In early December, 9 Regiment was informed it would be flying to a new airfield much closer to Stalingrad. The nearest village was Zety, which had just been liberated. Belyaeva’s flight was to return a few days later to the women’s regiment at Anisovka. Valya Krasnoshchyokova and Nina Shebalina were reluctant to part with the male pilots who seemed somehow to need their support, but they were also looking forward to seeing friends in their old regiment again, and to be with them when the regiment began combat duties, which Belyaeva said was imminent. There were practical considerations too: if they went back to the women’s fighter regiment, they would finally get new uniforms. Fate intervened, however, and separated Valya and Nina, who were not to meet again until the war was over.329
“Valya, wake up!” Valya opened her eyes to see Faina Pleshivtseva. Why was she being wakened? It was the middle of the night, dark, cold, and completely silent. Everybody else was asleep. Faina explained everything in a whisper, but it was all so strange that Valya, still half asleep, had trouble making head or tail of it.330 Nine Regiment was flying to its new deployment, and Litvyak and Budanova had decided to flee with it instead of returning to the women’s regiment with Belyaeva. They intended to take Pleshivtseva and Valya with them to service their planes and, right now, needed them to come very quietly to the airfield, warm up the aircraft, and keep them ready. As she dressed quickly and quietly, it dawned on Valya just what she was being drawn into. She could not see why Pleshivtseva had asked her rather than anyone else, because they were not on close terms, but Valya was conscientious. It never occurred to her to refuse. Budanova and Litvyak were officers, they commanded their crews, and the responsibility was theirs.
But how had they decided to do something so outrageous? Which of them had taken the initiative in deciding they should run away, and misappropriate combat aircraft into the bargain? In fact, this sort of thing occurred more often than one would imagine, particularly toward the end of the war when young pilots, desperate to see action, would help themselves to a plane and fly to the front. They could be punished, but that was unusual. Such indulgence in the armed forces, where strict discipline was usually enforced, might seem puzzling, but pilots evidently belonged to a caste exempt from the rules that applied to everybody else.
Antifreeze for aircraft engines was not available to Soviet pilots, so Valya and Faina had to sit for a long time in the aircraft heating the engines. Finally Litvyak and Budanova appeared and told them the Lisunov Li-2 transport aircraft (a version of the Douglas DC-3) for the headquarters equipment was about to be loaded. There was a pile of aircraft covers in the tail of this enormous airbus where, they suggested, Valya and Faina could hide. These covers were as warm as quilts, and mechanics and technicians often used them as blankets. Pulling the covers round them, Valya and Faina sat in the tail behind crates of headquarters property, but when the “Douglas” took off and gained height, it became clear they were going to be none too warm. A strong draft was blowing through the tail.331
There was, however, no real need for them to hide. Nine Regiment’s chief engineer, Spiridonov, had worked out they were there. “Girls, where are you? Come on out!” he yelled. They later heard that his male mechanics had told him they had not readied the planes for Litvyak and Budanova. After a quick consultation, Valya and Faina decided they were unlikely to be thrown out of the hatch and emerged.
It was still dark when they landed at Zety, an almost completely destroyed Kalmyk village. Spiridonov did not tell them off, having many other things on his mind. “Girls, it’s up to you to meet the other planes as they arrive!” The transport with the male mechanics had been delayed, so there was no one to service incoming planes. From that early start, Valya and Faina worked straight through the day with nothing to eat. The others had passes for the canteen. Handsome Yevgeny Dranishchev, a hero of the Battle of Stalingrad, gave them a bar of chocolate from his emergency rations. “Let’s just eat one square a day, like Raskova did,” Valya suggested.
Victor Nikitin, chief of staff of 9 Regiment, called them in that evening after they had done a very full day’s work. “You are deserters. You should be court-martialed!” he began sternly (having already had the same conversation with Litvyak and Budanova). Valya protested, “We are not deserters! Quite the opposite. We have run to, not from, the front.” “Dear me, aren’t you the clever one!” Nikitin said sarcastically, but the girls could see he was going to let them stay and that his ire was more for appearance’s sake. They were highly trained, hardworking, and would be an asset to the regiment. Nikitin put away wrath and replaced it with mercy.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“What have you eaten?”
“Chocolate, like Raskova.”
Without more ado, Nikitin sent them off to the pilots’ canteen. There, also for appearance’s sake, they were asked where their passes were and Valya said she had no idea. They were fed anyway.
It was late and they were very tired, but the authorities were unprepared when they asked where they should sleep. In the end they said, “Go to the pilots’ dugout!” It was large and newly constructed, and the young pilots gave them a friendly if amused reception. They separated off a corner for them with a piece of material and gave them a sleeping bag. Valya and Faina squeezed into it together, were soon warm, and fell asleep.
For the pilots of 9 Regiment, their flight to Zety represented a new experience. They could see this was the beginning of a long advance westward. Zety was the first airfield they had landed at in an area liberated from the Germans and their regiment was one of the first to return to “land that had suffered much, been traversed by hundreds of tanks, and scorched mercilessly by fire.”332
All that remained of the village of Zety were three huts in the immensity of the flat landscape. The steppe was white with snow, which made everything around look beautiful and hid from view all the ruins, craters, wrecked tanks and vehicles. The accommodation for aircraft was better than for personnel, in that the Germans had left protective earth-covered shelters at the airfield. One of the three huts was commandeered for the canteen, the headquarters occupied another, and the third was allocated to the pilots and mechanics.333 Litvyak and Budanova were put up in a small, separate room in the headquarters hut. For the two-thirds of the personnel for whom there was no room in the dormitory hut, dugouts were hastily prepared. Starting in the morning, by evening the men had built a place to live. Each squadron gouged out pits in ground frozen as hard as stone. These were roofed with metal from wrecked planes and vehicles and capped with earth and snow. The sappers installed small iron stoves and their living quarters were complete. There was no wood to be found in the steppe, but the next day the airfield maintenance battalion had “procured hay and heating oil,” and it was soon cozy in the dugouts, above which thick black smoke billowed. In the cramped command post the telephone rang incessantly and Chief of Staff Nikitin could be heard talking into it without respite. Maps showing the “operational environment” hung on a boarded wall, stirring as the wind gusted, but demonstrating that the front line had already moved forward almost to Kotelnikovo. Pilots crowded round, awaiting orders. The airfield had been cleared of snow, and it was decided to start flights that same day. It was desperately cold, but Amet-Khan, looking closely at the map, remarked, “If we keep moving at this rate, we should be in Alupka in time for the holiday season.” Yevgeny Dranishchev expressed doubt, and Amet-Khan looked closely at him too. The faces of both pilots were gray after a sleepless night and from the cold, and both had their noses hidden in their fur collars. “I fear you are forgetting who rules the skies in this area!” Amet-Khan said in tones of mock menace. “Of that no one is in doubt,” Dranishchev retorted. “Nine Guards Regiment, in which there serves that valorous son of Alupka, Sultan Amet-Khan himself.”334
Those two were the regiment’s wits, and all present tuned in to this promising exchange that, however, came to an end almost immediately as Nikitin received details over the phone of their combat mission. They were to attack the airfield at Gumrak.
Vladimir Lavrinenkov waited with bated breath. His plane was ready for takeoff and he knew every building and every hard stand at the airfield. Would he be included? Shestakov called out his name, adding, “You will lead a flight of six aircraft.”335
He went on to warn them that a good half of Paulus’s transport aircraft were at Gumrak, and there were plenty of fighters there to protect them. If those were given time to take off, they would have a fight on their hands.
Gumrak was the reserve airfield of the surrounded German troops but, with Russian units already approaching their main airfield at Pitomnik, Gumrak, with its inconvenient short runway, was being used more intensively by the day.
Shestakov ordered his force to approach the airfield from the center of Stalingrad, the better to take the enemy by surprise. To Lavrinenkov’s disappointment, Shestakov, in deploying the group, positioned his flight high above the others so they could act as a screen against any possible German attack. Shestakov himself headed straight for the target with another flight consisting of Amet-Khan, Alelyukhin, Korolyov, Bondarenko, Budanova, and Serogodsky.
The assault on Gumrak was a success. Shestakov set fire to a Junkers Ju 52 transport on the airfield, and five others immediately caught fire. The airfield was covered by a pall of thick smoke, through which flames licked upward here and there.
For the mechanics, life in Zety went on much as at Zhitkur, with work, work and more work, rest in an overheated dugout, and infrequent trips to the bathhouse. Valya and Faina were no longer servicing the planes of Litvyak and Budanova but working with other crews and meeting other pilots.336 A plane’s crew was a closed community. The mechanic’s day was spent working hard and waiting for their pilot to return. If he was in a good mood, he might say what had happened on the mission, but that was by no means certain. How the other pilots were faring was something you might hear from their mechanics, or overhear in a conversation, but Valya generally only got to talk with the other mechanics in the evenings when they came back to the crowded dugout, where they slept side by side, or half asleep in the morning on their way back out to the airfield. Litvyak and Budanova had their work in the sky, while that of Valya and Faina was on the ground, their paths crossing neither in the canteen nor in the dormitory. Valya heard only sporadically about missions flown by the women, or, indeed, by the men.
Shestakov’s regiment was sent into battle on December 9, 1942, and already by December 11 a group of pilots, that included Lavrinenkov, Amet-Khan and Dranishchev, together with some from another regiment, had shot down eighteen German transports “which had been proceeding from the direction of Kotelnikovo by way of Zety to the encircled German troops at Nariman.” Yeryomenko, commander of the Stalingrad Front, reported this success to Stalin, who expressed gratitude to the pilots concerned.337
Not infrequently, the fighters would take off “on sight,” when an observer reported the approach of German planes. The regiment’s Yaks were well concealed in the shelters the Germans had left them, and German transport pilots, unaware of the airfield’s existence, would often fly toward Stalingrad right over their heads. When the enemy was spotted, 9 Regiment’s pilots would take off and “attack without even turning to gain height.”338 Days when a Ju 52 laden with food was brought down nearby gladdened the heart of Major Pushkarsky, commander of the airfield maintenance battalion. It made a substantial contribution to the quality of meals.
On one occasion, Lavrinenkov succeeded in shooting down two German transports in succession. One fell near the regimental command post and, when Vladimir landed, he was summoned to meet the German pilot who had parachuted to safety. The tall redheaded officer removed his helmet, goggles, and map case and asked to have his already unloaded pistol returned. He handed them over to Lavrinenkov, as was traditional. Then he started taking out photographs of his wife, children and parents. His eyes and ingratiating smile pleaded for mercy, for his life to be saved for the sake of those in the photos. Vladimir could understand his motivation, but reflected that he himself would never behave like that if captured.339 He and his comrades felt no personal animosity or hatred toward captured German pilots, and no urge to take the law into their own hands. The only exception was in Commissar Panov’s neighboring 85 Regiment, when a German pilot who had been shot down escaped from captivity and was then shot down for a second time. The pilots conferred briefly before marching him to a nearby ravine and all shooting him simultaneously to make sure he would never fight against them again. The commander and commissar did not intervene, understanding the pilots’ logic and judging that, in the context, his blood could simply be written off.340
Vladimir’s good day with two kills was followed, as was often the case, by a less good one.
That day Lavrinenkov was flying with Katya Budanova as his wingmate.341 They were advised that a group of Heinkel bombers had been spotted. Most probably, these had been converted into transports and were carrying supplies to the Cauldron. The Heinkels had been camouflaged with white paint and they did not spot them immediately. When they did, Lavrinenkov went into a climb. “Cover me. I’m going in,” he radioed Budanova. His burst hit the target, but the German gunner also hit him. He felt his plane suddenly pulling strongly to the left, “as if the left wing had become twice as heavy.” Immediately, he heard Katya’s voice in the headphones. “Seventeen, you’ve been hit. I’m covering you!” When Lavrinenkov looked at his right wing, he found it had all but disappeared, only the bare framework remaining. It took immense effort to keep the skewed aircraft on course.
The bomber he had damaged was shot down by another pilot. Budanova could have done the job, but was obliged to remain with her crippled lead aircraft. “Head back to the airfield! I’m covering you,” she repeated from time to time to encourage Lavrinenkov, but when he did make it back, he saw it was going to be very difficult to land. On a turn the plane went into a spin. “Jump!” he heard Katya urge, but he had decided to land it.
The landing was “more like falling from a modest height.” The first person to come running across the deep snow to him was Budanova. Next the chief of staff drove up. Lavrinenkov had been justified in deciding to try to save his plane. “Roll up your sleeves, Kaparka!” the chief mechanic ordered Vladimir’s man. All that was needed for the repair was glue, percale covering material, and a skilled pair of hands.
The regiment was flying sorties ceaselessly. Between December 10 and 31 they flew 349 missions. In other words, every day the pilots took to the air three or four times, and that in December when the days are at their shortest. To be without a plane at just this moment was particularly galling. For the next few days, not knowing what to do with himself, Vladimir mooched about from the hostel to the hard standing where the aircraft were parked, to the headquarters, and back to his plane. He hung around his Yak in the hope of making himself useful to the mechanics repairing it. On one such day, he heard a roar of engines and looked up to see a huge Dornier returning from Stalingrad, but flying very low, its engines laboring, most probably heavily overloaded.342 After delivering their cargo, these transports would take on board as many sick and wounded as could be crammed in. The field gendarmes charged with organizing boarding of the planes had great difficulty maintaining order. They would fire in the air, but still so many people were piled into the aircraft it could barely take off.
Vladimir instinctively ran toward his plane before remembering it was out of commission. Then he ran to phone headquarters, but they had already alerted a group of the regiment’s fighters that was approaching Zety. Vladimir and the mechanics observed from the ground as the lead aircraft, piloted by Shestakov, broke away from the group and caught up with the Dornier. He was unable to fire at it because all his ammunition had been used up during the sortie. Another fighter immediately took over the attack and several bursts of machine-gun fire were heard. The giant Dornier went out of control and crashed. Before the fighters had even landed, everyone knew that this formidable aircraft, bristling in every direction with machine guns, had been shot down by Lilya Litvyak.
According to Lavrinenkov’s memoirs, Litvyak and Budanova had rapidly gained the affection and respect of his regiment. The men went out of their way to make life easier for them and minimize their risks in combat, but “the reaction on the part of Litvyak and Budanova was completely unexpected: they categorically refused to be fussed over and declined all acts of consideration.”343 Next to broad-shouldered Katya, the diminutive Lilya seemed like a little girl. They were close friends but, Lavrinenkov claims, “Katya was the boss. Lively, direct, and great fun,” she soon became the life and soul of the squadron. Nobody was better at organizing a dinner or dance than Katya.
Just before the New Year, Faina and Valya went to visit some Kalmyks in their yurta, to see what life was like for them. What she saw appalled the intellectual Valya. As soon as they entered, fetid air assailed their nostrils. A Kalmyk woman was sitting, smoking a pipe and rocking a cradle containing a baby covered in urine and feces. The Kalmyks offered them tea with salt and fat, but they declined.344
Valya Krasnoshchyokova remembered their celebration of New Year 1943 for the fact that their food in the canteen was served in a mug and their wine in a bowl. There was a shortage of millet porridge, compensated for by an over-supply of wine. Valya, who had just turned twenty in December, had never drunk wine before, and neither was Faina used to it. Jostling each other with their elbows, they emptied the bowls in one, and on an almost empty stomach the wine acted so effectively that they could not climb the hill on their way back to their digs in the village. The ground was slippery, and whenever they got to the top they promptly slid back down in fits of giggles.
The pilots spent the whole of December 31 in battle and “collapsed into bed” immediately after eating. The cold and their exhaustion left them feeling completely spent. Someone did, however, wake up around midnight, remembered it was nearly the New Year, and woke the others. Amet-Khan suggested greeting the New Year and their successes at the front in his favored manner, a pistol shot fired into the air. It felt just too cold to go outside, so they pulled the trigger right there in the dugout. Their salute blew out the oil lamp, fashioned out of a shell case, the stove door flew open and embers fell out onto the floor. One of the men dealt with it, and they all immediately went back to sleep.345
Did Lilya Litvyak and Katya Budanova celebrate their last New Year, or were they too so tired that they slept through it? What were their emotions and thoughts on New Year’s Eve 1943? Perhaps they were worried about the future, because they knew Shestakov was insisting they should be moved from the regiment and there was no certainty they would be accepted by another. Everything was to be decided in the next few days.
According to pilots in the regiment, Shestakov respected and admired the girls as pilots.346 However, the unit was sustaining incredibly high losses and there was a general feeling that it was too dangerous for them. This tough-minded man with a complex, authoritarian character decided they could no longer fight side by side with the men in his regiment.
Boris Sidnev, commander of 6 Fighter Air Division, personally undertook to find a place for Litvyak and Budanova in a way he would assuredly not have helped ordinary male pilots. He saw the girls as something special. Sidnev followed their successes, considered them good pilots, and was proud to have them in his division. But there was an even more compelling reason behind his support for their refusal to go back to the women’s regiment. “Any fool could see he fancied Lilya.”347
The 34-year-old Major General Boris Sidnev was well educated and handsome. “Quiet-natured and well mannered, an excellent pilot,”348 but with a pronounced stammer, which was unusual for a soldier of that rank. Sometimes articulating a word would cost him such effort that he was “convulsed, with his jaws chattering.” His speech defect did not stop Sidnev from having a spectacular career. Starting the war as the commander of a fighter regiment with the rank of major, he ended it as the commander of an air corps with the rank of major general. Those who knew him considered him entirely worthy of these exalted positions and ranks. He was a good commander, valued his pilots, and flew in battle himself.
He did, however, have one failing: everybody in 8 Air Army knew Sidnev was a womanizer.349 It would seem the young general had never been turned down by anyone until he ran into Lilya Litvyak. Young waitresses and telephone operators could not resist his charms. Such romances were nothing out of the ordinary. Khryukin, his superior, also had a “field wife.” Many other commanders, high and low, in 8 Air Army had romances. Cohabitation with subordinates was a fact of life in the Red Army.
As a pilot and officer, Lilya Litvyak was in a completely different situation from most girls at the front. Men could ogle her as much as they liked: she was afraid of nothing and no one, and was well able to stand up for herself. She would have been quite prepared to tell a general where to get off, but chose instead to avoid any kind of confrontation with Boris Sidnev. When he summoned her to headquarters, she would often hide, and ask that he should be told she could not be found.350 When she had no option but to encounter the divisional commander, she was as polite, friendly, and natural as with all the other men in love with her. She could not afford to quarrel with Sidnev, since it was his decision whether she stayed in a combat regiment or was sent back to the women’s fighter regiment. Anya Skorobogatova would occasionally see Lilya in there when she came on business to Air Division headquarters. Sitting at a table, Lilya would be chatting to some high-up, often Sidnev himself, and Anya was amazed how relaxed she was, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a sergeant to be sitting with generals, nibbling chocolate and chatting about Moscow. She responded to their jokes with her unforgettable laugh, and Anya found it wonderfully happy and uninhibited expression: not the “tee-hee-hee” of an affected flirt; or a deliberately sensuous “ho-ho-ho”; but genuine, happy, open laughter—“ha-ha-ha!”351 Anya took a great liking to Lilya, but there was little probability of their becoming friends. Though both ranked as sergeants, the gulf between them in the unwritten hierarchy of the Air Division was too great.
To be on such friendly terms with senior officers while brushing aside their attempts at sexual harassment was something a girl in Anya’s position would never have got away with. She preferred just to keep well out of the way of over-friendly commanders. Once, just once, she and another radio operator were invited to a strange party at divisional headquarters to celebrate a holiday.352 A well-stocked table had been laid, at which a lot of her superiors were sitting with one or two other girls. Much vodka was drunk and everybody was having a good time until, at a certain moment, Anya suddenly became uneasy. The atmosphere changed. One of the officers started moving closer and closer and Anya decided, despite pressing entreaties, that it was time to leave. Her friend reappeared only the next morning, said nothing about what had happened, and Anya did not ask. She decided that from then on she would accept no invitations to dine with her superiors, whatever the pretext.
By behaving with a certain amount of guile, Lilya secured Sidnev’s much-needed support for herself and Katya. While agreeing with Shestakov that the girls should leave his regiment on the grounds that it was too dangerous for them there, Sidnev had no wish to see them leave his fighter division completely. Such were the times: at the request of a girl he was in love with, a divisional commander allowed her to risk her life rather than send her back to the relative safety of an air defense regiment. Besides 9 Fighter Regiment there were three other regiments in 268 Fighter Air Division. These were Nikolai Baranov’s 296 Regiment, Boris Yeremin’s 31 Regiment, and Ivan Zalessky’s 85 Regiment. Sidnev offered Litvyak and Budanova to Yeremin and Baranov.
Boris Yeremin, who knew Shestakov well, had had no doubt a day would come when he would face this choice, and had already decided not to accept them. Yeremin knew how keen Budanova and Litvyak were to stay in a combat regiment and that both were good pilots who only needed to gain more experience in action. His 31 Regiment, however, was a specialized fighter-reconnaissance unit and the pilots sometimes flew missions hundreds of kilometers behind the enemy’s front line. When his divisional commander asked him what he thought, he replied diplomatically that he was “not against the idea in principle.” In his opinion, both girls had been quite well trained, and “Litvyak was particularly outstanding.” Yeremin saw her as a rare example of a born fighter pilot. She “felt the air,” she “saw” it, always knowing what was going on around her and reacting to everything in good time, but how could they send any girl deep into enemy-occupied territory? Yeremin reminded Sidnev how difficult it would be for them to get back from there “if anything happened.” And if they were caught, they might be raped and tortured. Sidnev agreed. Katya and Lilya heard this news right away, most probably from Sidnev himself. Yeremin recalled Lilya, with her wry sense of humor, administering a pinprick in the canteen: “People are saying Boris Yeremin is scared of us.” Yeremin, who was afraid not of them but for them, did not demur.353
That left Baranov’s 296 Regiment. It had been fighting throughout the war alongside Shestakov’s 9 Regiment, whose two female pilots had impressed him. In addition, Lilya had in her favor the story of how she shot down that German ace during the Battle of Stalingrad. It was told half jokingly, half in earnest, some claiming that the German pilot had “flown headlong into her gunfire.” Somehow, men could not bring themselves to believe that Lilya had shot down an outstanding German pilot on almost her first sortie. What could be the explanation? Talent? Skill? Or just extraordinary good luck? She had, however, other kills to her name. “I’ll take them,” Baranov said. He was short of pilots, and short of planes too.354
“That’s it, girls. Pack your things! We’re being kicked out,” Katya announced grimly as she came into the dugout where Valya and Faina slept.355 The mechanics were as sad to part with 9 Regiment as their pilots. Nevertheless, Lilya and Katya’s dearest wish had been granted. They would be continuing to serve in a fighter regiment, and a very distinguished one at that. They joined Baranov’s 296 Fighter Regiment a couple of days later in Kotelnikovo.
The Night Witches of 588 Bomber Regiment tried to tell their fortunes that New Year’s Eve, as they had a year earlier in Engels. At midnight they burned a sheet of paper and then looked at the shadow of its charred remains on the wall. Galya Dokutovich joined in, and decided hers looked like a coffin. The other girls all “fell over themselves thinking up all sorts of nonsensical alternative interpretations.” Luckily, Galya was not superstitious.356 She was back with her regiment and felt extremely happy.
Galya had returned one wet, overcast December evening. The crews of 588 Regiment were gathered at the school in the center of Assinovskaya, ready to go to the airfield. They were standing, looking up at gray sky and the “dark wisps of low cloud.” The trees seemed to be waving their bare branches ridiculously, as if slipping in the mud and trying to keep their balance.357 The girls were waiting for the truck that took them to the airport, but instead round the corner came a mud-spattered car out of which stepped a girl who, at first, no one recognized. She was wearing a greatcoat that was too small and tight, which someone must have given her, and holding a half-empty rucksack. She got out and stood there, motionless and silent, until suddenly someone said quietly, “It’s Galya. Galya Dokutovich!”
Galya rushed headlong toward them, struggling to pull her boots out of the squelching mud. Her friends could hardly believe she had come back from the rear after such a terrible accident. She was hugged and fussed over, she laughed out loud and could not stop talking. Natasha Meklin noticed the tears welling up in Galya’s eyes. Then their truck arrived, they all climbed in the back and it moved off, leaving Galya alone on the road, “tall, in her absurdly short coat, looking so lonely, looking after us, waving.”