A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (11 page)

I had married while I was at the military academy. My husband
was drafted into the army in the very first days of the war, and then he
was killed in action. I had no time for love during the war.

At one point we were stationed in the Caucasus in an area that was
very close to a swamp. There were lots of mosquitoes, and I was
bitten so severely that I was ill, and my body was covered with red
spots. The regimental doctor decided to take me to Rostov on the
Don for examination and consultation with another doctor. While we
were on our way to that military hospital, we were bombed and fired
upon. When we came to the hospital, there was another very severe
bombing. The Germans were bombing the hospital, and people were
being wounded and killed. They were carrying the wounded out of
what had been the hospital, but it was completely destroyed; I was so
shattered by what I was witnessing that I broke down completely. It
was a carnage! The doctors were totally engaged in caring for the
dying and wounded, and our doctor decided that we should return at
once to our regiment.

On our journey hack, I looked down at my body and saw the disease had vanished-all the red spots had disappeared completely! It
must have been the trauma of the bombing, but I left the regiment
absolutely sick and returned absolutely healthy. Out of that terrible
tragedy came a small comedy.

Another time we were stationed in Belorussia, and the area was in
a state of flux. First our troops were encircled, then they were not.
The Germans and our troops were all mixed in close proximity, and
an area would be first under our control, then under German troops.
We were sleeping in tents at the airfield, and just before dawn, we saw
a group of people moving toward us. We didn't know what to do. Were
they the enemy or Soviet troops? We got ready to fire at them, and at
that moment they displayed a white flag. It turned out that they were
Soviet troops who had gotten lost in the woods. The white flag saved their lives and our lives: we would have fired at them. There were so
many units encircled and milling around with the Germans that even
the commanders had no clear idea of the situation.

In the Crimea we were advancing, and we moved into a Ukrainian
settlement, a village; we were billeted in their houses. I was in a
house where I was treated to a very good meal, and it was Easter time.
The housewife cooked special cakes and eggs and other good things
to eat. We were so excited and happy that we at last were going to
have substantial meals and a good sleep. By then all I could think
about and dream about was a full night's sleep. So at last I fell into bed
and went to sleep. I dreamed that the aircraft in the regiment were
being bombed by the fascists. Then the housewife shook me by the
shoulder and said, "You must get up, your airfield is being bombed,
your aircraft are burning!" Well, the dream coincided with the truth. I
had a fortune-telling vision in my dream!

We all rushed to the airfield to save our planes. I threw on my
clothes and shoes in the darkness and ran out of the house, and it
wasn't until I was running toward the airfield that I realized I had on
my high heels. I lost the heel of one shoe, and at that moment a
German plane came down the road, following me with tracer bullets.
He was flying at such low altitude that I could see his face. I threw
myself flat on the ground, and he flew over me.

When I came to the airfield many of our planes were damaged,
some burning and some destroyed. The Germans had gone. I jumped
into the cockpit of one of the aircraft to check the damage, and the
German planes returned and continued bombing. I dove out of the
cockpit onto the ground and lay under the wing. There were no
trenches in which to hide, the bombing was heavy, and all of us lay on
the ground with no protection, waiting for it to stop. When they flew
away two or three of the girls were wounded, and our planes sustained
heavy damage.

Before that episode, the regiment was inspected by the commander
of the front. He was not satisfied with us because he did not like the
underwear and linen hung out on clotheslines, nor was he satisfied
with the combat readiness of the regiment. The second time he came
to inspect he was completely satisfied with our readiness, and he
decided to reward the girls with suits, coats, skirts, and a pair of highheeled shoes. So they were ordered and given to all the girls in the
regiment. And that is why I had high-heeled shoes at the front!

While we were stationed in the Crimea, we were flying from our
air base to the auxiliary airfield when we were attacked by a German fighter. The Po-2 had four of us, the pilot, navigator, myself, and a
mechanic, squeezed into the two cockpits. I could hear the zinging of
the bullets passing by my head, but miraculously, none of us was hit.
The plane was punctured all over with small holes, and the instrument panel was smashed. It was difficult for the pilot to control the
plane, but she had to land because we had no parachutes. As we
approached for the landing, the German pilot circled and came back
to shoot us down. There was nothing to be done but try to get the
plane on the ground. It happened that a formation of our fighters
appeared, passing overhead, and the German turned back toward his
own lines. That is what saved us.

After the war I remained in the military, and I retired at the age of
fifty-five in the rank of lieutenant-colonel after thirty-two years.

Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniya Zhigulenko,
pilot, commander of the formation

Hero of the Soviet Union

Yevgeniya Zhigulenko,
46th regiment.
Photograph by Khaldei

I was born in the Kuban region.
My relatives come from Norway, and my grandfather was
the captain of a vessel. For
some faults he was dismissed
from the navy, and later on
he immigrated to Russia and
settled in the Kuban region.
My original name, my maiden
name, is Azarova. The name
Zhigulenko I have now stuck to
me quite accidently. If you are
aware of the events that went
on in Russia in the early postrevolutionary years, with the
Civil War between the Reds and
the Whites-Russians killing
Russians-trying to prove by
means of blood whose power
was stronger, then you know
that the massacre was nearly
impossible to escape. My father did not want to he involved in the
Civil War. He managed to get a passport that had belonged to a man,
Zhigulenko by name. According to those papers Zhigulenko was a physically disabled man, not to be recruited to the army. Thus my
father survived, and from then on the family had this name. It is
traditional in this country for a woman to change her last name when
she marries, so I knew I wouldn't have that name when I married. But
in the end it has happened that I've been wearing that name all my
life! I feel pity for my original name-I wish I could have it back. I feel
so much that we all have our roots manifested in this way.

Since my childhood I have been a freedom-loving Cossack girl
riding a horse along the Kuban steppes. My spirit has always been
emancipated, unconquered, and proud. Nothing passes by me unnoticed-that is a part of my Cossack nature also. Suddenly, out of
nowhere, a strong desire to fly was born in my flesh. In my teens,
when at school, I joined a glider club. I was full of dreams and romanticism; another wild desire dazzling in my mind was that I wanted to
be an actress. I had drama classes, and we staged several performances
in my native town. I even had a pseudonym just as an actor does, and I
named myself Lola Bredis.

In the course of my life this childish craziness came true, and I
became a movie director. Many years after the war I went to film
school in Moscow. I have made two feature films, and in the second I
had a small part as an actress.

Back to my youth: when I finished secondary school I moved to
Moscow and entered college, but I couldn't completely quit my secret
dream of flying. I was spellbound by the mystery of flight. I thought of
it as my integration with the universe. At night, I went to Tushino
Airfield for night flying in the glider school; in the day, I attended
college. I devoted my spare time to music classes at the Moscow
Conservatory. You can see now how gigantic my perspective washow tempting was my life unfolding, how it swirled around me in its
wild dance!

On June 22, 1941, I was returning to my college hostel room, full of
joy and life, and I sensed something tense in the air. The war-the
war has started, the girls told me. I had only a vague knowledge about
war, from books, mass media, and propaganda. Now it was a reality
to live with. I made up my mind to go to the front.

My path to the front was a comedy. My friend Nina and I had no
profession when the war broke out, no skill applicable to the front.
We devised a plan. We dug out a telephone number of a colonel in the
airforce headquarters in Moscow, and we called him. We spoke to
him mysteriously and never revealed our secret on the phone. We said
we could tell him our secret only in private. We persistently dialed his office telephone number for a week. We drove him crazy for the
whole week, so he surrendered. He signed for us a pass to his office in
the airforce headquarters. We entered that huge, concrete building,
and going down its long corridors we promised each other that we
would never leave the office until they let us go to the front.

I opened the door of the colonel's office and announced, "Comrade
Colonel, if you try to get rid of us we will sleep here, we will not
leave, we will stay here forever!" He looked at us in horror; his mouth
dropped open. We sensed he thought us two crazies. Then he sternly
said to us, "What is your case?" We answered that until they let us go
to the front, we would not leave. He burst out laughing. "You girls
should have told me about it at once! Marina Raskova is forming
female flying regiments; she is to be here in a few minutes, and you
may personally talk with her."

She arrived so alive and so miraculously beautiful-we were
spellbound. We stood breathless, so great was our emotion. She
smiled at us; she was well aware of her enigmatic beauty. We murmured affirmatively when she asked if we wanted to join the regiments. She gave us passes to the Zhukovsky Academy, where the
regiments were being assembled. Thus my girlfriend and I joined
the regiment.

At the training field in Engels, I was assigned as a navigator. Those
assigned as pilots had many more hours in the air than I. All of us
who were navigators looked upon ourselves as a very elite group
because our backgrounds were of colleges and universities. We were
well-read, intellectually minded, had good manners, and never heard
or said dirty words.

I was assigned to the 588th Air Regiment, and after training we
were sent to the front. I flew as navigator with pilot Polina Makogon,
who was only twenty-five; but I, being nineteen, considered her to be
quite old. Our flights together made me believe everyone was born
under her own star, lucky or tragic; but we are all destined to our own
fate, a fate impossible to change no matter what the circumstances.
My flights as a navigator with Polina substantiated this observation.
There were three episodes, the first being in the Caucasus, where our
airfield was located in a vast, hilly land. The runway abruptly ended
in a steep precipice, but ordinarily it was long enough for the aircraft
to take off and land. We took off on a mission, and the wheels had just
left the ground when the engine coughed and died. The plane returned to earth, and we were rushing toward the precipice. The Po-2
aircraft were without brakes, and by a miracle we stopped just ten steps from the abyss. We gasped with relief; it was my first experience
when I sensed mortality in the air.

We were assigned to bomb a bridge that the Germans were constructing from the left bank of the Mozdok River. On the right bank
were our troops. From above, at an altitude of 1,200 meters, it is
difficult at night to discern what is below. The small bridge seemed a
thin thread. To hit it a pilot had to concentrate all her energy and
vision, and more than that, to know exactly her speed, altitude, and
course for a full minute before the bomb was dropped. When the
target became discernible and was under the wing of the aircraft, I
cried to the pilot to hold to the left because we were drifting with the
wind. Our bombs missed the target.

The antiaircraft guns were firing, and the searchlights lit up the
sky around us. I was sweating and could feel a strip of sweat rolling
down my back. We turned from the target, giving way to following
aircraft. In the turn we fell into a stall and were nearing a crash, but
she managed to recover. Later on, when I myself piloted the aircraft, I
understood why she lost control over the target. There is a superhuman psychic overstrain when you are blinded by the searchlights and
deafened by the explosions of antiaircraft shells and fire all around
you. Your concentration over the target is so intense that it results in
a complete loss of your whereabouts-a disorientation. You cannot
tell the sky from the ground. Many of our crews crashed in that way.