Anna Timofeeva-Egorova - Over Fields of Fire

Mama had written me that with the help of kind-hearted people she had done up a petition to our fellow-countryman Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin 52 52 Translator’s note — the President of the USSR — a notable figure during Stalin’s reign. — trying to convince him of Vasen’ka’s 53 53 Translator’s note — diminutive for Vasiliy. innocence. Mama had had no response and then decided to come to Moscow herself. “Katya with my grandson Egoroushka walked me to the waiting room of the President’s office and then left”, my mum wrote. “There was a long queue, a lot of people had turned up. My turn came. I thought Mikhail Ivanovich would be there himself but looking at who met me I found no goatee. I expected the assistant would walk me to our countryman but he only said: ‘The Chairman of the Supreme Soviet doesn’t receive people on such questions…”

I continued to work at the flax factory. Twice a week I trained glider pilots, attended courses in preparation for tertiary study. One evening on my day off I popped into a café, sat at a table and ordered an ice cream.

“Egorova!” Someone called from behind me. I turned to the voice and, seeing the aeroclub commissar, came up to his table. He introduced me to his wife and daughter and seated me next to them.

“Why aren’t you attending the aeroclub?” The commissar asked me.

I expressed my concerns and he told me, “You should after all, yesterday we decided to grant you the only female assignment to the Kherson aviation school.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, ‘Kokkinaky’ 54 54 Translator’s note — surname of famous Soviet test-pilot brothers in the 1930s. ! And turning to his wife he explained with a laugh, “The guys gave Anya that nickname and I’ve been calling her that!”

“That’s fine, call me that, I even like it”, I replied frankly. “After all, the Kokkinaky brothers are famous test pilots and record-breakers!”

“Tomorrow take the referral from the aeroclub headquarters, resign from the factory and go to Kherson as fast as possible. Consider that you’ll have to pass exams there on general secondary school subjects as well as special disciplines. The competition will be hot, get ready!”

Indeed in Kherson there was a great flood of graduates from the country’s aeroclubs. They came from Moscow and Leningrad, Arkhangelsk and Baku, Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Minsk, Tashkent and Dushanbe. It was not a military school but OSOAVIAHIM one. Only girls were being accepted in the navigating division and mostly guys in the instructors’.

First of all we were sent for a medical examination. Those who passed would be divided into groups for the general subject exams. The oral exam on mathematics was run by an old lecturer from a teacher’s training college. Convinced that he had poor hearing, we helped each other with prompts and most of us received ‘fives’ 55 55 Editor’s note — the highest mark of the five-point system still employed in Russia. …

Gradually our numbers were becoming lower and lower — but now we had passed the credentials committee. Following the advice of the Smolensk Comsomol obkom I had said nothing about my elder brother. At long last the lists of those accepted were posted up. I read: “Egorova — to the navigating division”. There was no such great boisterous joy in my heart as back in Ulyanovsk but nevertheless I ran to a post-office and sent my mum a telegram — I wanted to make her happy for a while. Yes, to make her happy by letting her know her daughter had been accepted into flying school!

When she got my telegram from Kherson my mum replied with a letter, which I have kept.

My dearest, greetings!

I got your telegram. I am happy for you. But I would be happier if you were not striving for the sky. Are there really no good occupations on the ground? Your friend Nastya Rasskazova graduated from veterinary college, lives at home, treats livestock in the kolkhoz and her mum has no trouble at all. But you — all of my kids — are somehow driven, always want to achieve something and strive for something.

There is no news from Vasen’ka. Ah, my girl, my heart’s been tormented with suffering about him. Is he still alive, my dear boy? I remember coming to Moscow to see him and he’d already become a director and some kind of Deputy. He put his leather jacket on me, linked his arm in mine and walked me to a theatre. And there were mirrors all over the place in there and I actually thought, why are there people looking like us walking past — what a surprise! If you could only put in a good word for him…

But you do your studies, do your best. What can be done now if you have already fallen in love with your aviation and you are doing well in it. If you — my kids — are happy I am happy too. If you grieve — I — your mother — grieve too.

I’ve got eight of you — my children, and I am uneasy for all of you. All of you — my baby birds — have flown away. I’ve seen the last one — Kostya — off to the Army. I ordered him to serve faithfully and honestly but when the train had begun to disappear behind a turn I fell over onto the platform unconscious. What has happened to me — I am at a loss…

Oh, mama, mama! How could I explain to you what flying meant to me? It was my life, my song, my love! He who has flown into the sky — found his wings — will never betray it and will be faithful to it till the end, and if it happens that he can no longer fly he’ll dream of flying even so…

I liked the way the teachers in our school conducted the lessons. The most interesting classes were run on meteorology by an old retired sea captain who had ploughed all the seas and oceans. He was the idol of us all! The captain would enter the lecture room with his head proudly raised in a peaked service cap with a very high crown. We would all stand up to greet the captain, and looking at his meticulously ironed and made-to-measure uniform I would want so much to look like him! But the captain was not tall at all, had deep-set eyes that looked at us kindly and respectfully. The captain would begin each lecture with an ancient superstition: “If the sun sets in a cloud, navigator beware a gale…” Or he would recall another proverb related to our future occupation.

For the first time I understood what a good teacher was: he loved his profession, was addicted to it, and would not only impart good knowledge but would also inculcate in his listeners a love of the subject. Studying was easy for me. After all I had already worked as an instructor! We studied the theory of flying and, of course, flew — on two-seat U-2, UT-1 and UT-2 trainers.

The war against Finland sped up our graduation. They abruptly shortened, ‘rounded off’ the training program and took us through to the exams, which we also sat in a hurry. They didn’t even manage to tailor us uniforms and we graduated in the old blouses and skirts we’d worn as cadets.

After graduation I was transferred to the Kalinin City aeroclub to work as the aeroclub navigator. But it turned out on site that there already was a navigator in the aeroclub but they were short of a pilot-instructor. I really wanted to fly and happily agreed to take up that position. After a test of my flying techniques I was permitted to train student pilots and was assigned to a group of 12 men. The guys were different in their general level of training, physical development and character. They were united by one quality — their passion for aviation. Everyone was eager to complete ground training as fast as possible and to begin to fly. And I knew exactly how they felt!

The flight commander Senior Lieutenant Petr Chernigovets came to our classes often. He had been a fighter pilot in the Army and had been sent to the OSOAVIAHIM to “reinforce the training personnel”. Chernigovets was really a skilled flyer, knew mathematics and physics well and easily explained cumbersome aerodynamics formulas. The students liked him for his respectful attitude towards them. Petr helped me a lot too. One flying day the senior pilot-instructor Gavrilov crashed. The trainee pilot was thrown out of the plane when it hit the ground, and in the heat of the moment he got up and ran. The surgeons examined him, auscultated him and suspended him from flying. And in five days he was no more… Flights stopped. The students walked around depressed. The flight commander Cherepovets ordered the whole fight to line up to analyse the accident.