TWENTY-TWO

2 August 1942

Dear Pasha,

Galya can barely sit up, but already she can’t wait to be back with the regiment. Every day she asks when she’ll be well enough to return. She’s bored out of her mind at the hospital. She and Zhenechka write each other poems and stories and Zhenechka reads them to the rest of us. It keeps Galya occupied—and us too, because we’re rained out.

Last week’s rain kicked up into a beautiful summer thunderstorm. Lightning flashed and the downpour was so torrential that we couldn’t see a meter ahead. Lucky me: I was grounded on days when there was no possibility of flying anyway.

There was also no chance to rest or relax. Thunder constantly boomed overhead. Our dugouts were half flooded. Vera, in the bed by the doorway, would put out her hand to test the depth of the water during the night. If it was only a few centimeters deep, she’d say, “It’s fine, go back to sleep.” But when it got shin deep, she’d throw on a coat and wade out to the pump truck to get them to pump it out.

Colonel Popov made good on his threat: he complained about us to the marshal in command of the front. Turns out the marshal and Major Raskova go way back. Keen to see how her regiments were faring, he arranged an inspection the day the weather cleared up. And, he told us, he was bringing a friend.

I was nervous about the inspection, in part because of our damp and bedraggled state, but mainly because I was convinced Germans would show up somewhere armed with Russian SG-43s at that exact moment. It didn’t help that his friend turned out to be Tamara Kazarinova.

Kazarinova, wearing her customary frown, immediately stalked, or rather limped, over to Bershanskaya.

Bershanskaya said truthfully, “Major. This is a surprise.”

“I’ve been hearing so much about your regiment that I wanted to see it for myself,” said Kazarinova. “I would have thought that a brand-new commander might take it slow and spend more time learning how things are done, but you’ve jumped in as though you’ve commanded your whole life.” Her tone left no question as to how she felt about this upstart civilian.

“During wartime, we must all step up to greater responsibility,” said Bershanskaya.

“What’s this I hear about your girls gliding? Your mechanics didn’t have trouble installing their engines, did they?”

Bershanskaya replied that our gliding technique was strategic and had, so far, been highly effective.

“Frankly, I’m impressed by what you’ve accomplished here,” said Kazarinova. “Given your level of experience, it’s amazing that you’ve even gotten those trainers off the ground.”

That was enough for Bershanskaya. She said in a tone of carefully controlled politeness, “How’s the aircraft factory? Still unthreatened, I hope? It must be nice having such a relaxing assignment that you can afford to take a few days off to visit an old friend. But I suppose your regiment can spare you easily enough, since you can’t fly anyway.”

Kazarinova glowered, but she only said, “Knowing Marina Raskova doesn’t make you untouchable. Remember that.”

She retreated to rejoin the marshal. Bershanskaya bit her lip while the rest of us sneaked nervous glances at each other, trying to gauge how much trouble she had just gotten us into. She’s made us a very dangerous enemy.

But I can’t say that any of us blamed her.

To my astonishment, the marshal actually seemed pleased with us. He’s the same man who inspected us in Engels all those months ago. He praised us for how far we’d come, saying that Raskova’s girls were all grown up. Then he turned to Popov and said, “But it’s probably hard for the girls in the ground crews to do everything themselves. Why don’t we send them ten or twenty men to do the heavy work?”

Our infuriated armorers yelled, “We don’t need any help! We’re fine on our own!”

The marshal smiled indulgently and said that of course we were.

Popov broke in to say, “They may look like soldiers, but they’ve been a disaster. They mistook their own escorts for enemy aircraft and they accidentally delivered an airdrop to the fascists—at least I hope it was an accident. They’re a danger to themselves and a liability to the rest of the division.”

“This is what happens when you put a civilian in command of rookies,” said Kazarinova.

The marshal brushed them off. “Cut them some slack—you have to remember that you’re dealing with young girls, not battle-hardened men. All things considered, I think they’re doing very well.”

So our regiment will not be punished for my mistake. Yet the inspection left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want to be treated like a girl if it means what that marshal meant by it, being handled gently and forgiven when I mess up because I can’t be expected to do better.

Major Bershanskaya agreed. When the marshal was gone, she addressed us. “There you have it, eaglets—he says you’re doing well . . . for girls. Do you know how often I hear that? ‘Your pilots fly so well for women.’ ‘Your girls are doing such a great job, almost as good as the men.’ I’m not satisfied with that. Are you?”

Of course no one was.

She turned to me. “Junior Lieutenant, how many sorties did you fly on the seventeenth?”

I checked my logbook. “Two, ma’am.”

She said, “Your big brothers in the 650th all flew at least three.”

I ventured that their planes were faster.

Ilyushina put her hands on her hips. “And if they become elite Guards and we don’t, I’m sure you’ll find it adequate consolation that you were outflown by the mighty Polikarpov R-5.”

Bershanskaya asked her how quickly a ground crew could turn a U-2 around. Ilyushina said it could take as little as five minutes.

“Explain to me how we’re only fitting in two sorties a night,” said Bershanskaya.

Ilyushina shrugged. “Maybe they can’t cut it in the field.”

Protests broke out up and down the line from the mechanics and armorers. Bershanskaya asked a click-snap, “I won’t accept that what takes you five minutes in theory takes an hour when you’re under stress. What’s the real problem?”

She had singled out Masha, the girl who’d had the accident with the detonator. Masha still has a white scar on her forehead. She stammered and said, “It doesn’t take that long—I mean, it shouldn’t. But everyone is trying to get to the fuel truck or the truck carrying the bombs and we get in each other’s way.” In an even smaller voice, she added, “Also, ma’am, I’m not complaining or anything—we all want to do everything we can for the war effort—but we load and fuel the planes all night, and we service the weapons during the day. We never have a real chance to sleep.”

That day, we discovered the genius hiding beneath Bershanskaya’s reserved exterior. She conferred with Ilyushina and this is what they came up with: No more ground crews for each plane. Instead she divided the mechanics and armorers into groups and assigned each group a specific duty. One group would meet the planes and bring them to their hardstands, another would refuel them, and so on.

The next morning at breakfast I sat down next to a pilot from the 650th and asked him how many sorties he’d flown that night. He proudly told me that he had flown four. I got a long explanation of his heroic bombing missions and a generous offer to take me up in his R-5 and give me a few pointers before he got around to asking me how many I’d flown. I offhandly told him, “Seven. But I was last in the flight order.”

Next thing I knew he was wiping tea off the table.

Our competition with our big brothers is not a competition any longer. Now we outstrip our objectives every night and they find many different ways to say “What?” “How?” “That’s not possible!” We run out of bombs and our armorers have to beg, borrow, or trick their way into getting more.

In a few months we’ve cracked a problem that no one at the VVS had been able to solve. Bershanskaya told Ilyushina to write up a report for the division engineer so the other regiments could adopt our procedure. But instead of accolades, Ilyushina acquired a reprimand for violating the Technical Maintenance Manual and Bershanskaya got a strongly worded letter from Popov warning her that if she didn’t follow regulations, our flying days would be over regardless of how much the marshal liked us.

“Predictable,” said Ilyushina.

Bershanskaya asked her, “How often do you actually see the division engineer?”

“Not since we first arrived,” replied the captain. “He’s too busy keeping those obsolete Tupolev SBs in the air.”

“So he has no way of knowing if we’re following the manual or not.”

“I . . . suppose not,” said Ilyushina, who had figured out where the conversation was going and didn’t look completely on board. “But if Popov catches on, it’s all over.”

Bershanskaya thought it over. She said, “I’d rather spend a few weeks as an excellent regiment than the whole war as a mediocre one.”

And so she made a pragmatic decision: Ignore the reprimand and keep doing it our way.

Yours,

Valka

P.S. Have your orders come through yet? Tell me the instant they do. Maybe they’ll bring you closer to my edge of the map.

14 August 1942

Dear Valyushka,

Yes, our new orders came through. I felt nauseous as I decoded them. Rzhev. Even the name is the color of blood. My friends on the radio call it the “meat grinder.”

The first thing we saw when we arrived at the salient was a battery of armored trucks carrying big racks of parallel rails for launching rockets. When Pashkevich saw them, his face split into a feral grin and he yelled, “All right! Those will send the Fritzes running scared!” And to me, “You’ve finally met the Katyushas.”

That night, the Katyushas fired.

Why did the army give such a pretty name to such a horrible machine? When those rockets lit up in a salvo, they made a sound so unearthly that its color was not a real color: blindingly bright, yet black, pure jet black. As they screamed overhead, Pashkevich sat on the roof over the dugout door and laughed. “Eat rockets!” he shouted at the Germans.

I retreated to the far end of our dugout and huddled there, trembling, my eyes squeezed shut and my arms covering my head. You’d be ashamed of me.

Another voice joined the cacophany. Petya was screaming. A piercing, prolonged scream, breaking only for an occasional gasp of air. Vakhromov sat on the bed next to me, cradling the boy in his arms and speaking soothingly. Deep creases lined his forehead. The war is wearing him down.

Pashkevich reentered the dugout and caught me cowering. He backhanded me and shouted not to be such a coward. I’m nearly as frightened of him as I am of the Hitlerites, even though they’re the ones who will kill me. Then he turned to Vakhromov and ordered, “Shut that kid up!”

“I’m trying, but he’s frightened,” said Vakhromov.

Pashkevich drew his sidearm. He said through clenched teeth, “Shut him up or I will.”

Vakhromov drew the boy closer to him, his eyes darting back to the officer with the gun. “Petya? Petenka, listen to me. You have to quiet down now. I know you’re scared, but . . .”

Petya kept screaming. I took his hand. He dug his nails into my palm. I searched for words, anything that could reassure him, but couldn’t find any.

But I did have a song.

I opened my mouth, but choked on the sound. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Apple and pear trees were blooming.” At first my voice was barely audible, but as I continued that familiar song, it grew stronger. Soft gold tones began to paint over the piercing black.

Petya cracked one eye open a sliver. His screaming diminished to whimpering. Another volley of rockets howled outside. Their noise sliced through the music, so sharp it felt like physical pain. I faltered. Then a new color entered the song, sky blue, timid and quiet.

Petya was singing. I found my voice again and sang with new strength. We finished the last verse together.

One side of Pashkevich’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing, holstered his pistol, and left the dugout. Petya looked up at me, showing his big front teeth biting his lip in a hesitant semblance of a smile. Vakhromov said, “That was brave.”

He’s wrong. Even while I sang, my heart was pounding and my cheeks were wet with tears. The truth is, I’m anything but brave.

I’m scared, Valyushka, so scared, and it feels all the worse because you are always so bold. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t think I’m a coward. I don’t want to be even though I probably am. I shouldn’t be writing this to you but I have to talk to someone and I wouldn’t dare say so to Pashkevich or Vakhromov or even my radio friends. Maybe I won’t send this letter. Maybe I won’t get a chance.

Yours,

Pasha