Among the Red Stars Read online

  It’s hard to tell what Petya thinks of all the attention. At first he wouldn’t say a word beyond his name. Mostly he clung to Vakhromov. Vakhromov kept trying to draw him out of his shell, giving him piggyback rides and teaching him children’s games, but Petya just watched quietly, with round, solemn eyes.

  My sister is only a few years older than him. When I left, she was a wild girl who could count to a thousand while skipping rope without tripping once. What will the war do to her?

  The only time Petya makes a sound is at night. He has night terrors. He sits bolt upright with a look of panic and screams at the top of his lungs. Pashkevich grumbles, “Will someone shut that kid up!” He’s worried that someday the noise will put us in danger. Vakhromov picks Petya up and talks softly to him until he falls back asleep, mindless of how the boy thrashes and hits him.

  I don’t know what horrors Petya relives in his dreams, but when I hear his cyan screams, I see bullets hissing past me through the cornfield, Emelianov’s throat gushing blood, Rudenko freezing in a ditch and pleading with God not to let him die. I cover my ears and try not to listen and hope Pashkevich won’t notice how frightened a child’s nightmare makes me.

  Pashkevich ruled that Petya must be able to take care of himself if he’s going to stay. The boy struggled with a regular Mosin-Nagant, so the sergeant found an M38 carbine and is teaching him to handle it. It’s going poorly. Teaching is not one of Pashkevich’s strengths.

  I was on guard duty this morning during one of these sessions, sitting on an overturned bucket and practicing harmonica to get my mind off my leaky boots. I’ve never learned harmonica properly. I covered different combinations of holes with my tongue and wrote down the resulting colors until I figured out the scales. I don’t know how people learn music if they can’t see the colors.

  Petya ran up. His eyes were puffy, his face wet with tears and snot. I asked if Pashkevich was yelling at him again. He nodded.

  I said, “I should say that he’s doing it for your own good. But he isn’t. He’s just mean.”

  I played a quick scale on the harmonica. The boy’s large eyes fixed on it. I offered him the little brass instrument, but when he blew on it, he only succeeded in covering it with spit and making a muddy-brown noise. Gravely he handed it back.

  “There’s a trick to it,” I told him, and broke into a folk tune. Petya watched, mesmerized. It was the first time he’d shown real interest in anything, and I was determined not to waste the moment. I said, “I need help. You see, I know the tune of this song, but I’ve forgotten the words. I remember it was about a berry bush, with red berries with white flowers. Can you remind me how it goes?”

  Petya’s lips parted ever so slightly and he said in a tiny voice, “Kalinka of mine.”

  The grin that splashed my face was completely involuntary. “That’s right—I remember now. How does the rest of it go? Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka of mine . . .”

  “In the garden is a berry, malinka of mine!”

  We sang the chorus several times, faster and faster. Then I jumped to my feet and danced in a circle, playing the tune on the harmonica. Petya laughed and clapped.

  Petya is still quiet and serious, but I broke his silence. And I think that, even if I never accomplish another thing in the Red Army, at least I helped him.

  Later, when he’d wandered off, I began singing “Katyusha” to myself. I don’t know why that song makes me think of you, because it’s all wrong: you’re not at home treasuring my letters and I’m no brave steppe eagle. And yet it does. I wish I could see you, not how you looked back in Stakhanovo, but how you look now that you’ve become what you always wanted to be.

  Yours,

  Pasha

  SEVENTEEN

  OVER THE CHATTER OF BIRDS IN THE TREES I COULD JUST hear the drone of the German bombers that had been hammering a rail line near the front all morning. It was a mild, sunny June afternoon, so when I came off my shift guarding the aircraft, I was unsurprised to find my friends shunning the mess tables and sitting directly on the grass around a slightly squashed cardboard box, looking gleefully through the contents.

  “Come join us,” said Iskra, waving me over. She sat at the edge of the group, the tiniest distance away from everyone else. Before her arrest, she would have been in the middle. Nobody else noticed these things, but I did, and I worried about what they might be a symptom of. “Zhigli’s parents sent her a massive package full of American magazines. We haven’t a clue what they say, but we’re having fun looking at the pictures.”

  “I don’t want to look at magazines. We should be flying,” I grumbled. By now, the division commander’s plan was clear: If he couldn’t find an excuse to disband us, he’d simply ground us indefinitely.

  “The magazines won’t change when we get into combat,” said Zhigli.

  I regarded her suspiciously. Iskra rolled her eyes. “Come on, Valka. Don’t be a brat.”

  I sat down on the opposite edge of the group from Zhigli, next to Galya, our squadron’s aide-de-camp. Galya would have been rather plain-looking if she weren’t constantly beaming with enthusiasm. She had accessorized her straight brown hair with a polka-dot headband with a bow on it, which made her hard to take seriously.

  I peered skeptically into the box as though my grudge against Zhigli might have tainted the magazines. “Nothing interesting, looks like.”

  “Maybe not to you,” Iskra retorted.

  They were mostly fashion magazines, their glossy covers bearing photos of cherry-lipped women posing in square-shouldered jackets and patent leather pumps or frolicking on the beach wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses. The pilots and navigators delightedly passed them around.

  Galya looked at a photo of a socialite in a long cream-colored gown and kitten heels and then, sorrowfully, down at her hand-altered cavalry pants and artificial-leather boots. She said dreamily, “Raskova says that when the war is over, we’ll wear beautiful dresses and white shoes and she’ll throw a big party for us.”

  Riffling through the box, I found a red-bordered magazine depicting a large four-engine bomber in flight. “I found a news magazine.”

  “Can you read English?” asked Zhigli.

  “No, but there are pictures. Look at the size of that bomber, the V-24!”

  Iskra looked over my shoulder and whistled. “Our Peshkas would look like tiny insects next to that.”

  I licked my thumb and leafed through the magazine. There were more pictures of aircraft inside. “Look—the Americans paint pictures on the noses of their planes.”

  “We would have an even harder time passing ourselves off as serious airwomen if we did that,” said Iskra.

  Galya leaned over to see what we were looking at. She blushed and started giggling. “Most of them seem to be, um . . .”

  “Half-naked babes,” I said. “There does seem to be a lot of that.”

  “Boys will be boys,” said Zhigli.

  “Hang on, here’s a dragon. Oh, wait, it’s holding a naked babe.”

  “Pretty dragon, though,” said Galya.

  Iskra wondered, “How can she twist like that without breaking her back?”

  “American women must be flexible,” I said. “Really flexible.”

  “If that’s what they’re into over there, that dashes my hopes of eloping with a handsome American pilot,” said Zhigli with a sigh.

  I slapped the magazine shut and stood up. “To the airfield, Iskra! These photos have inspired me.”

  “To do what?” asked Iskra.

  “We shall paint a naked man on our plane.”

  “Have you ever seen a naked man?”

  “I . . .” I felt my face color. “There’s no correct way to answer that question, is there?”

  Galya’s giggling redoubled.

  “Pasha doesn’t count,” said Iskra. “Seventeen-year-olds aren’t men.”

  “Iskra, please tell me the quickest way to make you stop talking.” Baseless as her teasing was, it was still embarrassing. And
today it was making me angry. Pasha had dealt with bullets and shells and freezing and starvation, and it wasn’t fair to make him the butt of a joke.

  I was spared further discussion when we were interrupted by our new chief of staff. Everyone set down the magazines and scrambled to attention.

  “As you were,” said the chief of staff, adding, “Must you do that? I was training alongside you two weeks ago.”

  “Would you like a magazine?” asked Zhigli, handing her one. The officer rolled it up and tucked it in her pocket. “Duty before pleasure, I’m afraid. You girls have another training flight.”

  Groans and complaints arose from everyone except Galya.

  “We’re not here to train, we’re here to fight,” I said as we reluctantly fell in. “Not that Trud Gornyaka hasn’t been relaxing . . .”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Zhigli. “You’re in a house. We’re holed up in a stable. We call it the Hotel Flying Horses.”

  “. . . but I want to bomb something at some point.”

  “You know what I think?” said Galya. “I think the division commander doesn’t like us.”

  Iskra stopped walking and looked at her. “You should have been a reconnaissance pilot with those observational skills.”

  Major Bershanskaya stood on the makeshift landing strip, a section of potato field marked out with kerosene lamps, talking to Captain Ilyushina. Ilyushina had sandy hair and the resigned air of someone who was constantly stepping in to fix other people’s mistakes. She was saying, “Everything looks fine. I’ll recalibrate the altimeters tonight before takeoff.”

  “Good. The meadow to the west should make a perfect auxiliary airfield. We don’t need long runways like those heavy SBs. Good morning, girls. Go get started on your preflight checks. You’re hedgehopping again. The division navigator says that your navigation skills are adequate at high elevations, but closer to the ground it’s only a matter of time before one of you ends up wrapped in high-voltage wires.”

  The pilots and navigators dispersed to their U-2s. I lagged behind and asked Bershanskaya, “Ma’am, more training? I thought our first mission was tonight.”

  “You’re not coming. Squadron commanders only.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too dangerous. There might be escorts,” said Ilyushina.

  “Male pilots go into combat with a few weeks of training. We’ve had six months. Is it so much to ask that we actually get to fight?” I protested.

  Working ourselves to the bone in training only to get stonewalled at the end seemed a worse fate than never being recruited at all. Popov said we hadn’t proved ourselves. But how could we prove ourselves if we never faced combat?

  Bershanskaya told me kindly, “Koroleva, I know you want to be a daring eagle of the Red Army Air Force, but you’re still an eaglet. Give it time.”

  Ilyushina told her, “It’s like you have a hundred and twelve children.”

  “It’s not—” began the major, but she was cut off by an explosion followed by a scream. The three of us ducked and covered our heads before it became apparent that we weren’t under attack. The source of the noise was at the other end of the field, where a couple of dazed, dirt-speckled armorers stood around a small crater. One was holding a handkerchief to a laceration across her cheek and eyebrow.

  “Well?” asked Bershanskaya.

  “Only an accident, ma’am,” said the uninjured one. “That fuze went off for no reason!”

  Bershanskaya raised an eyebrow.

  The uninjured armorer admitted, “We did throw a rock at it.”

  “We wondered if it could go off with the safety pin still in,” said the injured one, a tiny girl named Masha.

  “Turns out it can.”

  Bershanskaya put a hand on her forehead. Ilyushina looked from the crater to one armorer, then to the other, and shrugged. “Could have been worse. They could have tried hitting it with a hammer.”

  Bershanskaya turned to me. “You girls aren’t ready.”

  EIGHTEEN

  11 June 1942

  Dear Pasha,

  The night before last, we all gathered to see the commanders off: Bershanskaya and her navigator, our squadron commander Olkhovskaya and her navigator, and the command crew of the other squadron. After all our work, only six people got to fly.

  The biplanes, each loaded with two bombs under each lower wing and two under the fuselage, left the light of the hooded kerosene lanterns and were immediately swallowed up by the darkness. Soon we could no longer hear their rattly engines.

  As we waited out there in the cold night air, it sank in that this was not a training mission. Out there in their little planes, those women weren’t concerned with regimental politics. They faced guns, maybe even fighters. And these fighters wouldn’t just play with them. It was difficult not to spend the whole time thinking of the worst possible things that might happen. In the future I’ll be flying and won’t have time to worry about everyone else, but for the mechanics and armorers, every night will be like this.

  And then came that familiar ticking in the distance. One of our “sewing machines” had returned. It came to a bumpy landing and Bershanskaya climbed out, along with the regimental navigator. Notwithstanding that the pilot was our superior officer, we mobbed them with hugs, kisses, and cheers. The 588th was combat active! Bershanskaya gave us a modest smile. Then the command crew of the second squadron arrived. They accepted our congratulations coolly.

  A few more minutes passed before we realized that our celebration was premature. Olkhovskaya had not returned. The other crews hadn’t seen her get shot down; she and her navigator had simply vanished. We spent the rest of the night and the next day waiting, hope glimmering whenever we thought we heard an engine or glimpsed movement in the sky. But there was nothing.

  Olkhovskaya’s mechanic went to Bershanskaya with tears streaming down her face. “Was it my fault? Did something go wrong with their plane? I checked everything so carefully. . . .”

  Bershanskaya should’ve lied and told her that the plane was fine. Instead she said honestly, “I don’t know.”

  We knew that this would happen someday. Not all of us would come home after the war. But I wasn’t prepared. In our short months together, every girl in our regiment has come to feel like an essential part of it, someone without whom the 588th wouldn’t be the 588th anymore.

  Truthfully I didn’t like Olkhovskaya much. She was strict and humorless. But now I remember the other things, like how she milked a cow the day before she disappeared and shared the milk with us. If Major Raskova had been here, she would have known what to say to raise our spirits, but Bershanskaya has no gift for speaking.

  Gone without a trace. Do you know what that means, Pasha? It means that two airwomen who were eager to fight are now listed as deserters. It means that their families get nothing, not even the right to say that their daughters were killed in the Great Patriotic War.

  It was a bitter consolation that they had successfully bombed their target. Bershanskaya assembled a glum and shell-shocked group of airwomen in the morning, her face an impassive mask shutting us out from her feelings.

  She informed us that, despite our loss, the division commander judged the mission a success and was ready to declare us operational. “But,” she added, “I’m prepared to request one additional week to prepare. It’s been a difficult night. I don’t want to send you into combat if you don’t feel ready.”

  I felt anything but ready. But I imagined Popov’s reaction when Bershanskaya made her request. Those little girls play at being pilots but go to pieces at their first casualty. It was the excuse he needed, proof that we lacked the mettle to be soldiers. So I asked, “What do the male regiments do when they lose someone? Do they take time off?”

  The major bit her lip and said, “No. They don’t.”

  Our decision was unanimous. If we wanted to be treated like the other regiments, we needed to act like them. If that meant flying our first operational mission the
night after our first loss, then we would fly through the pain. So Bershanskaya appointed a new command crew for the second squadron: Zhenechka and her pilot, Dina. Zhenechka was distraught about receiving a promotion over the bodies of her comrades. She tried to turn it down. The major told her she had to obey orders. It was cruel, but the squadron needed a commander. I admit I’m glad it wasn’t me, that I won’t be the one stepping into a dead woman’s boots, issuing the orders she would have issued and flying the missions she would have flown.

  We flew our first combat mission last night in the rain. Popov had assigned us an easy target. Defenseless infantry. It would be a walk in the park, he said, something even a girl couldn’t fail at.

  The fields were all boggy. The vehicles’ wheels kept sinking in. Our ground crews dismantled a fence and used the logs to make bumpy hardstands and runways for the planes, but our fuel truck kept getting mired down. After hauling it out of the mud twice, the girls gave up and carried the fuel to the planes in jerry cans.

  Dina and Zhenechka left before us. We were to follow exactly three minutes later. Iskra kept track of the time on her watch. Two days ago we were overflowing with enthusiasm. Now I wasn’t sure what I felt. Not nervous, exactly, though I should have been. Unsettled, I guess. I looked back at Iskra. Her face was pure focus, her mouth set in a line.

  Just before we were set to take off, Bershanskaya came running up to the side of our plane, mindless of the rain. For an instant I panicked at the thought that she would change her mind and cancel our mission. A part of me hoped for it. But she only looked up at us and said, “Be careful.”

  “We will,” I said, hoping I could keep that promise.

  The Polikarpov’s wheels skidded and slipped into the cracks between the wet logs, but I got her nose up and into the air before we hit the mud. The raindrops trickling up the windscreen made it hard to see, but it scarcely mattered, the night was so dark. I had to trust Iskra to somehow correlate the shadowy shapes we could see below us to the landmarks on her map. Trust. There it was again.