“You may”, Kozin nodded in agreement and glanced at me somewhat reproachfully.
“What have you appointed me Regimental Navigator for? I won’t handle it. I’ll be a laughing stock! There’s Berdashkevich, the 2nd Squadron Commander, there’s Soukhoroukov, Vakhramov. It’ll be handier for them to be Navigator of a male regiment!”
“Have you said your piece?” The lieutenant-colonel asked brusquely. “Then about turn and march! Double-quick to carry out your Regiment Navigator duties. And don’t bring this matter up to me again.”
Now in my new capacity I ran training with the flying personneclass="underline" sometimes I would direct an ‘attack’ by radio from the bombing range observation tower. My duty was to make sure everyone had their maps in order. During preparation for a mission I had to make a meticulous study, tell the airmen how we’d be flying, where the targets would be, what we were going to bomb. That’s preparation for a sortie too. I began to like the navigator’s duties a bit too, they grew on me. After all, I had graduated from the Kherson Aviation School as a navigator, when working in the Kalinin aeroclub I used to teach aerial navigation for several hours a week, I had done a navigator’s course in Stavropol. In a word, knowing about my navigator’s ‘classes’ and taking into account my combat experience the regimental commanders had not appointed me for the position by an accident. Apart from that I was promoted to the rank of Senior Lieutenant.
So, here I was standing on the tower, and there was such a wonderful panorama around me! The planes were taxiing over the green carpet of the airfield, from the Poltava side the American ‘Fortresses’142 were taking off to bomb the common foe. A small river was visible not far off, one of Peter the Great’s redoubts towered just nearby, and skylarks completely filled the sky…
The telephone rang. I took the receiver and heard the voice of the flight controller:
“Get ready, taking off shortly!”
The radio-station’s engine under the tower began to work. I took the microphone, blew into it for convention’s sake and spoke: “Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! ‘Birch’ here! Do you hear there?”
“‘Mignonette-2’ here”! ‘Mignonette-2’ here”! I hear you loud and clear. Request two hundred…”
‘Mignonette-2’ was Major Karev’s callsign, and two hundred was permission to carry out bombing and ground attack. I’d always wondered why Regimental Signals Commander Matyshenko gave the men call signs like ‘Mignonette’, ‘Violet’, ‘Lilac’, ‘Volga’143. And once he gave me the call-sign ‘Hawk’ — enough to make a cat laugh!
A group of Sturmoviks was already over the training ground — it made a circuit and steeply dived on a target. The pilots carefully caught the targets in their gun-sights and shot short bursts at the scattered dummies, then dropped bombs and circled to gain altitude. Karev, Mignonette-2, calmly gave orders and carefully watched every pilot’s work.
“Khoikhlin! Reduce your diving angle…”
“Ageev! Don’t fall behind…”
“Tsvetkov! Slow your plane down or you’ll shoot ahead of the group.”
“Well-done, Kirillov!”
The voice of Mignonette-2 flew over the training ground and, seeing Karev’s painstaking work with the young pilots, I involuntarily thought of that steadfast man with deep respect, remembering my flights with him over Taman. I have never seen a bolder and more gallant flyer over the battlefield than Karev.
After repeating the pass, Karev’s group retired towards the aerodrome.
“Birch, Mignonette-17 here, Mignonette-17 here…” A different voice was heard now from the microphone. “Permission for two hundred?”
“Granted!”
And suddenly I heard: “Birchie, are your teeth bothering you?” I did indeed have a toothache. I was standing on the tower with a bandaged cheek, but I furiously cut off the insolent son of the airwaves: “Mignonette-17, mind your own business! Reduce your angle!”
But the pilot didn’t obey and dropped his bombs diving at a steep angle.
“Mignonette-17! Stop acting willfully! Otherwise I’ll shut the down the range!”
“Roger”, the pilot replied gaily and closed in for another attack. You had to admit, he attacked the target deftly, but then he left the range descending, hedge-hopping, leaving a Ukrainian song behind him:
By now I knew the pilot was Lieutenant Ivan Pokashevskiy. That fellow with the broad face and mop of dark hair and mischievous grey eyes had stood out among the newcomers. He was out of uniform: on top of an old-fashioned blouse and civilian trousers he had a wool-lined jacket, worn, seasoned jackboots, an ear-flapped cap set on the back of his head — just about to fall off… Ivan told us he had been shot down in combat and taken prisoner. When the Fritzes were taking the POW airmen to Germany he and two of his comrades broke a hole in the wagon floor and at night time leaped out of the moving train. They then ran into the woods where they managed to find the partisans. Pokashevskiy fought alongside the partisans for seven months and was even awarded the Order of the Red Star. Then the airmen were transferred to Moscow and assigned to aviation units, and thus Ivan found himself in our regiment. When his father learned his son was alive (he and his mother had received the death notice a year before) he sold his bee-hives and bought an aircraft with the proceeds. Ivan’s father very much wanted his son to fly that plane: he reckoned it would be safer that way.
Pokashevskiy was fitted out in our regiment and appointed as a pilot to the 2nd Squadron. And then his father — Ivan Potapovich Pokashevskiy — arrived in Karlovka and brought with him his eldest son Vladimir — a sovkhoz144 director.
“Let my laddies serve in your unit”, he said to the regimental commander trustingly, in Ukrainian. “Volod’ka145 has been in ‘armour’146 as irreplaceable — enough is enough! It’s time he does his duty! But only on one condition — don’t make it cushy for my sons, put the heat on them like it says to in the Army Regulations…”
The weather was wonderful that day. There was not a single cloud in the blue sky, the sun was as warming as in summer. A lot of people were gathered at the aerodrome — locals from Karlovka and the neighbouring villages with banners and portraits of Party and State leaders, and the heroes of the occasion themselves. And there, aside from the other planes, stood a brand-new Sturmovik with an inscription on the fuselage ‘To the Pokashevkiy sons — from their Father’.
The head of the Division’s Political Department Lieutenant-Colonel I. M. Dyachenko and the Pokashevskiy family climbed up on the plane’s wing. The sons helped their father to get up on it and stood next to him: Ivan to the right, Vladimir to the left. The meeting was opened by Dyachenko who had two Orders of the Red Banner on his chest. Ivan Mironovich had been badly wounded defending Moscow, and after that the doctors ruled him out of flying operations.
Dyachenko spoke passionately and excitedly about the kolkhoznik147 Pokashevskiy’s patriotic deed, about the coming battles and our future Victory. Then he let Ivan Potapovich have the floor. The old man gave a start and was just about to step forward, but his sons held him back so to stop him tumbling from the wing. And he said only two words: “Brothers and sisters!” and there he fell silent. His sons leant towards him and said something, apparently encouraging him… I would long remember that simple peasant’s short speech in Ukrainian: “I’ve got two sons. I’m giving them away to my dear Fatherland148. I’d like to join you beating the invaders but I’m a bit past it…”
142
American B-17 Flying Fortresses flying missions over Eastern Europe sometimes used Poltava.