They all look at me, obviously waiting for my idea.
“Every night, we all run back and forth between the bomb depot and the fuel truck and so on. We each have at least four different jobs that have us running willy-nilly all over the field. But what if we each were charged with one job? I know we need three armorers there to carry the bombs, since they’re so heavy, but fueling requires just one person. We should have duty teams with specialized tasks who work in shifts. If Alexia did the fueling, Galya and Olga and I could focus on rearmament, and we’d have three fewer people fighting for the fuel hoses.”
Galya snorts. “No offense, Valya, but let’s have Alexia work on arming. You don’t have the feel yet for the latching. You should do fuel.”
“No offense taken.” I smile. I must convince them that this will work. “You understand what I mean.” They do. Even sharp-tongued Galya nods slowly.
“Let’s try it tonight,” Mara says.
“What’s this all about?” A large, somewhat older woman comes in. It’s Nika, the director of the ground crew. “What are you going to try?”
Mara steps forward. “Nika, Valya here has a proposal.”
“Valya where? Who’s Valya?”
Mara nods at me. “Valentina Petrovna Baskova, sister of Tatyana Baskova.”
“Ah, she must be new.”
“She’s part of the ground crew, Comrade Nika,” Tatyana explains. “And she has an excellent idea for reorganizing the ground crew operations to make them more—”
Nika cuts her off by stepping forward and jabbing her finger into Mara’s chest. “You tend to the pilots, Tretorov, and I tend to the ground operations. Understand?”
Mara doesn’t answer, but she scowls slightly, then turns her back and walks off a few paces.
“Understand?” Nika turns to the rest of us. No one says a word. She stomps out.
Galya swears under her breath. “Yeah, we understand, you vodka-soaked fool!” She turns to me. “It’s a great idea.”
“It is, Valya. Truly.” Tatyana smiles.
Mara suddenly returns. “Let’s do it. Nika won’t know the difference.”
It takes only one night to put the new system in place. On our first try, we service Mara’s plane, from fueling to rearmament, in under five minutes. By the end of the evening, half the planes are being serviced by teams, greatly reducing the crowds at the fuel trucks and the bomb trucks. The airfield no longer feels like a swarming hive of bees but a rather orderly place. Despite this, there are still some holdouts. Some mechanics and some pilots are reluctant to give up the old system.
That morning, as I’m making my way back to the Flying Horse Hotel I hear a beautiful song spooling into the frigid air. It is as if the wind has parted to make way for this thrilling voice. My heart goes still, and I stand in my too-big men’s boots in snow up to my knees and listen, pulling up the earflaps on my ushanka despite the freezing temperatures. I don’t care if my ears drop off. I recognize the song. Dvorˇák’s “Song to the Moon” from the opera Rusalka. This voice is like warm honey, amber and full of light. I am enchanted. The voice begins leaping octaves, and now it burns like a flame licking away the grayness of the dawn. An overwhelming flood of joy rises within me, and when I step through the door of the Flying Horse Hotel I see Mara standing by the oil drum. In the opera, Rusalka is the daughter of a water goblin who falls in love with a prince. It’s a fairy tale, and here is Mara, a Night Witch, singing it as if she were that fairy on the stage at the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad.
* * *
Four days later, the holdouts come to see the light, and the team system is adopted by every pilot and mechanic. In addition to creating a more orderly airfield, it allows for a shift system to be put in place, and for once we have actual designated sleeping times. A week later while I’m sleeping in the Flying Horse Hotel, someone shakes my shoulder. It’s a mechanic, Alyona. I’m instantly alert.
“What is it?”
“Comrade Bershanskaya wants to speak with you.”
A wave of cold dread crashed over me. “Tatyana!” I blurt out. “Has she been shot down?”
“No, no. Tatyana just landed. I saw her come in,” Alyona replies.
I’m out of bed in a flash and climb into my boots. There is no such thing as nightgowns. We sleep in pants, jackets, mufflers, and hats. It’s too cold for anything less.
Yevdokiya Bershanskaya is the commander of the 588th Regiment. This will be my first time meeting her. She has not been at our airfield since I arrived. And now she wants to talk to me—why? What have I done wrong?
I have to fight my way through the wind to command headquarters. It is not an imposing affair, just a hut. But it has an antenna and I notice a thermometer on the outside. The temperature is negative thirty degrees centigrade. Despite our aching bones, this makes us happy. With each drop in degree, we all almost cheer, for we know the Nazis are freezing their boots off. They have no clothes for the Russian winters and apparently have not learned from last winter. Of course our night-bomber pilots have been bombing the railway lines and supply trucks that were said to be carrying warm clothes. But the Nazi idea of warm clothes is fairly ridiculous. They simply don’t know how to make them. They don’t understand how the fabrics and furs must be put together in the most ingenious ways to block the cold.
There’s a huge gust of wind that blasts me right through the door of the hut as I enter.
“Oh my goodness! What a wind. May it whack off the führer’s privates!” Yevdokiya Bershanskaya laughs and gets up from the desk, clenching a cigarette holder in her teeth. What would my mother think if she heard how this woman so casually spoke about the führer’s privates?
“Comrade Baskova, I am so pleased to meet you.” She leans across the desk and extends a gloved hand.
“It is an honor, Comrade Bershanskaya.”
She is a beautiful woman with warm, intelligent, laughing eyes. Another gust of wind whips through the door. “Ah, and here comes your sister.” She gives a nod to Tatyana. I’m suddenly very nervous. Why is my sister here? Has Papa been found, found dead or captured? But Bershanskaya’s manner is hardly that of one about to announce dreaded news. She’s positively jolly.
“So, my dear, you seem to have beaten me to it.” She rocks back on the heels of her boots, then quickly gestures to a chair. “Come sit down, Valentina. May I call you Valentina?” Tatyana leans against the wall. A funny half-smile plays across her face.
“Yes, or Valya,” I say in a small voice. “What have I beaten you to?” She sits down again and props her boots up on the desk.
“The new servicing system. When I landed tonight it seemed that this field was more like a croquet court. No more helter-skelter. My plane was serviced in less than five minutes. I couldn’t believe it.” A quick smile flashes across her face. “And I am told that you are the genius behind this.” I shrug. “Don’t be modest. I’ve been trying to organize our system for ages, and you did it your first week here! You made the ground crew work as an efficient assembly line.”
I feel a quiet thrill, just the way I did when Mara agreed to try my approach. Now Comrade Bershanskaya, the commander of the 588th, is praising me. I only wish Nika was in the small room to hear her.
The commander pauses a moment. “I like to think that I also introduced an assembly line of sorts, one for training pilots and navigators, so we can continuously feed the regiment and keep us operational and all female.” I feel a flicker of excitement but say nothing. “I want to begin training mechanics and armorers to become navigators.” Her voice quickens as she speaks. “And then train navigators to become pilots.”
The flicker grows into a blaze. This could be my chance. “I’m now on refueling, but I can already fly.”
“I know that, my dear, but have you ever flown in combat?”
“No.”
“Well, let me tell you that the best way to learn is to navigate. And I know you know how to do that as well.” She casts a glance toward T
atyana. “Your sister tells me that you scored higher than she did on the navigation test in the aero club.”
“She did?” I look around and see Tatyana still leaning against the wall. Her face is inscrutable, yet still there is the odd smile.
“Always feels good, admit it,” Bershanskaya chuckles, “to beat an older sister.”
“Well, navigating isn’t quite the same as being a pilot,” Tatyana interjects.
I ignore her patronizing remark. “When will I begin?”
“Tonight. Is that soon enough?” She smiles. “You’ll fly with the squadron commander, Comrade Mara Tretorov.”
I’m so overwhelmed, I can barely speak. “Yes, comrade … and … and thank you for this opportunity.”
“I should thank you. You are helping to get our fragile little U-2s up there faster than we ever thought possible. We have increased our sorties by one third in these last few days. Be proud. Be proud you are a soldier. Be proud you are a woman.” She tips back in her chair and points at the banner that hangs on the wall. In flowing writing it reads “You are a woman, and you should be proud of that.” That is the slogan of the 588th Regiment. And I realize I’m proud to be a woman and proud to be a navigator. My first step toward being a pilot!
I’m getting closer. That’s all I can think when I climb into the rear cockpit a few hours later, for the first of eleven sorties with Mara. Our first target is a railroad line leading toward Stalingrad. There’s a Nazi depot near the railroad supposedly filled with warm clothes, food, and munitions. We are flying in the first bomber position. This means we will drop the first bomb on the target while two other planes fly decoy to distract the German antiaircraft fire. Destroying depots like these is key. If they don’t have the food or warm clothes, they will have to retreat. This is just the kind of target Night Witches love.
“If we drop these bombs right, the munitions stored in that depot will do the rest of the work. The place will go up like a barn full of dry hay,” Mara shouts back to me.
We are flying in a line with two other planes. How often I have watched this formation from the ground in Stalingrad. My eyes are fastened on the compass and the coordinates on the map. I kill my torch one kilometer from the target. I feel Mara throttle back. The sky is suddenly latticed with light. It feels as if we have entered an electric spiderweb.
“Altimeter twelve hundred meters,” I call.
She begins her descent and we slow to a glide speed. To drop the bomb we must not be below six hundred meters. Any lower and the blowback from the explosion will damage our own aircraft. We begin crawling into one of the few dark spaces between the searchlights. Meanwhile, the other two U-2s are being harassed by tracer bullets. I think my heart is beating louder than our notoriously quiet engines, which at this speed are almost mute. One U-2 peels off and bombs a searchlight. We feel the reverberations but keep flying through our dark channel. A tremendous thrill floods through me as Mara throttles back and the engines quiet to a near idle and we soundlessly close in on the target. We are deadly, yet I have never felt more alive. Is this how Yuri must feel when he draws the helmeted head of a Nazi into the crosshairs of his rifle? Fifty seconds from the target. I look at the painted mark on the wing. This is the system for lining up the target. When the mark and the target overlap, I pull the handle of the bomb release. There is a slight jolt, then a huge blast. The little plane shakes so violently, I could swear we were below the minimum six hundred meters. The conflagration roils up into the night like a breaking sea of flames. Mara accelerates and we climb into the storm of antiaircraft fire, where the air is thick with the scent of explosives.
We head to our second target, both decoy planes with us once again. We’re meant to hit a fuel depot right on the edge of the front. The searchlights frighten me more than anything. It’s like flying through a deadly maze. But our next target, a German staff headquarters near Mozdok, has even more powerful searchlights. After I pull the bomb latch we are caught in the beam for a few seconds and it’s blinding. I see Mara slouch down in the cockpit, for she can see nothing outside for several seconds even after we escape the beam. It’s hard maintaining a level flight and we seem to waggle about. We drop our last bomb. Mara climbs back up and begins to initiate a steep turn toward our base.
Our strategy tonight is what we call a tight shuttle. With three craft we weave in and out as we drop our loads of bombs. Rotating the first bomber position among the three of us, we are joined in a dark dance of death. It is like a rondo, except the music is gunfire coupled with the sizzling rasp of tracer bullets and the percussion of the bombs. Destroying a searchlight gives me as much pleasure as blowing up munitions depots and bridges.
There are linked controls between the two cockpits, and by our third sortie Mara is tired, and turns the flying over to me for the return trip. She begins singing an old Russian folk song, “Katyusha,” the song for which the rocket launcher was named.
Apples and pears had blossomed,
The river was cloaked in fog.
A shore that was steep and forbidding
Katyusha came out atop.
She sang of a bluish-gray eagle
That flew in the vast, silent steppe;
She sang of the one she held dear,
Whose letters she carefully kept.
Oh song, little song of a maiden,
Go follow the sun in the sky.
A fighter you’ll find in the trenches—
Please tell him Katyusha says hi.
A sight of this girl, of her singing
You shall in his mind resurrect.
And while he’s protecting the country,
The love will Katyusha protect.
It is soothing. Her voice twines through the thrum of the engine. Like a flower-laden vine, it climbs through the night, blooming in the darkness. But as I fly the tiny U-2, leaving the flames of Stalingrad behind, I cannot help but wonder about my friends in Trench 301. I think of Mikhail, my little commander. Why had he never mentioned he was a pianist? Is Anna still head of the trench? Does Gunga Din bring water; and the butcher girl, where is she with her slabs of horsemeat? Yuri, Yuri, my dear sniper; who is in his sights this evening? I feel a funny little stir in my heart when I think of him. A tenderness for a killer. We are all killers in one sense, whether we drop bombs from the sky or fire antiaircraft guns from a trench, but Yuri is the only one who sees the face of the intended victim when he draws him into his sights. I never saw the faces of the German soldiers who died when I dropped the bombs on the searchlights. All I thought about was the thrill of seeing the light blink out and the calm swell of darkness swim up into the night. I didn’t give a thought to their burned bodies, their last gasps of air. I only experienced joy at having taken out one filament in the electric spiderweb of the horribly illuminated light of war.
I am haunted by those bittersweet words of the song: “Let him remember an ordinary girl.” Would Yuri remember me? I remember him so well. The perfect innocence in those keen eyes. His words come back all of a sudden, and I break out in a cold sweat. You see, I’m a sniper. I kill all day, all night long. But I got to save you. Save a life. I felt human again.
But now I have killed. I have probably killed more people in this single night with our 250 kilos of bombs than he could kill in a week with his little rifle. Every time I pulled that handle to release the bomb, I delivered death wholesale. Am I still human?
The war does not end on February 2, but the Battle of Stalingrad does. I am grateful. It means the killing has stopped. Of course I don’t know which of my friends, my teachers, or my neighbors survived these months of hell. But now we have the Germans on the run—running west—and we, the Night Witches, will follow them “like flies on rotting meat,” as Bershanskaya says.
The Battle of Stalingrad is over, but not the war. We like to think of the Nazis in retreat, fleeing with their tails between their legs. However, they are more like mad dogs with their teeth bared, more perilous than they have ever been. Th
ey rape, they burn. Their rage is fed by the humiliation of their defeat at Stalingrad.
Before we turn west, Mara is ordered to fly over the crippled city and report back to Bershanskaya on the conditions.
The morning is thick with fog that melts away as a bright sun rises. Wind-whipped clouds break across a blue sky. It’s the first time I’ve flown with her in the daytime, and there’s an eerie quietness to the world. No Messerschmitts streaking across the blue of the morning. The Stukas that traveled the sky like closely packed schooling sharks have all vanished.
“Look down there, port wing,” Mara shouts. It’s the Pitomnik airbase that the Nazis took four months ago. Now it is in shambles. The carcasses of two dozen Stukas and countless Messerschmitts, along with the gargantuan Focke-Wulf Condors, lie shattered on the ground. How I trembled just two weeks ago when one of those condors screamed out of the night. Mara had called back, “Don’t worry.” Then she immediately cut her speed and the Focke-Wulf overshot us instantly, leaving Mara and me far behind in its wake. We told that story with glee when we returned.
“Like David and Goliath!” Olga hooted.
“No, more like the tortoise and the hare,” I said. Then Leah, who specializes in repairing the ailerons, the flaps, and the movable parts of the wings, took it upon herself to paint a tiny tortoise near the red star on the fuselage of our plane.
I noticed that everyone seemed buoyant about our tale of losing the Focke-Wulf, except for Tatyana, who looked very serious. “It takes a lot of skill to throttle back under those circumstances because of the turbulence caused by a Focke.” She spoke to Mara, but I knew the remarks were addressed to me. Translation: Little sister, you are nowhere near that level of skill yet.