11 June 1942
Dear Pasha,
The night before last, we all gathered to see the commanders off: Bershanskaya and her navigator, our squadron commander Olkhovskaya and her navigator, and the command crew of the other squadron. After all our work, only six people got to fly.
The biplanes, each loaded with two bombs under each lower wing and two under the fuselage, left the light of the hooded kerosene lanterns and were immediately swallowed up by the darkness. Soon we could no longer hear their rattly engines.
As we waited out there in the cold night air, it sank in that this was not a training mission. Out there in their little planes, those women weren’t concerned with regimental politics. They faced guns, maybe even fighters. And these fighters wouldn’t just play with them. It was difficult not to spend the whole time thinking of the worst possible things that might happen. In the future I’ll be flying and won’t have time to worry about everyone else, but for the mechanics and armorers, every night will be like this.
And then came that familiar ticking in the distance. One of our “sewing machines” had returned. It came to a bumpy landing and Bershanskaya climbed out, along with the regimental navigator. Notwithstanding that the pilot was our superior officer, we mobbed them with hugs, kisses, and cheers. The 588th was combat active! Bershanskaya gave us a modest smile. Then the command crew of the second squadron arrived. They accepted our congratulations coolly.
A few more minutes passed before we realized that our celebration was premature. Olkhovskaya had not returned. The other crews hadn’t seen her get shot down; she and her navigator had simply vanished. We spent the rest of the night and the next day waiting, hope glimmering whenever we thought we heard an engine or glimpsed movement in the sky. But there was nothing.
Olkhovskaya’s mechanic went to Bershanskaya with tears streaming down her face. “Was it my fault? Did something go wrong with their plane? I checked everything so carefully. . . .”
Bershanskaya should’ve lied and told her that the plane was fine. Instead she said honestly, “I don’t know.”
We knew that this would happen someday. Not all of us would come home after the war. But I wasn’t prepared. In our short months together, every girl in our regiment has come to feel like an essential part of it, someone without whom the 588th wouldn’t be the 588th anymore.
Truthfully I didn’t like Olkhovskaya much. She was strict and humorless. But now I remember the other things, like how she milked a cow the day before she disappeared and shared the milk with us. If Major Raskova had been here, she would have known what to say to raise our spirits, but Bershanskaya has no gift for speaking.
Gone without a trace. Do you know what that means, Pasha? It means that two airwomen who were eager to fight are now listed as deserters. It means that their families get nothing, not even the right to say that their daughters were killed in the Great Patriotic War.
It was a bitter consolation that they had successfully bombed their target. Bershanskaya assembled a glum and shell-shocked group of airwomen in the morning, her face an impassive mask shutting us out from her feelings.
She informed us that, despite our loss, the division commander judged the mission a success and was ready to declare us operational. “But,” she added, “I’m prepared to request one additional week to prepare. It’s been a difficult night. I don’t want to send you into combat if you don’t feel ready.”
I felt anything but ready. But I imagined Popov’s reaction when Bershanskaya made her request. Those little girls play at being pilots but go to pieces at their first casualty. It was the excuse he needed, proof that we lacked the mettle to be soldiers. So I asked, “What do the male regiments do when they lose someone? Do they take time off?”
The major bit her lip and said, “No. They don’t.”
Our decision was unanimous. If we wanted to be treated like the other regiments, we needed to act like them. If that meant flying our first operational mission the night after our first loss, then we would fly through the pain. So Bershanskaya appointed a new command crew for the second squadron: Zhenechka and her pilot, Dina. Zhenechka was distraught about receiving a promotion over the bodies of her comrades. She tried to turn it down. The major told her she had to obey orders. It was cruel, but the squadron needed a commander. I admit I’m glad it wasn’t me, that I won’t be the one stepping into a dead woman’s boots, issuing the orders she would have issued and flying the missions she would have flown.
We flew our first combat mission last night in the rain. Popov had assigned us an easy target. Defenseless infantry. It would be a walk in the park, he said, something even a girl couldn’t fail at.
The fields were all boggy. The vehicles’ wheels kept sinking in. Our ground crews dismantled a fence and used the logs to make bumpy hardstands and runways for the planes, but our fuel truck kept getting mired down. After hauling it out of the mud twice, the girls gave up and carried the fuel to the planes in jerry cans.
Dina and Zhenechka left before us. We were to follow exactly three minutes later. Iskra kept track of the time on her watch. Two days ago we were overflowing with enthusiasm. Now I wasn’t sure what I felt. Not nervous, exactly, though I should have been. Unsettled, I guess. I looked back at Iskra. Her face was pure focus, her mouth set in a line.
Just before we were set to take off, Bershanskaya came running up to the side of our plane, mindless of the rain. For an instant I panicked at the thought that she would change her mind and cancel our mission. A part of me hoped for it. But she only looked up at us and said, “Be careful.”
“We will,” I said, hoping I could keep that promise.
The Polikarpov’s wheels skidded and slipped into the cracks between the wet logs, but I got her nose up and into the air before we hit the mud. The raindrops trickling up the windscreen made it hard to see, but it scarcely mattered, the night was so dark. I had to trust Iskra to somehow correlate the shadowy shapes we could see below us to the landmarks on her map. Trust. There it was again.
Before I knew it, I heard Iskra’s voice, tinny and hollow through the speaking tube, telling me, “Target in sight.”
Looking at the ground, I could make out the vague outlines of barracks, vehicles, and small human figures running here and there. Smoke rose from somewhere. Dina and Zhenechka had left their mark. And then I was struck with the knowledge of what we were doing. Images flashed into my mind: fires and figures lying motionless.
And then the image of Olkhovskaya’s plane, spiraling to the ground.
“When you’re ready, Iskra,” I told my cousin.
“Bombs away,” said Iskra. There was a click and the U-2 leaped forward, light and agile without its burden.
We were flying low. As the bombs detonated, a cloud of warm steam enveloped us; it was glowing with the light of the explosions. I brought the plane around to return to the auxiliary airfield. Our airfield lanterns, called “flying mice,” shine in only one direction, so if you approach from any other, you can’t see anything and could easily crash. I hadn’t been afraid over the target, but now an irrational fear crept up on me, a feeling that I had done something wrong, a schoolchild’s fear. I found myself second-guessing Iskra, wondering if it was taking longer for us to return, if we had already overshot the field, how we would ever find it again if we had.
But then I saw the little pinpricks of light marking the airfield. I touched down and felt our plane’s tires sink into the soft ground. Dina and Zhenechka’s U-2 was nearby. I could hear them talking quietly.
“There wasn’t any flak,” said Zhenechka, her voice tinged with disappointment. “It was like a training run.”
“The flowers come first and the fruit comes later,” was Dina’s philosophical reply.
Our ground crew came alongside to get Number 41 armed and fueled again, and Galya brought us tin mugs of tea. There was no shelter at the auxiliary airfield, so we sat on the lower wing while we waited. The upper wing kept us a little bit drier.
Bershanskaya sat on the passenger seat of a bomb truck, her feet on the running board. She didn’t say anything to us, but she gave us a smile—not a shy, crooked half smile but a proud smile.
I was still shaken and unsettled from that first mission when they got the plane turned around, but I had no choice; we did another run of the same target. We were never fired on. We returned to Trud Gornyaka as day dawned. Our host was already out. We stripped off our soaked uniforms and climbed the wooden ladder to the sleeping platform on the oven. I should have immediately fallen asleep after that long night, but an hour later, I found myself sitting up, trembling.
“Can’t sleep?” said Iskra.
“No,” I replied.
“Me neither.” She was silent for a moment. And then, “Do you want to talk?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
Our next sortie is tonight.
Yours,
Valka