20. “Not a woman, a combat pilot”
The group of pilots headed off to Derbent by train before dark. I was amongst them — the first female pilot who had got admission to the Sturmoviks… Since my childhood I’d been lucky enough to meet good people. Wherever I studied, wherever I worked I would meet loyal friends, kind-hearted tutors. I was trained at the factory school by the old craftsman Goubanov, I was assisted by the engineer Aliev, who was the shift boss, in my transfer to the most important sector of operations — the tunnel. I was trained by the superb instructor Miroevskiy in the aeroclub, the secretary of the Ulyanovsk District Comsomol Committee gave me a hand at a very hard moment of my life, then there was Maria Borek from Leningrad, the Secretary of the Smolensk District Comsomol Committee, the Commissar of the Smolensk aeroclub… Was it really possible to count all those who had warmed my soul with their sympathy and human kindness and helped me to realize my dream!
But not everyone met me with sympathy in the ground attack regiment. There were some (for some reason, especially many of those belonged to the technical staff) who grumbled under their breath “What good is a woman in ground-attack aviation?” But the regiment navigator Petr Karev shushed them: “The Regiment’s not getting a woman, it’s getting a combat pilot…”
So there I was in the ground attack regiment. The Battalion Commissar Ignashov — deputy commander for political affairs — summoned us, the newly arrived pilots, by turns for interview. I didn’t know what he had spoken about with my comrades, but I was stunned by his very first question: “And what’s the point of putting yourself in mortal danger?”
“Mortal all of a sudden?” I growled, displeased.
But Ignashov went on: “A Sturmovik is too hard for a woman. And take into account, our losses are rather great. I’ll tell you confidentially that in the latest fighting over Gizel village we lost nearly all our airmen. Although our plane is armour-plated, more airmen die in it than in any other kind of plane. Think it over properly and go back to the training regiment. The Sturmovik isn’t suitable for a woman!”
“And what is suitable for a woman at war, Comrade Commissar?” I asked challengingly. “To be a medic? To drag a wounded man from the battlefield under enemy fire, strained beyond her strength? Or being a sniper? To stalk the enemy under cover for hours in all weathers, kill them, get killed herself? Or maybe, a surgeon would be easier? To receive the wounded, to operate under bombing and, seeing people suffer and die, suffer herself?”
Ignashov wanted to say something but I was already hard to stop. “Obviously it would be easier to be dropped off behind enemy lines with a radio transmitter? And maybe now women are better off on the home front? They smelt metal, grow corn and bring up kids at the same time, they get the death notices of their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters? It seems to me, Comrade Commissar”, by now I had began to talk quieter, “now is no time to see any difference between a man and a woman until we cleanse our motherland of the Hitlerites…”
I finished my impromptu ‘performance’, and then Ignashov smiled: “That’s right, my daughter is as cranky as you. She used to work in a base hospital as a surgeon, but no way: she had to be at the frontline. Currently she’s somewhere near Stalingrad… We haven’t heard from her for a long while — neither my wife nor me. My wife suffers especially — she’s alone at home… Do you write letters to your family?” Ignashov asked, taking some pills out of his pocket. Only now did I discern how ill he was. He had ‘bags’ under his eyes, blue lips, and a pale and puffy face.
“I do write letters but haven’t had any from home for a long time. I feel very sad sometimes. Then I convince myself that it’s the field mail’s fault…”
“At your age you can convince yourself even of something pleasant”, the Commissar said, addressing me with ‘thou’ for the first time. “Are you married?”
“No”, I replied in one word, and suddenly, as if I had at long last found someone to speak my mind to, to disclose my innermost thoughts to, I burst out: “But I love very much one man, a pilot. He’s a fighter pilot, in combat somewhere near Leningrad. We wanted to get married before the war but I kept postponing it. One time I said that we should graduate from the flying school, another time that I had to turn out one more group of cadets, and then the war came…”
The conversation with Ignashov clearly took too long but we parted like old friends.
“You can come to me with all your questions, joys and sorrows. We will sort everything out together”, he said, sort of casually, in farewell, and stretched his hand out to me. Ignashov was popular in the regiment. As for the political commissar who had been his predecessor in the 805th, once they had even bashed him! According to the stories he used to just walk around giving orders. The regiment was in combat, men were dying, everyone was having a hard time, but he would just give orders… Ignashov was a completely different man.
We were given only two days to study the Sturmovik equipment and get ready for examination by the senior regimental engineer. All the newly-arrived men were distributed among the squadrons straightaway. The pilot Vakhramov and I were sent to the 3rd Squadron. Puny, short Valya98 Vakhtramov looked like a boy. And when we’d found out that he was only about nineteen we were surprised: this little chap, with this height, had managed to put up his age so as to join an aviation school!
When we reached the Ogni aerodrome Vakhramov lagged behind the train. There were very few passenger trains back then and he had to catch up with us on a tanker of fuel oil. Of course he was stained badly and had also lost his papers. In short, when Valentin arrived at the regiment nobody would believe he was a pilot: my confirmation was required. The regiment commander himself met Vakhramov out and said just one thing: “Clean yourself up!”
The regimental chief-of-staff Captain Belov told us the regiment’s war stories, told about the airmen who had distinguished themselves in combat. We found out that our 805th Ground-attack Regiment had been raised from the 138th High-speed Bombers. It had been in combat since the first day of the war. The airmen flew bombing missions against the columns of German troops advancing from the Western frontier towards Kiev and losses in the regiment were very heavy. When almost no fighting machines were left in it, the regiment moved by railroad to Makhachkala99 and then across the sea to Astrakhan100 where the pilots were going to learn to handle the new Pe-2 plane — a dive-bomber of Petlyakov’s design. I disliked it — but I didn’t fly it, just watched it.
However, before the regiment had time to get quartered a new order arrived — to set about studying the Il-2 Sturmovik. And we were on the road again — this time to pick up the combat aircraft. And here the regiment received the name “805th Ground-attack Aviation”. The staff learned to handle the new equipment and the regiment relocated to the frontline where it joined the 230th Ground-attack Aviation Division. Thus the combat life of the regiment began with flying the famous Ilyushin Sturmovik.
The Regimental Engineer began the traditional examinations on knowledge of the plane’s design, engine, aerodynamics. The engine of A. Mikoulin’s design had 12 cylinders — one of the most powerful engines of that time, developed specially for the Sturmovik. I knew well all its technical characteristics. It was incomparable with the U-2 engine. The U-2 engine had 5 cylinders and the exhaust nipples were located in the collector. On the Il-2 all the nipples extended outside, and that was why when the engine worked it roared mightily.