A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (43 page)

To continue my story, I was restless staying with my aunt and
couldn't stand the idea of just waiting to be arrested again by the
The trial was in Minsk, and I went there with the idea of
surrendering myself, but my uncle wouldn't allow it. He believed that
I must go to Moscow to prove to the Central Party and the Komsomol
that I was innocent and had committed no crime. On the night train I shivered with fear that at any moment the NKVD would board the
train and arrest me. In Moscow I hurried to Pravda, the Communist
newspaper, to tell my story, to plead my case, and to beg for their
intercession. They listened, then called the Central Komsomol Committee in pretense of helping me. In truth, they were closely connected to the and were busy fabricating big lies for the party.
Never thinking of the consequence, I even left my aunt's address with
them.

I returned to Smolensk to continue with my studies. Two months
later agents intruded into my aunt's apartment while I was at
school, searched it inside out, grabbed some family photographs, and
left me an order to be in their office that day. Again I was to be
arraigned with the group before the Supreme Court of Belorussia,
also behind the closed doors. I asked the Central Komsomol Committee to send a representative to the trial, which they did. But it was a
sham; they only pretended to help my case. In the end, all but one of
us were released. One boy was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for anti-Soviet propaganda. This was because once, at school, he
said that collective farms in this country, in the period of agricultural
reconstruction of the 192os and 1930s, had been conducted against
Lenin's general plan of agricultural rejuvenation.

Later I moved to Moscow and attended courses in Morse code. I
tried to be readmitted into the Komsomol. I wrote many appeals and
knocked on many doors, but in vain. The war started, and I attended a
special class to prepare to be flown behind enemy lines and work
with the partisans. Upon completion I filled out a questionnaire; one
of the questions asked if I were a member of the Komsomol, and if
not, what was the reason. For the whole period of Soviet rule it was
obligatory for all young people from the ages of fourteen to twentyeight to be Komsomol members. I answered that I had been expelled.
We had been informed by the selections board that if we were
accepted as volunteers, the risk of being killed was ninety-nine
percent-one percent would survive. I did not hesitate a second in my
determination to go to the front. When I was summoned before the
board for the final determination, I was rejected. The reason was my
expulsion.

My parents had left our native land of Belorussia and walked to
somewhere in the Volga River region as the Germans advanced into
our country. I decided to try to find them, and luckily I did. But my
grandparents were killed by the fascists in their village during the
first days of German occupation, for they shot all the Jews on the spot, irrespective of their age. They were old and sick and could not
think of abandoning their home to walk long kilometers to somewhere else-they preferred death.

I returned to Moscow and renewed my efforts to be reinstated into
the Komsomol and thus be eligible to volunteer for the front. The
Komsomol then summoned me and told me my appeal would be
granted if I went on a special mission behind the enemy lines. Those
terms sounded as though I had committed a crime and were expiating
my guilt, so I couldn't accept them. In despair I wrote to Lavrentij
Beriya, chief of the By a miracle my letter was read by a
general, a very honest man, who believed my story. He placed me
before him and interviewed me. He told me that I should never ever
mention that I had once been expelled from the Komsomol. He then
supported me, and I was able to join the Komsomol. After that I
became a ground radio operator stationed at one of the Moscow
airdromes.

But I had a burning desire to be a flight radio operator and requested a transfer. Soon I was sent to take a brief training course, and
in 1942 I was assigned to the Loth Guard Air Transport Division as a
flight radio operator. Our division was stationed at Vnukovo airdrome
near Moscow. We flew behind the front line to the enemy's rear,
dropping medicine, food supplies, ammunition, and weapons to the
partisans who conducted subversive activities on enemy-held territory. Sometimes we dropped paratroopers deep into the rear. At the
front we dropped oil barrels for our tanks and trucks, and on other
missions we landed at the front to carry the badly wounded to the
rear so they might survive. Occasionally we were attacked by fascist
fighters. When we flew to the besieged city of Stalingrad to drop
supplies and bring out the wounded, we were escorted by fighters
even though our Lisunov Li-2 aircraft was equipped with machinegun turrets.

In Belorussia, in 1943, the partisans were waging the so-called Rail
War. They blew up the tracks so the German cargo trains could not
deliver supplies to their troops. We delivered supplies to these partisans hiding in the dense Belorussian woods. We dropped the cargo at
night. They would signal us from the ground with identification
fires, and the code changed each night. One night it might be fires
laid in a triangle, another night a cross or rectangle. We talked with
the land forces through radio. It often happened that German intelligence intercepted the partisan code and laid out fires of similar
shapes to trap the Soviet transport aircraft. But we outwitted the Germans; we had auxiliary codes in addition to the fires. The partisans would shoot up a signal flare of a certain color, and the aircraft
would respond with a prearranged answering signal color-only then
did we drop the cargo.

I had many experiences in the war that made my heart sink. But
one is especially unforgettable. On one mission, when we were about
to drop supplies to the partisans, we were very unexpectedly attacked
by a German fighter. The aircraft commander asked me to check why
the tail gunner was silent. I rushed to the tail compartment and saw
that the turret and machine guns had been hit and were unusable.
The right fuel tank was leaking and flaming. The fighter made another pass on the right and attacked the pilot's cabin. The commander could hear the bullets bouncing off the armor plate in back of
him where my station was located and thought I had been killed. But
I was still in the rear of the plane. I ran to the commander to report
that we were on fire. We were flying at only 200 meters, and he
started to climb so we could bail out of the aircraft. But our parachutes were all piled into the tail of the plane, and it was on fire. Our
only chance to survive was to land the plane in the area of the partisan fires beneath us. While the pilot struggled to control the aircraft,
we were throwing weapons, ammunition fuses, and detonator cargo
out of the plane so it wouldn't explode when we landed. The pilot,
our commander, called to me to help him hold the aircraft, and I saw
that he was wounded in his chest and right arm. Our copilot became
so frightened he left the cabin and cowered near the back of the plane.
I couldn't help hold the control stick-it was beyond my physical
capacity-so I dashed to the flight engineer for help, but he was on
the floor, bleeding from six bullet wounds. Our commander was
barely conscious but still managed to control the aircraft as we bellylanded. My life flashed before my eyes in an instant. My last wish was
that everyone who had made me unjustly suffer in my youth for
crimes never committed would learn now that I was dying for my fair
motherland.

We touched the ground-we were safe! When we belly-landed I
opened the hatch and pulled the flight engineer out of the cabin. The
navigator and tail gunner had already jumped out and helped me
lower the engineer to the ground. Now I can hardly give an account of
how I energized myself to drag our commander through the hatch,
but I did. I was the last to quit the plane. When I felt myself firmly on
the ground I heard the commander's order to crawl away from the
plane. We might be on enemy-held territory, for we hadn't had time to signal the partisans on the ground. The fuel tanks blew up, and the
whole plane was burning. Then the men who were not wounded went
into the forest to reconnoiter. Our commander wanted us to leave
him because he was so badly wounded, and he had his pistol ready to
shoot himself if the fascists came. I didn't obey him and stayed with
the wounded. I was in despair, for I didn't know how to stem the
bleeding of the chest wound. I remembered that I always had many
handkerchiefs in my greatcoat, because in the daytime when we were
not flying I passed the time embroidering them. I used them now for
bandages, pressing them against the chest wound. The flight engineer
was also bleeding. I tore his high boot with a knife and bandaged the
wounds with his foot wrapping.

In about an hour the crew returned with a partisan, a horse, and
a cart. We loaded the wounded onto the cart and made our way to a
village controlled by the partisans. The wounded were carried into a
hut, and the surgeon extracted splinters and bullets from their bodies.
There was no anesthesia, so he used pieces of ice to freeze the area.
The partisans radioed to the their headquarters in Moscow that we
had crashed, and two weeks later, two small aircraft were sent to ferry
us out. Before we left we were visited by the secretary of the underground Komsomol. Our commander praised my courage and selfcontrol, and the secretary turned to see me. His dismay and astonishment showed on his face when he recognized me as the girl whom he
had arrested and expelled from the Komsomol!

While awaiting the rescue aircraft, the navigator and I returned to
our burned aircraft to search for the Order of the Red Star, the award
our pilot commander had been wearing when we were forced to land.
He valued it highly and mourned its loss. It was nowhere to be found
at the aircraft site, but we did find, to our horror, that we were in the
middle of a mine field! Later, when in a Moscow military hospital,
surgery was performed on our commander, and when they entered
the wound, they extracted the medal from his chest! It had deflected
the bullet from his heart and saved his life.

Our flights to the landing strips behind the lines in the Crimea were
very risky. The partisans built short strips in the mountains where
they were hiding, and fog and overcast made it difficult to locate these
rocky fields. They could not light fires at night because they were
visible everywhere, and in the daytime German fighters loitered over
them. On one such mission we searched five days to locate the small
landing strip. When we finally landed to take out the severely
wounded, we packed the aircraft to capacity, for the men would die there if we could not fly them out. On each trip we would carry thirtyfive or forty people, our maximum load. We had no nurses on board,
and we attended them ourselves as best we could. It was impossible to
take a breath in the passenger compartment, for the bodies were decaying and stinking. On one mission one of our engines quit over the Black
Sea, and we were forced to turn to an auxiliary field. It took forty
minutes to get to that field, and all the way there we realized we could
crash any minute-it seemed like an eternity.

Many of our missions lasted for two or three days. My crew always
granted me the best conveniences, while they nested in worse. Moreover, they cared not only about my comfort but also about my long
braid I couldn't bear to cut. Each time we were stationed near a small
rivulet, pond, or lake, my crew would bring me several buckets of
clear water to wash and rinse my thick, long hair. I gave them my
ration of vodka and cigarettes, and they gave me their chocolate.
They never dirty-mouthed in my presence; they treated me in a most
gracious manner. And in their presence I never gave way to emotions,
no matter how grave the situation. Every day we saw such grief,
death, and destruction that my thoughts merged into one desire-to
liberate my motherland from the fascist barbarians. On board the
aircraft I felt sheltered and protected. My plane was my home; I stood
on the flooring of the plane as if on the land.

In 1944 the war was moving toward its end. We were flying to the
Belorussian front, where the Germans were vehemently resisting, for
they were losing superiority on all fronts. They threw the main German air forces to that front. On those missions we were attacked
again and again, and on each flight we returned with bullet holes in
the fuselage. I feared each flight. But when my commander transferred me to Kiev to another crew I sobbed for several days. Not only
was I losing my crew but I would never cross the front again, because
I was being assigned to domestic duty behind the front. No longer was
I defeating the enemy; I was assigned to fly with the Ukrainian government within Soviet-held territory. My commander made this decision to transfer me because he felt that he bore responsibility for
my life. Once I had saved him when I pulled him out of a burning
aircraft, and now he was saving me from a wild bullet. My younger
brother lost his life at age eighteen, in 1944, and now my commander
was forcibly preventing me from losing mine. Soon I quit flying completely. I entered the Military Academy of Foreign Interpreters but
was soon transferred to a civilian college, the Linguistic University,
for I was expecting a child.

I majored in Italian and Spanish, then completed postgraduate
courses and defended my dissertation. For ten years I taught Italian at
the University of Foreign Economic Relations. Later I translated feature films for Mosfilm. Then I moved into film production, where I
am now managing producer for joint Russian-Italian films.