At last Anna Yegorova’s dream came true: she was going to fly the Ilyushin Il-2, a ground-attack aircraft nicknamed “The Hunchback” by the Russians and “Meat-grinder” by the terrified Germans. She cannot have been the only pilot of the small, defenseless U-2s who fervently hoped one day to fly the death-dealing Il-2. But the losses of Il-2 pilots were even greater than those flying the U-2.
In their new air assault regiment, Anna Yegorova and her friends were called in one by one for an interview by the political adviser.389 We have no idea what he talked to the men about, but his first question to Anna was, “Why would you want to expose yourself to deadly danger?” “Oh, don’t tell me it’s deadly!” she threw back at him. The officer told her that their losses were “rather heavy,” and added, “I can tell you in confidence that in the recent fighting at Gizel, almost none of our pilots came back.”
His fatherly advice to Anna was to be prudent and go back to a training regiment where she would be more useful as an instructor. Flying a ground assault bomber was no work for a woman. He was speaking without hostility or any lack of respect, but lately Anna had been receiving similar advice so regularly that she flew off the handle at the least provocation.
“Well, what is suitable work for women in war, Comrade Commissar?” she demanded. “Nursing? Straining yourself beyond all reason to drag wounded soldiers off the battlefield under fire? Or being a sniper? Spending hours in all weathers stalking enemies, killing them and getting killed yourself?”
The commissar tried to say something, but now there was no stopping Anna.
“Perhaps it would be less dangerous to be airdropped behind enemy lines with a radio? Or maybe it is easier now for women in the rear, smelting metal or growing crops, while trying at the same time to bring up children?”
The commissar did not try to argue, just smiled sadly and told Anna he had an equally crazy daughter. She was a doctor at the front, somewhere near Stalingrad, but he had had no letters from her for a long time.
Soon Anna was traveling by rail with the assault regiment to collect new Il-2 aircraft from the factory. The railway carriage was noisy, the pilots exultant at the Red Army’s tremendous success at Stalingrad, only regretting that they would have no chance of fighting there as they trundled slowly on their way to collect their aircraft. On February 2 they heard at one of the stations a loudspeaker announcement from the Soviet Informbyuro news agency that “Hitler’s Army Group South, led by Field Marshal Paulus, has surrendered.” Soon after that, they reached their destination, expecting to take delivery of the new aircraft that, they were promised, would be ready any day now. This proved to be nonsense. There was also a long queue in the canteen at the factory’s airfield. To be issued an aluminum spoon you had first to surrender your fur hat as security because the spoons were constantly being pilfered. The food was unexciting: what they described as “hunter’s soup,” where you had to pursue isolated pieces of vegetable round the bowl, the inevitable “shrapnel porridge” and, smeared over a large aluminum plate, “dessert à la raspberry.” The men joked, “It’ll keep you alive, but you won’t feel like chasing girls.” They were accommodated in a dugout “the size of a tunnel in the Moscow Metro, with two tiers of bunks.” It was here that Anna was one day brought a letter from Tanya Fyodorova, a friend from her days building the Metro.
Tanya wrote about new Metro stations, which were still being built in spite of the war—Novokuznetskaya, Paveletskaya, Avtozavodskaya—and about their friends in the flying club, almost all of whom were now at the front. Anna’s instructor, Miroyevsky, and Sergey Feoktistov were flying ground attack bombers; Valeriy Vishnikov, Yevgeny Minshutin and Sergey Korolyov were fighter pilots. Many had already been killed: Luka Mirovitsky, Ivan Oparin, Alexander Lobanov, Vasiliy Kochetkov, Victor Kutov . . .
What? Victor? Anna was in shock. Everything faded into darkness, the sun, the people, the war. She was suffocating. Next she saw the kind face of the regimental doctor. He said, “Go ahead, cry, my dear, go ahead. That’s going to help . . .” But Anna could not cry. “Something unbearably heavy had fallen on my heart and did not shift for many, many years after that . . .”
Soon, when they were on the Southern Front, she had an unusually vivid, beautiful dream. She had returned that day, tired and very cold, to the little house Dr. Kozlovsky had insisted she should be allocated. The stove was warm, the coals had not yet gone out and were glowing prettily with little flickering red, blue and gold flames. Anna warmed herself at it and, without undressing, fell asleep on the bed. She dreamed of Victor, as vividly as if he had been with her. He was wearing a white shirt with a tie and an embroidered Tajik skullcap. Anna was with him, wearing a black velveteen skirt and blue shirt with a white collar and lacing. She had a white beret, white stockings, and white slippers with a blue trim. Her beret, the latest word in chic, was barely managing to cling to the top of her head and her right ear. Anna actually had owned “all this splendor” before the war. She had acquired it in the hard currency Torgsin shop on the strength of an old gold coin her mother gave her. Admittedly, Victor had never been known to wear a tie. Thus attired, they were strolling together over a vast, daisy-covered meadow in Sokolniki Park. How relaxed and happy she felt in this dream! Someone knocked on the door, but she had no wish to wake up. They hammered louder and louder, shouting her name, but her body would not obey her. She got up somehow and began crawling along the wall toward the door but fell before reaching it. She managed to crawl on and, with great difficulty, unlocked it. Some of the pilots had looked in on her quite by chance, and if they had not she would have been dead in the morning, poisoned by fumes from the stove.
They nursed her all night, walking her up and down outside in the fresh air, and in the morning took her to the good doctor in his surgery. She told him about her dream, adding, “It would have been better if I had never woken up.”
His kind face became stern and he said, “Death will come to everyone in due course, but not everyone manages to live their life in this world with dignity.” The next day, Anna pulled herself together and attended the training session to fly the Il-2 as if nothing had happened. She put powder on her face to hide the scratches from her fall.
On the other flank of the Southern Front, the regiments of Boris Sidnev’s Fighter Division took to the sky. January had been a fairly quiet month for them. “Aerial Combat missions—3,” Major Krainov, political adviser of Baranov’s 296 Fighter Regiment, noted in his secret report. “During this period, no enemy aircraft were shot down. There were no combat losses in the regiment.” Katya Budanova’s biographers claim that on January 8 she was paired with Baranov and took part in a dogfight with four Focke-Wulf aircraft, one of which was shot down.390 There is no mention of this in the regimental records and it is probably another legend. Litvyak and Budanova’s successes in 296 Fighter Regiment began only in February 1943, but what victories they were!
The Southern Front was preparing to attack Rostov-on-Don. If the city could be recaptured speedily, the German armies in the Caucasus could be encircled, and in far greater numbers than in the Stalingrad Cauldron. In early January, on the orders of the Military Council of the Stalingrad Front, commanders and political officers “gave talks explaining the heroic exploits of aircrews and the selfless labor of maintenance workers.” The advance of Soviet troops was demonstrated on maps, unlike the only too recent retreat. In 296 Fighter Regiment the propaganda campaign involved all Party members, headed by “Batya” Baranov himself who “explained the significance of the attack and of the rout of the German hordes at Stalingrad.”
Valya Krasnoshchyokova likened Batya to the Soviet aviation hero, test pilot Valeriy Chkalov: like him, he was an intrepid pilot and a good man. His pupil and friend, Alexey Maresiev who became a great Soviet war hero, felt the same way about him.391 Shot down over enemy territory and wounded in both legs, Maresiev crawled eighteen kilometers, trying to get back to his unit. Later, after his legs were amputated, he began flying again and returned to his combat unit. “Baranov was my first commander at the front. I can see him as if he was here now: average height, solidly built, with curly, slightly ginger hair. You could see the willpower in his eyes. As a commander he was strict, but liked people and recognized their good qualities. Baranov was the first to teach me what is most important for any pilot, the art of skillfully, resourcefully, and unpredictably conducting a dogfight,” Maresiev recalled.
Yevgeny Radchenko of 296 Regiment tells us that Baranov taught the pilots, his subordinates and his students to fight “by personal example. Whenever there was a really difficult mission, he would lead the group himself.”392 Radchenko adds that Baranov was fun-loving, and he really did have a unique personality. From childhood he wanted to ride with the cavalry, but the inexorable march of progress obliged him to adjust his plans and he became a pilot. Nevertheless, there was something of the swashbuckling cavalry officer about him. On one occasion, Timofey Khryukin, commander of 8 Air Army, arrived at the regiment to find Baranov sending his pilots off on their missions in very strange attire. He was barefoot, wearing a peasant shirt instead of a military tunic, and giving them the signal to take off with a saber. (Heaven only knows how he had come by that.) “Take a look at yourself, Baranov,” was all Khryukin said. He was the same age as Baranov and liked and respected him.393
In January 1943, Krainov had reported to the head of the political department of 6 Guards Air Division on the propaganda work he had carried out. “The political and moral condition of the regiment’s personnel is healthy. All personnel in the regiment and the Party and Komsomol organization are focused on carrying out the combat orders of the regiment’s commanders. The personnel are inspired by the successful advance of our Red Army and are putting all their strength into hastening the rout of the enemy.” Suitable topics were selected for talks to be given by the Party members to other members of the regiment, such as: “Revolutionary Vigilance During the Advance of the Red Army.” The girl armorers were given a special talk by Major Guskov on the need to “Increase Revolutionary Vigilance!”
The political workers had long been aware of the particular difficulty of indoctrinating women. We do not know what Major Krainov thought about his regiment’s female cadres, but Political Adviser Panov in the neighboring 85 Regiment sometimes lost patience. One evening he was conducting an indoctrination session with the female personnel in which they were being assured that: “America and England will not abandon us in our hour of need, the Japs in the Pacific Ocean are facing total collapse, the Yugoslav partisans have again taught the Germans a lesson they will not forget, and Rommel in Africa is stuck in the sands of the desert. Furthermore, not only does the Red Army now have at its disposal Katyusha rockets and new tanks, but also the heroic traditions of our ancestors, (admittedly counts and princes, but good ones), Suvorov and Kutuzov.”394 The girls, some of whom, after a tiring day and not expecting the political adviser to be dropping in, had already gone to bed, did appear to be listening, but their vacant eyes told him they were thinking about other matters. Suddenly a black-eyed girl called Nadya lifted her blanket and, to the great amusement of her friends, invited him to join her. “Oh, Commissar, Commissar, where do you have to go? Nip in under my blanket!” Panov had no option but to abandon his political indoctrination session and take his leave with some alacrity.
One way a newly demoted commissar could make himself useful was by improving the living conditions of the mechanics and technicians, if he could be bothered. Krainov could be bothered, and often upbraided the commander of the airfield maintenance battalion for various problems and oversights. The victory at Stalingrad brought little improvement in conditions for the technical staff. As one political report noted, while “the regiment’s aircrew are always fed well and in a timely and ample manner with hot meals,” maintenance staff, often “because of dysfunction in the work of the ASB,”1 did not have enough to eat. In 1943 and later, especially during the final advance, maintenance staff were often “fed abominably: millet concentrate was boiled which they had to drink without seasoning.”395 All this time, while moving from one airfield to another, they were unable to wash and just could not get rid of their lice. These had appeared at Stalingrad, which was hardly surprising as there was no question there of being able to wash. The regimental engineer remarked one morning to mechanic Kolya Menkov, “Well, Menkov, that’s a lot of Messers you’ve got crawling over you!”396 But how were they to be dealt with? They used petrol to exterminate the lice on clothing, and picked them off themselves, but within a few days they were back. The command took the matter seriously only after someone caught typhus. At that stage everybody was washed thoroughly and clothing treated, but that was already toward the end of January 1943 when they liberated Zernograd.
1 The Airfield Support Battalion: functions of the battalion included servicing the pilots and crews as well as organizing food, clothing and accommodation.