands, scratched his head, combed with his fingers his crew-cut of light brown hair and hotly exclaimed, “I’ve got it, Egorova! You will go to work as a Pioneer37 leader in an NKVD labour colony for juvenile offenders.38 You’ll be there until the next draft to the flying school. Over that time all this will have settled down, your brother is sure to have been released and you will join again. The head of the colony is a good man — he’ll understand. Anyway, let’s go and see him…”

Thus I settled at the colony in a small room of a wooden house. The colony occupied a large three-storey red-brick building located almost in the centre of Ulyanovsk in Bazarnaya Square. A large yard with shacks and workshops was adjacent to the building. All the kids studied in classes for four hours and for four hours they worked here in the yard in the workshops.

Of course, it was difficult to build a team from juvenile criminals. Each kid, aged from 8 to 16, already had a criminal record. Each group had its ‘warlord’ and I decided to start with him. But how would I pinpoint him? I began by simply walking around, watching and listening. I would come to a class, sit at the back, and observe how their life went on. The exercise books issued by the Russian teacher for dictation would instantly turn into playing cards and a real ‘battle’ would begin. Anything might be lost up to or including dinner. In the canteen you might see a scene such as one boy, stuffed, having eaten several dinners, and the losers drooling…

My suggestion of joining hobby groups: shooting, aircraft modelling, sailing, got not so much as a nibble. But after watching closely a couple more times and consulting with the tutors and teachers I selected eight boys from different groups and walked them to the Pioneers’ Palace, which was really splendid, in Ulyanovsk. And there, as I had arranged, we were received like dear old friends. Then I walked the boys to the tank and aerotechnical schools. We were received with interest everywhere: they showed us around, talked a lot and even became our sponsors. The tank cadets and the aircraftsmen began to spend time with us. It was they, I understand now, who lit a flame in the souls of these difficult kids. The ice was broken!

By the end of the third month of my work as a Pioneer leader the first detachment of Young Pioneers had been formed. For the first time a Pioneer’s bugle resounded in the colony yard, a drum began to tap and 30 boys with red ties, a standard bearer and his assistants, marched past an improvised tribune, walked out through the gate and joined the columns the people of Ulyanovsk’s May Day parade. But we had hardly gotten ourselves organised when an order, forbidding any kind of Pioneer activities in the juvenile offender colonies, arrived. I was fired…

The flying school’s supplementary intake hadn’t started yet and I was still living in the colony. I started work at the Volodarskiy Munitions Plant, situated across the Volga. The manager of the human resources department asked me “What do you want to do here?”

I answered that I begged to be employed at any kind of work but my trade was construction — steel fixer, caulker…

“Will you go to Accounts as a clerk?”

“But I’ve never worked in accounting.”

“Not a problem, you’ll learn”, the human resources officer said and added as if thinking it over: “If I send you to a workshop, they do shiftwork and for the first three months you’ll be on an apprentice’s wage. But in Accounts there’s only one shift and a permanent salary. You’ll just have to learn. When you see the chief accountant say you used to work as a clerk.

“I won’t be able to work as a clerk”, I kept repeating.

“You will, you will!” — And he registered me as an accounts clerk.

When I came to the chief accountant he asked me what kind of clerk I used to be.

“What d’you mean, what kind?” I was surprised.

“Well, was it bookkeeping or accounting?”

“Bookkeeping”, I replied smartly, remembering the official’s instructions.

“That’s good. Go to the transport department and see the senior accountant.”

I was immediately offered employment in the transport department accounts section and shown the desk I would sit at.

“Please tally up the statements” — the accountant handed me a stack of paper sheets covered with writing. But how to calculate, what with? There was an abacus in front of me and there was some kind of small machine. Everyone around me was smartly clicking their abacus beads, but of course I had no idea how to calculate that way! However, by lunchtime I had added up all the sheets but, to be honest, not with the abacus but on a sheet of paper. So that nobody could see how I was calculating I put it into a half-open drawer of the desk.

During lunch break everybody went to the canteen. They called me along but I declined and decided to talk to Maria Borek, — a bookkeeper sitting next to me. Maria would have her lunch an hour earlier than the rest so the section would not be unattended. As soon as everyone was gone I asked her “Maria Michaylovna39, please explain to me how to calculate on an abacus, and what this machine in front of me is for.”

Maria Mikhaylovna gave me a surprised look through her pince-nez, “That’s an adding machine. But how are you going to work without special training?”

I stood silent, and what could I say?

“Well, we will practise during the lunch break and for an hour after work, and now I will explain adding and subtracting on the abacus to you…”

Many years have gone since then but I still remember Maria Mikhaylovna Borek, a Leningrader born and bred. She taught me bookkeeping, supported me in every possible way, looked out for me. She got me involved in the social life too. Nevertheless, when I heard about the additional draft to the flying school I immediately brought my application for the entrance examination. But I was rejected during the preliminary interview.

“During the last draft you concealed that your brother was an enemy of the people, and now you want to worm your way into the school again? You won’t fool us — we’re awake!”

And again I was riding the Ulyanovsk-Moscow train. The wagon was crowded and filled with tobacco smoke. Children were crying. Lying on the topmost bunk I was sighing for my dear brother and my ruined dream. But how could my brother be an enemy of the people? But my brother was the people! Our parents had had sixteen children — eight of them had died, eight had survived. Poverty had made my father take any work. He used to work sometimes as a truckdriver — he carried fish from Ostashkov, from Seliger, sometimes he used to go to Torzhok for cucumbers. There had been years when he worked at a dye-works in Petrograd. My father froze in the trenches of the Imperialist War40, and defended Soviet rule during the Civil War. After all those battles he came home sick and died in 1925 at the age of forty nine. Vasya — the eldest of my brothers — wanted to study very much. But having done four years at the Sidorovskaya school he went by decision of a family council to work as a tailor’s ‘boy’.

Father said back then, “Mother, let’s sell our sheep and I’ll take Vas’ka41 to Petrograd. I’ll ask Egor Antonovich up there to put in a word for him with the boss. Very likely he’ll be a tradesman. There’s nothing here, is there? No place to study, and no way to keep him clad, shod and fed.”

And then he addressed his son, “Maybe, son, you don’t want to learn to be a tailor — then go and be a cobbler with Uncle Misha. He’s your uncle, your mum’s brother — he won’t lead you astray… The choice is yours.”

Vasya chose tailoring and studied right up until the October Revolution. The sixteen year old lad got himself a rifle during the days of the Revolution and went to war with it to fight against the Cadets42. Wounded, Vasya managed somehow to make his way to Aunt Agrafena’s, a distant relative of our father. The Aunt panicked and sent a letter to the village, writing that only God knew if Vasya would live or die. On receiving this news my mother abandoned everything and rushed to save her son. She nursed him back to health and brought him home — tall, skinny and shaven-headed. But Vasya didn’t stay at home long and soon found a job on the railways in Kouvshinovo. And some time later the workers put him forward for the position of salesman in their store. There was hunger and devastation in the country — back then they would choose as salesmen the most reliable men, the ones they trusted. Then Vasya was transferred to Rzhev, then to Moscow. It was a common biography of working class guys in those years: worked, studied on the job, became a Communist. Later he graduated from the Planning Academy, a Komvuz43. The workers of the Moskvoshvey44 N5 factory elected him as their deputy to the Mossovet45. “Head of the Planning Department of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Trade — what kind of enemy of the people is that?” I thought, turning over in my mind my dear brother’s whole life. “Defamation! Slander!” And I remembered my mum praying to God, kneeling before the icons, as she firstly listed all our names, the names of her children, begging God for health and wisdom for us, and then at the end of each prayer repeating: “God save them from slander!” Back then, in my childhood, I didn’t understand that word but now it was exposed before me in all its terrible nakedness…

How slowly the train was going! But on the approach to Moscow I had become somehow indifferent to everything. Where was I going, what for, whom to? Here was Moscow, the city of my Comsomol youth. It was here where my fate had turned so suddenly, binding a village girl to the city and the sky… Moscow met me with an overcast and rainy day. This time no one was meeting me, nobody was waiting for me. I rang my brother Vasiliy’s apartment from the train station. His wife Katya answered. Recognizing my voice she burst into sobs and couldn’t say a word for a while. Having calmed down a bit Katya asked “Where are you now, Nyurochka46?”

“At the Kazanskiy train station.”

“Wait for me near the main entrance, I’ll come around shortly.”

And there I was, standing and waiting. An hour went by, then another… And suddenly I noticed a poorly dressed woman with a hangdog look.

“Katya?”

It turned out she had been looking for me dressed in military uniform and I was looking for her: a beautiful woman with splendid hair, sparkling eyes and proud carriage… Again there were tears… She grasped my hand and led me inside the station. We found a vacant bench and sat down, and Katya told me Vasya had been tried by a troika47 that had sentenced him to ten years behind bars. Vasya had been accused of espionage and connections with British intelligence. His article in the ‘Economy newspaper’ had been allegedly reprinted by the British, and by this he had given away some sort of state secret…

“Ten years! For what?” Katya said, sobbing. “Nyurochka, my dear, please don’t ring me up or pop into my place anymore. Today I came by only to pick up Yurochka’s gear. We’re roaming between friends’ places at the moment although many of them are afraid of us… And I’m afraid I may be arrested at home… What will happen to Yurka48 then?” Katya wept. I was in tears as well. We parted…

Where was I to go? To Victor in his aviation unit? By no means, looking like this… To the aeroclub? No. To the Metrostroy? To pitying looks, to let everything remind me of my happiest time, my daring dreams, to let every allusion to the past make my life miserable? No way! Maybe later, but what now?.. I’ll follow my nose! Here in the timetable there is a train that will take me to my brother Alexey. So I’m off to that town…

And now the train was dawdling, halting at each sub-station, drearily rattling its wheels… I didn’t find my brother in Sebezh — he had been transferred to a new post. I stayed overnight at the neighbours’ place and in the morning I was on the road again. I had only 12 roubles left in my purse. I was just two roubles short of the fare to the town where my other brother Lesha49 worked. Not a drama — I bought a ticket for all the money I had, and being one station short of the destination wouldn’t be a big deal — I could walk it. Again I was riding in a passenger wagon on an upper bunk and nearly crying. Did I really have no willpower? And if I did why was I lying like this, flat on my back not wanting to make any effort? Why was I not fighting for my right to fly? I remembered the words of the First Secretary of the Comsomol Central Committee Sasha Kosyrev50, loved by all young people: “Never deviate from your chosen course. Keep moving forward courageously and proudly…”

“Keep advancing courageously and proudly!” I repeated these words aloud and at that moment the train, shuddering with all its long and clumsy body, stopped as if giving me a choice.

“Where are we?” I asked, my head hanging down.

“Must be Smolensk!” A man answered.

“How long are we stopping”

“Half an hour at least”

Unexpectedly for my neighbours in the wagon, I nimbly jumped down from my bunk, slipped my coat on, picked up my trunk and rushed for the exit.