“The Germans are in retreat and we are going after them,” Zhenya Rudneva of 588 Night Bomber Regiment wrote in her diary. Four Air Army was on the heels of German troops withdrawing from the Caucasus.
She reported to her parents that “because we are constantly on the move the field mail will be even worse than it was. Now it really is our turn to celebrate on our street. We are attacking and will stay here for a day or two before moving on again to a new place, because the Krauts are scrambling to get away at amazing speed.”397 Zhenya wrote in her letters that the girls in her regiment found themselves lodging with the same women as they had last summer. Then, as now, they would only stay in one place for a short while since they were constantly changing airfields as they retreated along with the ground troops. But now they were moving in the opposite direction.398 Zhenya was sharing with Galya Dokutovich, who felt terribly sorry for the local people and noted in her diary how much the Germans had destroyed while they were there and how shamelessly they had robbed the inhabitants.
Heaven knows who told them the myth about themselves that was said to be circulating among the Germans. Galya noted, “The Hitlerites have found out about the existence of our regiment” and were supposedly saying that “our regiment recruits street women and all kinds of madcaps, and that we are given special injections which half stop us being women. We are half-women, half-men, sleep during the day and go out bombing at night.”399 There was also a story that when a U-2 from the men’s regiment fell into German hands “they all, especially the officers, rushed to the plane to goggle at the woman pilot. The crew were men, but were made to strip naked anyway.”
The Night Witches believed this silly story. Even though they had been so many months at the front and seen so many terrible things, they were still very naive and inexperienced. Many had never seen a dead enemy soldier.
Natasha Meklin first saw a German corpse in February 1943 at Rasshevatka Station. The Germans had been driven out just the day before by General Kirichenko’s Cavalry Corps. The village was in flames and the bodies of people and horses were everywhere. On the side of the road to the airfield Natasha and her pilot Irina Sebrova came upon a dead German soldier. He was lying behind a mound and Natasha almost fell over him. The girls stopped to look. They were silent. The German was young, without his uniform, in blue underwear. “The body was pale and waxen, the head thrown back and turned to one side. It had straight fair hair frozen to the snow.”400 It looked as if he had just turned round and was staring in horror at the road, expecting something to happen.
Until then the girls had only a vague idea of what the death they sowed every night might look like at close quarters: “Suppress the point of fire,” “Bomb the crossing,” “Destroy enemy combat resources.” It all sounded so abstract and straightforward. They knew that every enemy killed brought the hour of victory closer, and that was why they had gone to war in the first place. Now, however, contemplating the bloodless face of a dead enemy on which the fresh snow was not melting, his arm thrown to one side with its fingers tensed, Natasha experienced mixed emotions: depression, revulsion, but also pity. “Tomorrow I shall be bombing again,” she reflected, “and the day after that, and the day after that until the war is over or until I am killed myself.”
“We are 150 kilometers from the front line,” Galya Dokutovich wrote on February 2, 1943. “Tomorrow we fly on to catch up with it.”401
They flew again and again in the direction of Krasnodar: 4 Air Army was providing support for the North Caucasus Front, which was advancing rapidly on the capital of the Kuban. “We are flying. I have flown 28 sorties already. At present we are in Dzherelievskaya. We have got used to not sleeping at night, whether we are working or not. It is like being on the front line here. Enemy spies are snooping all the time and they have their aircraft in the sky. The fascists are pulling all their equipment and troops out of the Caucasus to the Kerch Strait. We are pecking at them from the sky. Rostov, Shakhty, Novoshakhtinsk, Konstantinovka have been recaptured, and yesterday we heard the news that Kharkov has been taken,” she wrote on February 17.402 Events had moved so quickly that the retaking of Krasnodar just five days previously seemed already a thing of the distant past. The newspapers were still writing about it, however, and emphasizing the heroic part played by 4 Air Army.
German units withdrew through Rostov, blowing up the bridges behind them. Having begun to retreat on January 10, 1943, within four weeks all formations of the German 17th Army fighting in the Caucasus had descended on the Kuban bridgehead.
At the beginning of the fighting to retake Rostov, Baranov’s 296 Regiment had just fifteen serviceable aircraft left, and two that were being repaired in Kotelnikovo.403 Four planes on the far side of the Volga had to be written off as irreparable. The pilots took turns flying the few aircraft available. Lilya Litvyak now often shared the same plane as Semyon Gorkhiver, an arrangement that suited the mechanics because Gorkhiver was short and only slightly taller than Litvyak, so when one of them flew after the other there was no need to adjust the pedals. Lilya and Semyon enjoyed sharing a joke.404
On February 10, Kutsenko, Salomatin, Budanova and Gorkhiver distinguished themselves by shooting down three German aircraft.405 Litvyak was not far behind. On February 11 the regiment “flew 20 missions to provide cover for Soviet ground troops.” In the course of the day the regiment’s commander, Nikolai Baranov, and Lilya Litvyak both shot down a Stuka, and one Messerschmitt was shot down by a group of other pilots. In his secret report, Political Adviser Major Krainov noted the vanguard role of Communists in the operation: “Member of the C.P.S.U.(b) Senior Lieutenant Salomatin and Member of the C.P.S.U.(b) Captain Verblyudov are fearless combatants in the air.”406
Alexey Salomatin, however, had less and less time to devote to Communist Party activities, because he had fallen in love. You can hide nothing in a regiment, and the relationship blossoming between two pilots in the First Squadron was public knowledge. Salomatin was so popular and admired in the regiment, and Litvyak had performed so well in her first dogfights since joining the unit, that their feelings were treated with great respect even by pilots who loved playing the fool and winding their friend up. Both the pilots and mechanics did their best to “make it possible for them to be alone.”407 At the beginning of March Salomatin and Litvyak applied to Baranov for permission to marry. This was granted, but even then they had little opportunity to be together. The only chance they had to spend time together by themselves was at night. More often than not they would be allocated a small room in a peasant hut, but with the front advancing, their temporary refuges changed frequently.408 Sometimes though they managed to grab the chance to take a break from the relentless fighting. There is a lovely photograph that must have been taken on one of these precious afternoons. Pilots crowd on all sides round an off-roader—it is strange to see these pilots beside a vehicle other than a plane. Alexander Martynov is to one side, while Alexey Salomatin is closer to Lilya, his elbows on the bonnet, his chin resting on his hands. Batya is sitting on the running board, showing off his new yellow buckskin boots. The pilots had these made from leather stripped off the fuel tanks of downed Junkers. They were purely for show, and hopeless at keeping water out. They look so carefree and happy that it is hard to believe three of them would be dead within months of the picture having been taken.
“This is a time for bombing and bombing,” Zhenya Rudneva wrote in her diary.409 The ground was thawing out and atrocious, impassable mud marked the coming of spring. It caught whole columns of German vehicles retreating on the roads from the Caucasus. The only problem for the Russians was that their planes were also unable to taxi out through the mud for takeoff, and there were no fuel deliveries. The airfield maintenance battalion vehicles got stuck in the mud too.
This necessitated some changes to the regiment’s routine. They had to go out to the airfield long before it was light in order to drag the aircraft from their stands to the runway. The undercarriages sank deep into the mud, and the mechanics’ feet in their canvas boots did the same. “In peacetime,” Raisa Aronova reflected, “no one in their right mind would consider flying with this sort of mud.” How remote peacetime seemed now. Katya Piskaryova would just stop a local man on the road and say, “Come on, uncle, give us a hand!”
The lack of fuel meant they had to fly less frequently, which created an opportunity for some of the personnel to be sent to a health resort. Yessentuki, the best resort and hospital in the Caucasus, was only 200 kilometers away, and had just been recaptured from the Germans.
“I’ve been given a pass to the Yessentuki sanatorium,” Galya Dokutovich recorded on February 24.410 It was unlike her to agree to go to a sanatorium when none of them could wait for the airfield to dry out and the fuel trucks to get back on the roads, but Galya was feeling very ill. “I feel awful. I try not to show it, but I am afraid my endurance may soon fail,” she confessed, but only to her diary.411 She said nothing to her friends, not even Polina. They were not blind, no matter how hard Galya tried to hide her suffering, but the only time Polina tried to talk to her about it, Galya got very angry and forbade her to mention it again.
After several months of occupation, the sanatorium in the newly liberated town was probably not in a great state to receive visitors, but the soldiers were undemanding. Soon after arriving, Galya wrote in her diary that she was already getting used to conditions there and was not too bored. In addition, she had found someone who was giving a lot of meaning to her stay there.
It is a simple matter to trace her developing relationship with Misha, a blue-eyed pilot, through her diary entries. First there is a note that some officers came into the girls’ room, and “behaved too freely,” and started saying such things that Galya had to leave. Then she admits to the diary how surprised she is to find that one of them, Misha, is really “a very genuine and profound person.” Misha left, and Galya writes that one of the staff told her, “He left his heart with you, Galya.” She thought to herself, “He does not know that he also took mine with him!” “Wonderful, blue-eyed Misha with that shock of tousled hair” flew a Boston, an American heavy bomber, in a regiment deployed not too far from where the Night Witches were, so there was a chance they might meet again soon. After Misha’s departure, time dragged “unbelievably slowly.” She just wanted “to get back to the regiment as soon as possible, back to work.” And also, back to where she might “if only in passing” get to see Misha.
The deadly danger she faced every night she was flying seemed to Galya wholly negligible compared to the threat to Misha flying his Boston. Galya was in love.