Daughters of the Night Sky, page 14
I nodded quietly as the sweltering heat of late June stilled the air. Taisiya was as smart a woman as I’d ever met, and pragmatic, too. But I didn’t find myself reassured by her words. They could be either the truth that she believed to the core of her being, or the words she knew her navigator needed to hear. As I willed sleep to come, I made the compromise with myself that, like so much in times of war, it was neither one nor the other, but both.
“I need you to promise me something, Taisiya,” I said, keeping my words barely above a whisper. As though to project them into the world would make them somehow more tangible.
“No. I’m not making you any promises.” She sat up straight in her bed, glaring down at me. “I won’t listen to this kind of talk.”
“I’m not going to ask you to take care of Mama for the rest of her days or anything. I just want her and Vanya to be told properly—if the worst should happen.”
Taisiya tossed her pillow so it whacked me smartly across the face. “No.”
I sat up in turn and lobbed the lumpy mass back at her. “You can be rather heartless, you know.”
“Pragmatic. It’s a stupid request.”
“How can you say such a thing?” I asked, wishing I had something harder within arm’s reach to pitch at her. “Do you want your parents or Matvei to go months without hearing the news?”
“Of course I don’t, Katya. I’m not the one who can make you these promises. If you go down, I’m going with you. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Shaking, I pulled my own notebook and Papa’s fountain pen from my knapsack. I wrote words of love to Mama and Vanya. I had to believe they wouldn’t be my last but wrote as though they would be. With each carefully scripted letter, my trepidation seeped out onto the page with the bright-blue ink so I would not carry it with me.
The crews that were flying assembled around a blackboard, papered with a large map of the front and reconnaissance photos of the German munitions we were charged with destroying. Sofia indicated our heading and the calculations that determined how long it would take us to reach the target based on the Polikarpov’s cruising speed. I’d have to keep one eye on my compass to make sure we stayed on the right heading and the other on my chronometer to let Taisiya know when we were approaching. The weather report looked favorable as well—no crosswinds expected that might blow us off course or make flight impossible altogether.
Renata and Polina had our craft’s systems checked three times, bombs loaded, and every centimeter of the dilapidated crop duster freshly painted and in perfect working order. Like mothers loading down their children with baked goods and lovingly knitted blankets as they headed off to university, they buried their worry for us with constant activity. The plane looked better than the day it came off the assembly line, and I smiled broadly to see my name painted below the rear cockpit.
I embraced Renata, Polina having absented herself from the emotion of our departure. If I knew her, she’d be watching from the sidelines, near enough to be present when needed, but removed enough that she would not have to show her tears to her comrades. “She looks beautiful,” I said, patting the side of the aircraft, not embarrassing Renata by embroidering the compliment. “Thank you.”
“It was our pleasure,” Renata said, holding her chin high and smiling bright. I loved that about her. The pride she took in her work, the joy she still showed despite the inferno to the west.
“You have your orders,” I told her. “You won’t need them, but it makes me feel better knowing that you have them all the same.” I fixed my gaze on her brown eyes, and she patted the three letters she’d tucked into her breast pocket that I’d scrawled out when we were supposed to be sleeping. Even a missive for the Solonevs. They might not love me, but they had given me my husband and deserved the attention. I gripped Renata’s hands for a moment and gave her a hard smile. I’m glad you’re here for me.
“Clear skies, ladies,” Sofia said, shaking our hands before climbing into her cockpit, and giving the signal that she was ready to depart. The second crew would depart six minutes after they were up in the air, and we would follow six minutes after them.
My hands were stock still as I took my place in the rear cockpit, but as the engine roared to life I felt deafened, though I’d heard the drone hour after hour for the past few months. I deepened my shallow breaths and kept my eyes on the back of Taisiya’s helmet to calm my nerves. She seemed so steady. I didn’t know if I ought to find comfort in her resolve or berate myself for my lack of it. I chose the former. She waved to the ground crew to signal our readiness and turned her head forward.
Up in the air, we flew in tight formation. Our bombs would be more effective if dropped in rapid succession. It was twenty minutes before the target came into view, owing to our slow aircraft. The German camp was orderly. Proper barracks, a large mess hall fashioned from canvas. They didn’t improvise like we did, with bunks in tents, trenches, and obliging villagers’ homes. It appeared they didn’t have to. The munitions store came into view, obvious by virtue of looking so unremarkable. We cut our engines and swooped low, banking to the left so hard, I gripped one of the metal support beams until I could feel my fingers cramping in my leather gloves.
The plane emitted an unearthly whistle as we glided down, unaided by our engines and only minimally controlled by Taisiya’s gliding skills.
While daylight would have given the Germans a clear target, sound is more fickle. All they heard was an eerie squeal as we whooshed toward our targets. While it was logical for them to assume the enemy would come from the east—they knew where we were encamped, in the broad sense, if not precisely—they couldn’t pinpoint the exact direction from which we approached. The wind carried our sound where it willed, and by the time the Germans realized that the humming sound was not coming from three sewing machines that inexplicably found themselves in their camp, we were upon them.
Sofia dropped her bomb first. Then Darya.
I removed my right glove to pry open the cap, then pitched the flare over the edge, illuminating the path for Taisiya to loose the bomb.
Before the bombs made contact, Taisiya fired the engine back to life and made her course back to our airfield. I craned around to see that all three bombs made their target in rapid succession. Seeing the munitions tent send off a series of small explosions, like fireworks, as their precious instruments of death blazed below us, I let out a whoop that was swallowed by the roar of the engine.
The Germans, having at last realized what was happening, opened fire with their pistols and small arms—whatever they had by their bedsides. We were only five hundred meters high, so in the light from the fires, we could see their tiny figures below pouring out of the barracks, aiming their pistols in a futile attempt to ward us off. There was no time for them to launch an effective counterattack, so they fought back with what they had at hand.
In a proper aircraft their bullets would have been about as effective as throwing rocks in the sky—we could have evaded faster and flown higher. As it was, I could hear a few of the bullets make tearing sounds in the canvas that coated our wings. Sofia’s plane was up in front and quickly escaping the range of the enemy bullets. Taisiya and I were catching the brunt of the fire, but it was the haunting squeal of metal from Darya and Eva’s plane that worried us.
Their engine sputtered. Then stopped.
The Germans saw they had hit their mark and kept firing at the craft. Darya and Eva were in a perilous dive, and flames were shooting from the engine. We could feel the whoosh of air from their rapid descent as we flew over them. There was nothing we could do to save them from going down.
I forced my eyes to stay locked on the back of Taisiya’s head. This was no time to think. I called course corrections to Taisiya over the interphone and longed to have a throttle in my own hands, to have some control over whether we lived or died, but I could only grip my hands together and will our plane to safety.
We cleared the German camp, but it seemed like hours before we reached our own. Again and again I glanced behind us, certain I could hear the whirr of German engines, ready to retaliate for their destroyed munitions, but they launched no counterattack. We saw a spire from the church in the nearby town, and I felt myself give in to my trembling.
As I clambered down from the cockpit, the ground seemed too firm, too real. I felt Taisiya’s arm around me, and while the onlookers would think it a gesture of consolation or solidarity, it was the only thing propelling me forward.
Sofia was white as bleached cotton when we touched down and staggered back to the throng that awaited us. Renata and Polina looked horrified by the condition of the plane they’d so painstakingly prepared. The wings would need hours of patchwork. It was a miracle we’d been able to return unscathed.
“Darya and Eva?” Sofia asked quietly when no one else could find their voice. She’d been at the head of the formation, unable to see for certain what had happened.
“Gone,” I replied. “We saw them going down. If they manage to land, they’re only a few meters from the German camp. There is no way they won’t be found.”
“They did their duty,” Chernov said, emerging from the darkness to join us. “And the mission was a success. You’ll all be up tomorrow night.”
We nodded as the general retreated to his quarters. This was what success would look like. This was why we couldn’t contemplate failure.
CHAPTER 14
Early August 1942, Sorties: 27
The evening of our first mission rehashed itself in my mind like a newsreel played too slow on the projector—the first glimpse of the enemy base, watching our bombs turn their munitions into useless piles of rubble, our haphazard escape on shredded wings—forever etched in my brain. It was the sight of Darya and Eva’s plane, the engine enshrouded in flames, that was the most prominent memory. I could not look at our campfires or even the flame of a gas stove without remembering the terrifying screech as their plane went down.
Now the missions blurred together. Five to eight sorties in a single evening. Bridges, ammunition, hoards of supplies—all destroyed. Better, we kept the Germans awake, and they had to hate us for it.
“Congratulations, ladies,” Sofia said as we sat down to an early supper before dusk gave us the cover our missions required. “According to the latest intel, you’re considered a priority target.”
“That’s a comfort,” Taisiya said with a wry smile.
“Isn’t it, though? They’ve given us a charming nickname to go along with it, too.”
“Oh, don’t keep us in suspense,” a pilot named Zoya said with a giggle as she cut into her potatoes.
“Die Nachthexen,” Sofia replied with an admirable German accent.
“The Night Witches?” I said, remembering the German vocabulary from my language classes before the academy. I was unable to control my giggles as the peals of laughter from my comrades floated up to the trees. “How fitting. I think it suits us.”
Even Oksana, usually so solemn and quiet, smiled with the rest of us. They meant the nickname to be demeaning. They sought to make us sound like something inhuman with their taunt, likely so they would feel less remorse about opening fire on women. We knew the truth, though. If they went to this trouble, we were affecting them. It was exactly what we wanted.
“We also have a new order from Comrade Stalin,” Sofia announced. She kept her voice steady as she read the decree:
Form within the limits of each army 3 to 5 well-armed defensive squads (up to 200 persons in each), and put them directly behind unstable divisions. Require them, in case of panic and scattered withdrawals of elements of the divisions, to shoot in place panic-mongers and cowards and thus help the honest soldiers of the division execute their duty to the motherland.
Panic. Cowards. Easy words for advisers to bandy about in boardrooms and safe houses hundreds of kilometers from the rain of mortar shells and bullets from German guns. Harder to stomach when it was you who had to constantly fight against your gut instinct to flee from the inferno of hate that sprawled to the west. That the generals didn’t want troops to flee made sense, but to ban retreat was tactically questionable—and to assign troops to shoot anyone who even appeared to withdraw was worse than cruelty. It was madness.
“Can he mean such a thing?” Svetlana, now promoted to navigator, asked after a long moment of stunned silence.
“Comrade Stalin rarely speaks a word he doesn’t mean,” Sofia answered matter-of-factly. “But don’t let the directive make you uneasy. You’re all volunteers. There won’t be gunmen behind us to keep us in line.”
Renata spoke up from the back of the formation, where the armorers stood. “But what about our husbands and brothers on the ground?”
Sofia’s serene countenance faltered as she considered the question. It wasn’t our own necks we worried about. It was never about that—at least, never entirely.
“We have trained and flown together for months now, ladies. If your men possess a fraction of the bravery you have shown, I wouldn’t fear for them.” I could see the truth in Sofia’s blue eyes. She believed what she said, which counted for something.
We were dismissed, but none of us were quick to scatter back to our huts and farms for a bit of rest. Stalin’s words had shaken us too badly for real rest; what we wanted was the camaraderie of our sisters.
It was no afternoon for tunes on my creaky violin or for songs no one wanted to sing. It was no time for poetry or literature, either. I thought of the tools in my arsenal and found the sack where I kept my personal supplies. I removed my comb, pins, and the bright-red pencil that navigators used to mark their maps.
My hair had grown a few centimeters since they cropped it in Engels, and it now fell nearly to my collar, past the awkward length when it grew past the ear but too short to pull back properly.
I poured a cup of water and took small sections of my hair with a wetted comb, pinning them up all over my head.
“What on earth are you doing?” Polina asked.
“What does it look like?” I responded, pinning the last tendril up on top of my head to curl. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and traced the contour of my lips with the red, waxy navigator’s pencil, then filled them in with color. I hadn’t bothered with lipstick since the war broke out, and not often before, but Mama had always said that bad times were easier to endure with a pretty face and nice clothes. I couldn’t do anything about my uniform, but I could do the best with what I had.
“My Vanya will be here to collect me soon,” I said. “Your sweethearts, too. I think it’s best to look like we expect them home any moment.”
I did my best to keep up my cheerful facade for the girls. I never appeared outside the barracks without hair curled and color on my face. They began to pay more attention to their appearance as well, no longer bemoaning the loss of their long locks. I don’t know if they thought my efforts were sincere or bravado, but I felt it did a fair amount to help morale.
The improved mood made me smile. We took pains to alter our uniforms to fit better, the skilled seamstresses of the group being called upon to help those of us with less ability.
“You have a waist,” Taisiya commented as I appeared in my newly tailored uniform jacket. “Much better.”
“No woman wants to look like a rectangle,” I said, examining myself in the mirror and smoothing the fabric against my silhouette. It was a relief to wear my belt normally and not as a cinch that bound the excess fabric in clumps at my midsection, lest the ridiculous trousers fall in a green puddle at my feet.
“Too right,” she agreed, admiring her own form, looking kilos thinner and much more like a proper soldier in a uniform that suited her frame.
Oksana, assuming more duties as Sofia’s deputy, inspected our handiwork and nodded with approval. “You didn’t suit the uniforms, so you made them suit you.” The turn of phrase was telling. The Russian army had one uniform, made like cakes from a mold, each identical to the other. They were meant for one type of soldier—and there was no mistaking that we didn’t fit that mold. “Svetlana, what have you done to your collar?”
“I made a new one from some of the fur from my boots, Captain,” she answered, petting it absently. “I think it’s becoming.”
“I won’t deny that, but it’s not regulation. It’s one thing to make your uniforms fit you properly, quite another to alter them from standard issue. You’ll fix it at the next opportunity and not pull such a stunt again. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Captain.” She unbuttoned her jacket immediately and had her seam-ripper in hand before Oksana exited the barracks. Svetlana muttered under her breath, but I couldn’t fault Oksana’s reprimand. Those new to military life would not be well served by a gentle hand.
As we took to our planes that night, charged with bombing tanks as they advanced east, the evening air scratched at my throat. The west was on fire. There would be no way to harvest the crops as the Germans advanced, so the farmers and soldiers burned their wheat rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
I felt a wet warmth against my windblown face as we approached our targets. Tears streamed down, and I didn’t bother to stem the tide.
Russia was burning.
The acres of wheat lost would mean thousands of my countrymen would starve this winter. It would mean poor crops for years to come. Stalin was willing to send all of us to our deaths to save his country, and in that moment I couldn’t help but wonder if there would be anything left to save.
The German tanks below us rolled on over washboard roads toward a defenseless village, moving like a family of uncoordinated, greenish-brown turtles looking for the nearest entry point to their brook. Using the new chalk lines Renata measured out for me on the wings of the plane, I aimed my flare at the hillside next to a tank in the middle of the formation, hoping if Taisiya made her mark it would bring a fair amount of rock down around them. We wouldn’t be able to disable a tank, but we could make the roads impassable.
