The wake-up call, “Podyom!,” rang out long before the cold November sun rose over a frozen Volga. It was Olga Golubeva’s most hated command.63 She seemed only just to have got warm, only just to have fallen asleep when she heard “Podyom!” She snuggled into the pillow, but immediately jumped when the squadron adjutant bawled, “Do you need a special invitation?” Still half asleep, the girls reached out to the barely warm radiators on which they were drying wrappings of fluffy flannel which Commissar Rachkevich, who had been in the army for many years, had taught them to bind round their feet.
They were only now beginning to understand what being in the army was all about. Olga was not alone in being simply unable to see why it was necessary to march everywhere in line. They marched to their classes, to the canteen, to the aerodrome, and even to the bathhouse, from dawn until dark. At night they even heard the still strange commands in their dreams: “Dress right, dress! Atten-shun! About turn! No talking in the ranks!”
A lieutenant in his mid-thirties was in charge of drill practice. They called him their parade ground granddad. In their eyes he was really old. This ancient 35-year-old went down the rank “narrowing his beady, impudent eyes,” poking the girls in the belly and shouting, “Straighten up!”64 Granddad was universally loathed but most kept their loathing to themselves. Only a few dared let their feelings show. Intrepid Olga provoked him by coming on parade ostentatiously wearing felt winter boots instead of the regulation canvas boots. There was a spell of fearsomely cold weather and it would have seemed common sense for them all to be in felt boots, but their officers did not share this view. They believed dress regulations needed to be strictly observed on parade whatever the weather. Granddad imposed three extra fatigue duties on anyone wearing felt boots.
The mechanics in the night bomber regiment took an instant dislike to their chief mechanic, Sonya Ozerkova, a physically very fit martinet with a distinctly martial bearing. She came to the regiment from the Irkutsk Military College and she too got to work on enforcing strong discipline and a strict observance of the regulations. They were required to repeat her orders word for word, to report they had been performed, and to do so with unwavering formality. The mechanics, fresh from civilian life, considered her methods completely unnecessary, and detested Ozerkova for calling them out on drills at any time and whatever the weather, and for quizzing them endlessly about how they had carried out her orders. It was only when they reached the front that they understood the military logic that informed her prescriptions.
Girls trained at a flying club found it easier to adapt to this new environment than complete newcomers. They all had activities from early morning until late at night: navigation training, firearms training, parade ground training, equipment maintenance. In addition to all this the pilots, to their delight, at last started training flights.
The political commissars believed that constant indoctrination and supervision by the Party and Komsomol was imperative in a collective of women with an average age of twenty. They did not trust the girls in their care ever, under any circumstances. Not even on November 7, 1941, the anniversary of the October Revolution, when those serving in 122 Air Group were to take the military oath.
It was a wonderful, sunny day. The snow, “covering the fields and hills with a white veil,”65 glistened merrily in the sun, as if to add to the festivities. The day before, the girls had decorated the rooms and gone with bundles of clean underwear in their arms to the bathhouse. Then they worked into the night editing their first wall newspaper (handmade news-sheets designed for display on walls or other prominent places), For the Motherland. Early in the morning, a band played in the main hall of the officers’ club and Raskova made a speech. Taking the oath was an exceptionally important Soviet ritual, like Easter for Orthodox Christians, only even more momentous because it was taken only once in a lifetime. Many eyes were bright with tears and now, after taking the oath, they could consider themselves real soldiers. That evening, however, the girls from 122 Air Group were absent from the celebrations in that same hall. They had to sing and dance in the corridor behind a locked door, apart from the other service personnel in the garrison. They danced “not for joy but to dispel the sense of gloom which had overcome rather a lot of them” because of a decision by Yevdokia Rachkevich, the senior commissar, who felt the women she was responsible for should celebrate the anniversary separately from the garrison’s men. It was a decision that stunned even her fellow political officers.
Komsomol Administrator Nina Ivakina was a colleague of Rachkevich, but found the decision to oblige 122 Air Group to celebrate the anniversary in the corridor bizarre. It was insulting that they were being kept “like nuns.” Why were Komsomol members, who had volunteered to fight in the war, being treated like giddy adolescents incapable of looking after themselves? Ivakina believed her girls should be able in their free time “to interact with the Soviet people,” i.e., men. She considered Rachkevich would do well to remember that “parents who try to control their little fledglings too strictly in these matters are more likely to end up with loose-living daughters.”
Rachkevich did eventually relent, the girls were allowed into the hall to watch the show and dance during the interval. They went to bed “tired but happy.”
Battalion Commissar Yevdokia Rachkevich was a colorful character. Small and stout, she looked ridiculous in uniform but could not imagine life without the army. Fleeing as a young girl during the Civil War from the Ukrainian nationalists led by Symon Petlyura, she found herself working at a Soviet frontier post in Moldavia, initially as a cleaner, laundress and nursing orderly. The young woman could barely read or write, but was eager to study. While there she completed a law course but, wanting to stay in the army, decided to carry on studying. She was keen to become a political instructor because she was fanatically devoted to the new regime, which had raised her from an illiterate farm girl into a person of substance. Rachkevich sent a letter to the Military Political Academy in Moscow, but received a peremptory response stating: “We do not admit women.” She wrote indignantly to Marshal Budyonny, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, who intervened, and she was soon accepted, becoming the first woman to graduate from the Academy. The former cowherd stayed on as a postgraduate and wrote a dissertation. She decided, however, to defend it after the war was over and, when offered the position of commissar in a women’s air unit, jumped at the opportunity. When she set off to Engels she said goodbye to her husband, for good as it turned out. After parting from Rachkevich he soon found a new, younger wife. With no children and no family, Rachkevich had only the girls entrusted to her care.
“A commissar is a father to his soldiers and I, as a female commissar, shall be your mommy,” she never tired of saying to the girls. She behaved accordingly, like a loving, fussing, not very bright mommy and, just as the village women frightened their children by threatening them with the big bad wolf, so Rachkevich would threaten to write to Comrade Stalin, scaring the daylights out of whichever young woman she was currently finding fault with. The next day, having completely forgotten all her threats, Rachkevich would be back to calling the same girl “dearie” and discussing plans for the girl’s future.66
If she noticed anything amiss in the dress or conduct of one of her charges, Rachkevich was likely to give the delinquent the kind of dressing-down only a Ukrainian woman is capable of, excoriating them “with vehement, passionate sincerity.” If a girl exchanged even a few words with a man, Rachkevich would materialize instantly and put an end to any flirtation before it had begun. Behind her back all the girls in the regiments called her “Mommy,” but without affection. Because of her power as a political commissar the girls did not argue with her and obeyed her often willful and eccentric instructions, but disliked her and tried to keep out of her way. It became clear in later years how completely devoted this rather dim woman was to her pilots and ground staff. When the war was over Rachkevich, by now getting on in years and in poor health, would spend her vacations going round the territories where they had served, not resting until she had found the crash site of every missing airwoman from her regiment.
Nina Ivakina instantly took against her superior political officer, but as time passed, she herself became increasingly persuaded that strict discipline was essential for Air Group 122. The newly recruited servicewomen would skitter into town to get their hair permed, and behave dismissively toward their officers and commissars. “They talked endless nonsense” and even “got themselves into affairs.” The commissars were sometimes on the verge of despair. Only Raskova never doubted that her girls would become outstanding combatants. She had faith in them, and they had faith in her. Indeed, they were all “a little in love with her.”67 Raskova’s motto was, “We can do anything!” and her pilots, navigators and mechanics believed they really could while they were under the command of someone like her.