TWENTY-ONE

16 July 1942

Dear Valyushka,

We captured a couple of German scouts yesterday. Not spies, just regular soldiers in faded camouflage. They were about my age, proper blond Aryan boys, but ragged and scrawny as starved rats. I expected them to be defiant. They weren’t. They seemed dazed, like they weren’t sure what had happened or how they had ended up here.

It was impossible not to see myself in them. I wondered if they had enlisted or been drafted, whether they fought because they truly believed in fascist ideals or because they were made to fight, or simply because Germany was their home and they didn’t know what else to do.

Pashkevich interrogated them himself. I don’t know if he was supposed to or if he just wanted to. Of course they didn’t speak Russian. Pashkevich berated them and smacked them around a bit for that and then found someone to translate. Petya clung to Vakhromov, who whisked him away, muttering, “The child doesn’t need to see this.”

Turns out they didn’t have anything to tell us that we didn’t already know. Pashkevich refused to believe that. He took out his service pistol and struck one of them across the mouth. It broke his jaw. The other begged him to stop and swore that they had already told him everything. So Pashkevich shot them. First the wounded one while his comrade watched. Then the other. One bright orange gunshot after another.

Pashkevich saw me staring at the bodies. He said, “Do you have a problem, Danilin?”

I said, “No, sir.”

He said, “Good. Now take out this trash and bury it.” And I did.

I could make excuses. I could say that it wasn’t my place to say anything or that it wouldn’t have made any difference. But the truth is that he was hurting them and I was afraid that if I tried to stop him, he would hurt me.

Or worse, give me the pistol.

I keep thinking about what I would have done if he had ordered me to shoot them. I wish I could say I don’t know. But I do. I would have done it. I would never have forgiven myself but I would have pulled the trigger. I wouldn’t have had the courage not to.

You worry about what bombing the enemy says about you. But you’re doing what must be done in a time of war. If no one was willing to drop bombs, we would lose the war and we would all be enslaved or slaughtered at the hands of the fascists. Those scouts, though, their deaths helped no one. And I allowed it to happen. What does that say about me?

Our vacation by the reservoir will come to an end soon. We’re awaiting orders. I’m reluctant to touch my radio for fear of what I’ll hear. Do you remember the troops encircled at Rzhev, how they bravely held out for all those months? They’re gone now. Wiped out. If they weren’t important enough to save, I have no illusions about what will happen to us.

Yours,

Pasha

29 July 1942

Dear Pasha,

Part of me wants to ask how Pashkevich ever became an NCO, but I know. The Red Army likes them that way. Hard and angry and ready to do anything. But we can’t let ourselves become like that, not even to win the war. If I were there, I would straighten him out. And he would have to listen to me, because I outrank him.

I don’t want to hear you agonizing over what you should have done or what you didn’t do, and especially not what you might have done under other circumstances. You can’t change what’s already happened. All you can control is what you do next.

I’m keenly aware of this. Our regiment has suffered two disasters, and the second one was entirely my fault.

The first was a freak accident amid the chaos of rebasing. The fascists are still pushing us back. Every few days we’re forced to move again, flying through skies thick with smoke from fields set alight by fleeing peasants who had no time to harvest them. There’s a rumor that the village of Trud Gornyaka was burned to the ground. I feel sick thinking about what might have happened to Anna Alexandrovna and the other peasants. Iskra saw me poking at my kasha at breakfast and she gave my hand a squeeze, too quick for the others to notice. She knows when to not say anything.

Moving around as much as we do, we can’t always tell what parts of a particular field are for planes, what parts are for vehicles, and what parts are for people. That’s what caused the accident. Iskra and I were reporting after a third sortie when there was a scream and a squeal of brakes. We dashed over. Galya, worn out from running errands around the airfield all night, had lain down for a short rest. A fuel truck was rushing to the planes. The driver didn’t see her until the wheels met her.

Galya was alive, but in bad shape. Her face had lost its usual color and was very, very pale. Sweat broke out on her forehead with every ragged breath she fought to draw as they lifted her onto a stretcher to await the air ambulance. We held her hands and told her, “You’ll be okay, Galya, just hold on,” even though we were far from sure.

I’ve never seen Bershanskaya so furious. I can only hope her fury is never directed at me. She ripped into the already-miserable driver and threatened to have him court-martialed.

When she came alongside Galya’s stretcher, Galya grabbed her sleeve and, struggling with each word, said, “Promise me that when I come back you’ll let me fly.”

I was amazed. Lying there grievously wounded and she was thinking about what she’d do when she returned. Of course Bershanskaya promised.

We slept very little the next day as we awaited news. The call that came from the hospital, to our surprise, was good. Galya had injured her spine, but it wasn’t broken, as they had feared. The doctors were impressed by her resilience. If all went well, they said, she’d be fit to return to duty in a month. She had a message for Bershanskaya: “Remember your promise!”

It was such a relief to know that we wouldn’t lose our precious Galya. The accident was a reminder of what could happen to any of us at any time. I resolved to take special care of Iskra the next time we flew, and I slept extra close to her afterward beneath the aircraft’s wing.

Sometimes we relocate so hastily that there is no time to construct dugouts and we sleep on the airfield under the wings of our planes. The ground crews thoughtfully park the planes on high spots to keep us from getting soaked if it rains. But it’s hard to sleep in broad daylight with only a cockpit cover hung over the edge of the wing, especially when a mechanic starts banging around on the engine right above you. One benefit of canvas: it hurts less than aluminum when you sit up too fast.

One of those days I woke and Iskra was gone.

I found her on a hill near the airfield, stretched out on the grass with her eyes closed. Sunlight bathed her delicate face. I lay down next to her and whispered, “Trying to get a tan?”

She laughed without opening her eyes. “No. I’m just enjoying it. I spent weeks in a cell, two meters by three. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever see this again.” She gestured broadly at the sun and the sky and the rolling grass of the steppe.

She acts so normal, I almost forget that anything had happened to her. But Iskra doesn’t have the luxury of forgetting. I asked, “Do you want to tell me what happened? I hate that you have to carry that alone.”

“No, baby cousin,” she replied. “I just want to feel the sun.”

Amid everything, it’s amazing that we get any flying done at all. But we do. And that brings me to the second incident.

I really don’t want to tell you about this one. I’d rather let you keep telling everyone how proud you are of me, your hotshot pilot friend. But however much I hate to disappoint you, lying to you is even more unthinkable.

It goes back to the partisans. There are thousands of them in fascist territory, from bands of a few dozen furtively cutting telephone lines in occupied cities to brigades with hundreds of fighting men and women. Surrounded by fascist forces, they have only air supply as their lifeline. Our agile biplanes can dart in and out of their forest hideaways, dropping ammunition and medical supplies or airlifting out wounded men.

The partisans light signal fires to guide us, but the crafty fascists light their own fires to draw us off. We get around this by prearranging a signal pattern. One night the partisans will place the fires in a triangle. Another night it will be a cross. Tonight it was three fires in a row along the patch of clear ground that served as a runway.

Something else was different today: Zhigli flew as a pilot. Bershanskaya has promoted her. She was a cautious navigator, but in the front cockpit, she’s fearless. The only thing she worries about is what might happen to her former pilot if she’s not around to take care of her.

The weather was foul. There was rain and a difficult headwind that kicked up into gusts strong enough to wrench the controls from my hands. Zhigli was flying ahead of us, but we couldn’t see a thing through the lashing rain.

We caught a glimpse of her as we neared the drop zone. She should have already dropped her cargo and gone, but instead she was circling the clearing. I waited for the white shapes of parachutes to pop open underneath her plane. None appeared. After a couple of circles, her U-2 peeled away. But it didn’t head back to the airfield. It passed us and Zhigli waggled its still fully loaded wings, then turned north—the opposite direction she should have gone.

“She wants us to follow her,” said Iskra, as if I didn’t know what a wing waggle meant.

“I know,” I said a little defensively. “But what is she doing?”

Iskra sounded doubtful. “Something must have gone wrong with the drop.”

We were over the clearing. I spotted a line of three lights, flaring up and dying down erratically in the wind. Everything looked fine, and I told my cousin so.

She said, “It’s the right signal, but . . .”

I didn’t have time for Iskra’s waffling. I brought Number 41 down to the right altitude for a drop.

Iskra didn’t pull the release. She said, “Maybe we should follow Zhigli.”

“I have no idea what she’s up to and I won’t follow her to find out. Come on, Iskra, you know Zhigli gets ideas. She doesn’t want to fly if she hears a dog howling because she thinks it’s a bad omen. Stick to the flight plan.”

“She must have had a reason.”

I’d had enough. I wanted to mark off that fiftieth sortie. So I said, “Junior Lieutenant, I’m the commanding officer of this vessel and I’m ordering you to make the drop.”

We’re real soldiers now, not play soldiers. She obeyed my order.

When we were back at the airfield, trying not to slip on the wet canvas as we climbed out of our cockpits, Iskra said, “I can’t believe you pulled rank on me!”

“Sorry,” I replied. “The middle of a sortie is not a good time for a sudden change of plan. Please don’t be angry.”

“But Zhigli . . .”

Her plane came in just then, still laden with supplies. “She’s all right. And see? She failed to make the drop.”

Water streamed down the stairs of the plank-roofed command dugout as we headed to our debrief. We waded in, trying not to splash.

We found Zhigli there, doing what she does best: getting other people in trouble.

“. . . north to south. But the partisans’ runway runs east to west!”

Bershanskaya riffled through the papers on her desk and found an aerial photo of the partisan camp. The makeshift buildings and paths that made up the partisan camp reminded me of the pattern of wires and tacks on your homemade radio. “Look at that—you’re right! What were the exact instructions?”

Our head of communications said, “‘Three fires in a line along the runway.’ Not ‘three fires in a line east to west.’”

“Right, so any Germans who intercepted the message wouldn’t know which way to line them up,” said Zhigli.

Bershanskaya asked, “Did you find the real drop site?”

A small mercy for me, Zhigli hadn’t.

“We’ll try again when the weather clears up. No harm done.”

“No harm done by me,” said Zhigli. She pointed at me. “I tried to warn her, but she ignored me! You made the drop, didn’t you, Valka?”

I said sharply, “I completed the mission. It wasn’t my job to follow you on your flight to nowhere.”

“And it never occurred to you that I might have had a reason? You thought I was going for a joyride in a rainstorm carrying a hundred kilos of ammunition?” Zhigli’s dark-lashed eyes narrowed. “Or did you think I was leading you into a trap?”

“You can’t expect me to trust you,” I said.

“You should have,” said Bershanskaya. Her face was stern, with no hint of the good humor that usually danced beneath the surface. “It was a copycat signal.”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I realized what that meant.

Zhigli crossed her arms. “You dropped your cargo in the middle of a German camp. The fascists just got an early New Year’s present.”

“‘I’m the commanding officer of this vessel and I’m ordering you to make the drop,’” muttered Iskra, mimicking my voice.

“You’re not in trouble for making the drop, Koroleva,” said Bershanskaya. “You had no way of knowing. It was an accident. Two heavy machine guns and ten SMGs’ worth of accident, but still. The real issue is why you ignored Zhigulenko’s attempt to alert you.”

Zhigli began, “Because she’s convinced I’m—”

Bershanskaya held up a hand to silence her. “I know there’s bad blood between the two of you. It doesn’t matter why. But you need to work it out. Short of pistols at dawn, I don’t care how, just deal with it. I can’t have two pilots in my regiment who won’t work together, and I won’t separate you like squabbling schoolchildren. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, gritting my teeth. I couldn’t explain that this was more than a playground fight.

The major dismissed Zhigli, but told me, “One moment, Koroleva. There’s one more thing you need to do.”

She made me tell the division commander.

Heading to that meeting felt like being sent to the principal’s office after picking a fight with the boys at school; and like my defiant preteen self, I made up a long list of excuses, blaming Zhigli or the partisans or the weather. Except then I realized who would most easily take the blame for me. Iskra. There was an entirely different way to look at the fiasco: a questionably loyal navigator with known ties to wreckers deliberately drops weapons into enemy territory, despite clear indications that it is the wrong location.

No. No one could be given cause to look into Iskra and her past. She might have escaped unscathed last time, but the arrest was a permanent black mark on her record. She would never be truly out of danger. And that meant I had to take the fall, completely and unequivocally. I had messed up due to pure stupidity and that was the whole story.

You can imagine how that went. The division commander has been waiting for a mistake like this since we arrived. I got a long lecture in which the words “girls” and “useless” frequently coincided. Bershanskaya managed to cool him off a bit, but in the worst possible way: by pointing out that Zhigli hadn’t made my mistake and that it was therefore a single pilot’s isolated error, not representative of the whole regiment.

He didn’t disband us on the spot, though he wanted to, but he did ground me for two days. It would be longer, but we’re at war and we can’t spare pilots, even censured ones. Worse, he’s contacting his superiors. Says he’s willing to go all the way to the top if that’s what it takes to get rid of us. However that goes, it’s safe to say that I’ve set our regiment’s efforts to prove our competence back to zero.

I guess the list of people who believe in me is back down to just you.

Yours,

Valka