A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II (12 page)

Another proof in support of my theory of destiny: our aircraft was
hit by enemy fire in the Caucasian foothills, and we were descending
into a forced landing. In the pitch blackness I could discern a hill on
the right side and called out to the pilot to stay to the left, otherwise
we would crash into the hill. I was not sure she had heard me, so I
decided to flare the area to see the landscape, although for us to use a
flare in that way was strictly forbidden-the enemy could spot us. But
our lives were at stake, so I violated the order; I had a strong urge to
live. In the light of the flare Polina could see the hill; she made a
quick turn to the left, and we escaped the crash.

Soon after that episode I was made a pilot, and a younger and less
skilled navigator was assigned to fly with Polina. They were flying
back from a mission and collided with another aircraft in the air.
Both crews crashed and perished. With me, my pilot escaped death
three times; with another navigator, she perished. I don't associate
her death with any unskillfulness of the navigator. Now that I am so
closely studying occult sciences and astrology, I think my pilot was
destined to die so young. But I was her silver cord-the thread that held her to survive. As soon as that invisible connection was torn off
between us, she perished.

In the regiment we had a shortage of pilots, and so navigators were
retrained to become pilots and ground personnel to become navigators. My advantage was that I already knew how to fly, so I became a
pilot. By the end of the war I had a greater number of combat hours
than most of the air crews. I managed to outstrip them because I have
very long legs! There was an order in the regiment that the first pilot
to get into the cockpit and start the engine was to be the first to take
off; I was always the first because I ran faster!

We all volunteered to go to the front and strove to fulfill the most
combat missions, even beyond our physical capacity. We longed to
see the end of that horrible war, to liberate our fair motherland. We,
young girls of the flying regiments, did our best to contribute to the
defeat of the enemy and victory for our suffering people.

But life remains life, and we, as military pilots, still remained
young girls. We dreamed of our grooms, marriages, children, and a
future happy, peaceful life. We thought to meet our future mates at
the front. But our 46th regiment was unique, for it was purely female.
There wasn't even a shabby male mechanic to rest a glance on. Nevertheless, after a night of combat we never forgot to curl our hair.
Some girls thought it unpatriotic to look attractive. I argued that we
should. I said, "Imagine that I have a forced landing at a male fighter
airdrome. Soldiers are rushing to my aircraft because they know that
the crew is female. I, absolutely dashing, slide out of the cockpit and
take off my helmet, and my golden, curly hair streams down my
shoulders. Everyone is awed by my dazzling beauty. They all desperately fall in love with me."

The Soviet army began advancing into the Crimean Peninsula. Our
mission was to keep enemy bombers from taking off from their airfield
by bombing the airstrip every few minutes. My assignment was to map
a course for the regiment and to drop firebombs, which produced a
series of small fires indicating the location of their airdrome for the
other crews to follow. In order not to lose our orientation, we had to
flare the area. The instant the flare lit the area, we were over their
cement landing strip. My navigator then suggested that we fly on five
kilometers to the fascist weapon storage area and bomb it.

We dropped bombs and set the building on fire. For the next several
seconds the silence was frightening, because I knew very well the
enemy would react and smash us to pieces. I was all nerves and fear,
and my teeth clenched. Then the guns all fired along with search lights. I smelled gas in the cockpit-the fuel line was hit! When I saw
the storage building flaming above me and the moon below me, I
knew we had entered a stall. I recovered instinctively. The plane was
shaking, losing flying speed and altitude. I headed toward the waters
of the strait, and I remembered that there was an auxiliary field
somewhere in the hills.

I called to my navigator to give me directions, but there was no
reaction. I turned in my seat and to my horror found no navigator. I
began sweating at the thought that I had lost my navigator while we
were stalling upside down. I could not stand that thought-I had no
right to come back to the regiment without her. The altitude of the
aircraft was dropping down and down; then the altimeter showed no
height at all.

I found myself whispering to my mama to help me. Ahead of me
were the banks of the strait. I felt the wheels sliding on the water;
then they hit and stuck in the sand. I had made it just to the water's
edge. Then I heard my navigator's voice. "What the hell!" I was crazy
with relief and happiness. I turned and leaned over her; she was stuck
in the cockpit with one leg pierced through the cabin floor. She was
alive, she was safe!

While we were stalling, her seat had fallen to the bottom of the
cabin, and her leg had stuck into the broken floor. When she took off
her helmet, I saw a huge bump on her forehead; she had hurt her head
when we crashed. The infantrymen were running to our wrecked
plane. She, who had miraculously escaped death, was now grieving
over her forehead because she wanted to look attractive! Life took
over from the war-we all wanted to love and be loved. She cried with
dismay, "Look how many grooms are around, and who is going to
marry me with this huge hump on my forehead?" I burst out laughing, but it was a hysterical laughter. Thus I relieved myself of that
intensity of fear and tension.

Many of our crews were killed in the war, and we had to cope with
this as best we could. The way I felt then was that I wanted the old
times of my happy youth to return, and I idealistically visualized it.
But at the bottom of my heart the feelings were more complex and
complete. Seeing and hearing those massacred or herded into concentration camps as slave labor intensified and hardened our will and
desire for revenge.

All my life I've been living with a vision that has become the main
theme in both my feature films: a small boy, helpless and desperate in
his misfortune. He is not a fruit of my fantasy-he is a real person. In my films he is a symbol of the great Russian tragedy of the millions of
homeless, orphaned children.

I met this child on one of my missions. We were flying back to our
regiment at dawn, and in the outskirts of a Belorussian village I saw
something very tiny, a black spot-but it was something alive. When
we landed I saw a small boy all alone in the deserted village. My first
impulse was to give him all the rations each pilot carries in her
emergency sack: candies, a bar of chocolate, sugared milk. I grabbed it
from the cabin and flew to the child, spreading my arms like wings,
hoping to see a smile on the face of that tiny creature whom I could
make happy for at least a few moments. But in front of me was a
skinny, frozen face with enormous green eyes. And in them no glimpse
of joy. "Aunty, are you going to the front?" he asked me, and in his
voice was a weak hope. "My daddy is at the front. Find him, please.
My mama is dying there in the trench. If you find him, she won't
die...."

So you see, we couldn't help flying in combat, and we did our best
for those tiny human beings so they would never have to suffer
anymore-it was a genuine truth of heart.

Junior Lieutenant Olga Yerokhina-Averjanova,
mechanic of armament

I was born in 1924. Now I am a retired medical doctor. When the war
broke out I was finishing secondary school; I was seventeen. I had a
discussion at home with my mother and father, and we decided that I
should go to the front to defend the motherland. It was a home council. Moreover, I was the leader of the Communist League organization
at school. I lived in the Caucasus in the city of Stavropol.

At first they didn't want to take me into the army because I was so
young and didn't have any technical background. But later I was allowed to join the army, and I was admitted into the military school of
junior airforce staff. I studied there for three months and was then
admitted to the 63rd Air Regiment, a male regiment, which flew the
Boston-29 aircraft. I was a mechanic of armament.

In 1943 Bershanskaya, commander of the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment, selected me as a reinforcement for her regiment. It was easier
to serve in the male regiment in the physical sense that the heavy
duties were performed by the men. But from the point of view of
human relationships, it was much better in the women's regiment.
When we were on duty we called each other and members of the
command and staff by their rank, very officially; and then in the mess or barracks, we called each other informally, addressing each other by
our first names. This made friendships and relationships, and it was
all due to Bershanskaya, our commander, because she was a marvelous person.

We had a terrible accident in the Caucasus, when four of our aircraft crashed into each other. Two of them were awaiting permission
to land at night after a mission, and they were circling and circling
because nearby were German fighters, and they couldn't allow them
to land. Two others were taking off on a combat mission, so in that
darkness they ran into each other and crashed. Only one person survived while seven perished. Some of those could have survived, but
they hadn't been provided with parachutes. When they hit the ground
some of them were still alive and were crying out for someone to save
them because their aircraft were on fire. No one could help them.
They couldn't escape from the cockpits, and nobody could come
close to the planes because of the fires. They exploded, one after
another. Only one managed to escape from the cockpit, and she was
permanently crippled.

After each combat night we were allowed to sleep three or four
hours before a new duty day. But on the night of a crash we never
slept, never left the airfield. We waited until dawn, believing in miracles, asking God to save our girls, waiting for them to return. Many of
them did not come back, but sometimes when the planes were missing after a mission they really did return. They were shot down and
made emergency landings, returning sometimes two or three days
later. They were considered to have perished, but happily they turned
out to be alive and safe. Each loss was a great grief to us.

The aircraft carried different types of bombs. One small one made
a crackling sound when it hit, and it was very frightening to those on
the ground. The biggest complication to our duty was that we had to
work at night loading the bombs, and we used torches. If the batteries
gave out, we were forced to load the bombs by feeling with our hands
where to attach them to the aircraft.

Once when we were stationed in Poland, a male engineer of the air
division came to check our work. He decided to teach us how to
handle all the equipment and fuses and how to fix everything on the
aircraft-he wanted to show us his manly skills. He took an explosive
device in his hands that was ready to explode, and when I saw what
was happening, I jumped up and threw it away from his hands. At
that moment the device exploded, and a piece of shell penetrated his
head. He was cut from his eyebrow along his cheek.

We had some nights that we called our maximum nights. These
were nights when the air crews made from 12 to 18 missions. Irina
Sebrova was a leader in the competition to complete missions; she
had i,oo8 combat missions, and I worked on the aircraft of her formation. Near the end of the war I was promoted to junior lieutenant.

Our regiment received attention and much publicity during the
war, and we were promoted more frequently than the male regiments. The men didn't believe that women could do any good at the
front; they thought that it was not the female job to fly combat or
serve in the army. Later on, when we had proven ourselves, they
respected us.

Hygienically, it was a hardship. We didn't have enough soap or
water. Sometimes we used water from puddles to wash ourselves. In
one area the water was very salty, so we would melt snow. Our staff
would say that we had to always remember that we were women and
take care of ourselves.

First we fought in the Caucasus, then in the Crimea, then on the
Belorussian front. The women of our regiments would never wish a
war to come to anyone-to kill or be killed. All of us wanted to be
peaceful, friendly, kind, open, the way we are now in 199o.

Junior Lieutenant Mariya Tepikina-Popova,
pilot, deputy squadron commander

I was born in 1917 in the Urals near the town of Sverdlovsk, and I
came to aviation accidentally. I went to teachers' college, and when I
was a third-year student, the Komsomol leader of our college suggested that I should enter a pilots' school in Bataisk. He chose me
because I was an athlete at school. I was afraid to be trained as a pilot;
I didn't know if I could do it. I had planned to be a teacher, but the
Komsomol leader persuaded me. From 1936 to 1939 I attended that
aviation pilots' school. I was nineteen when I entered pilot training.

When I graduated I flew as a pilot with Aeroflot, our national
airline. I had been flying with the airline for two years when the war
broke out. I married during this period, and my husband was a pilot,
too. When the war started, he was drafted into the army air forces and
was shot down and killed in 1941. In October, 1941, right after my
husband perished, I was transferred to the town of Dzhanbul with my
baby son. I worked there as an instructor until 1943, and there I also
buried my son. You can understand my sentiments when I tell you
that I couldn't stay in the rear anymore because I lost both of those
dear to me, but they wouldn't let me go to the front until 1943. 1 cried for three days before the commander of the pilot training school
allowed me to leave.