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Anna Timofeeva-Egorova: Over Fields of Fire

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Anna Timofeeva-Egorova Over Fields of Fire

Over Fields of Fire: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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During the 1930s the Soviet Union launched a major effort to create a modern Air Force. That process required training tens of thousands of pilots. Among those pilots were larger numbers of young women, training shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. A common training program of the day involved studying in “flying clubs” during leisure hours, first using gliders and then training planes. Following this, the best graduates could enter military schools to become professional combat pilots or flight navigators. The author of this book passed through all of those stages and had become an experienced training pilot when the USSR entered the war. Volunteering for frontline duty, the author flew 130 combat missions piloting the U2 biplane in a liaison squadron. In the initial period of the war, the German Luftwaffe dominated the sky. Daily combat sorties demanded bravery and skill from the pilots of the liaison squadron operating obsolete, unarmed planes. Over the course of a year the author was shot down by German fighters three times but kept flying nevertheless. In late 1942 Anna Egorova became the first female pilot to fly the famous Sturmovik (ground attack) plane that played a major role in the ground battles of the Eastern Front. Earning the respect of her fellow male pilots, the author became not just a mature combat pilot, but a commanding officer. Over the course of two years the author advanced from ordinary pilot to the executive officer of the Squadron, and then was appointed Regimental navigator, in the process flying approximately 270 combat missions over the southern sector of the Eastern Front initially (Taman, the Crimea) before switching to the 1st Belorussian Front, and seeing action over White Russia and Poland. Flying on a mission over Poland in 1944 the author was shot down over a target by German flak. Severely burned, she was taken prisoner. After surviving in a German POW camp for 5 months, she was liberated by Soviet troops. After experiencing numerous humiliations as an “ex-POW” in 1965 the author finally received a top military award, a long-delayed “Golden Star” with the honorary title of “Hero of the Soviet Union”. This is a quite unique story of courage, determination and bravery in the face of tremendous personal adversity. The many obstacles Anna had to cross before she could fly first the Po-2, then the , are recounted in detail, including her tough work helping to build the Moscow Metro before the outbreak of war. Above all, is a very human story—sometimes sad, sometimes angry, filled with hope, at other times with near-despair, abundant in comradeship and professionalism—and never less than a large dose of determination! The first volume in the new Helion Library of the Great War, a series designed to bring into print rare books long out-of-print, as well as producing translations of important and overlooked material that will contribute to our knowledge of this conflict. * * * REVIEWS “…a very insightful slice of Russian thinking…. this woman’s treatment still manages to shine through brightly with her courage and honesty.” Windscreen Winter 2011

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I spent three weeks in the Botkinskaya hospital and when I got back to the pit I found out that Andrey Dikiy had died. He had snagged a bare electric cable with the hooks of the reinforcing rods. The death of our workmate shook us all…

After discharge from the hospital I wasn’t allowed to work and the shaft committee15 offered me a place in a floating holiday home. I refused and decided to see my mother in the village. I hadn’t written her about my visit but when I got off the train at the Kouvshinovo station both my mother and my sister Maria — my godmother — were there to meet me.

“How did you find out that I’d be coming?” I asked my sister. Maria explained it simply, “Mum had some sort of dream, then she came over early in the morning and said: “Let’s go to meet Annoushka16 — she’ll be coming today”. And you know our mum — she’s like a commander — if she gives an order you carry it out without arguing!”

Mother stopped Maria, addressing me: “My girl, why have you grown so thin? And you’re so pale…”

“I’m trainsick”, I explained, “you know how winding the railroad beyond Torzhok is, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, God forbid”, mum said. We got into a cart and went to Volodovo…

My holiday flashed past imperceptibly and now I was at the shaft again. From September I’d been studying at the Metrostroy workers’ faculty — sometimes in the mornings, sometimes in the evenings — in shifts. We worked six hours a day, never sparing ourselves no matter what. Sometimes we stayed in the shaft for two shifts in a row. Once, having worked the evening shift, I stayed for the night. I remember that we were binding fittings in the tunnel. My arms grew terribly tired, lifted all the time holding up the wire-cutters. And it was muggy and hot in the tunnel and I was desperate for a sleep, especially by morning. Someone, curled into a ball, had fallen asleep on a step of the scaffolding. And suddenly, as if on purpose, the head of the shaft Gotseridze and the Narkom17 for Railways came down underground. Noticing the sleeper they stopped.

“Why are there children in the shaft?” The Narkom asked sternly.

“They are Comsomol members”, Gotseridze answered.

“Send them up top immediately!”

They would have too, had we not mutinied. Standing up by fair means or foul for our right to work in the shaft we added years to our age. It was harder for those who were not tall enough. In a week it was all sorted out — we were tying fittings again but doing our best not to catch the bosses’ eyes.

There was such an atmosphere on our shaft that everyone rushed to the pit-face with a kind of joy, with pleasure. It was a blessing — to go to work cheerfully and to consider yourself useful and necessary to the people. To be conscious of the fact that something done by you, by your hands, would remain in your dear land! Nowadays, so many years later, no matter how many times I ride through the ‘Red Gate’ Metro station it seems to me to be the most beautiful. And when they say there are better ones I get angry. My Comsomol youth is set firm in this station, in the cold stone…

What can I say, we, the youth, had amazingly high morale back then. We always wanted to do something, to learn something. In the beginning Tosya Ostrovskaya and I passed tests to get a “Ready for work and defence!” badge18, a “Ready for medical work in defence!” one19, then for the “Voroshilov marksman”20 and even this wasn’t enough. We joined a choir, and began to go to Sokolniki21 for roller-skating. Tosya skated well but I had already smashed my elbows and knees but stubbornly kept getting up from the asphalt, kept practising and at long last — hurray! — I learned how.

4. Out of the pit and into the sky

Once in the shaft lunchroom I read a recruiting notice for the Metrostroy aeroclub glider and flying groups. Only recently the Comsomol’s IX Conference had put out the call: “Comsomol members — take to the air!” Once we were visited at the Metrostroy by some field editors from the Comsomol’skaya Pravda newspaper promoting it. At the same time our own paper — Udarnik Metrostroya22 — reported that the Metrostroy aeroclub had been granted territory for an aerodrome not far from the Malye Vyazemy station, 4 U-2 biplanes and 3 gliders. Future airmen and parachutists were invited to pull up stumps and build a field aerodrome and hangars for the planes and gliders. Well, if they need stumping we’d do the stumping! To be honest, I’d secretly dreamed of flying for a long time, the way people dream about far countries, alluring but unattainable. And now, having read the recruitment notice I plucked up my courage and made the first step — I headed to the given address — 3, Kuibysheva Street.

I found the building I needed but was afraid to go in. I had already read all the posters, the wall newspaper, the notices hung in the corridor, but still couldn’t find the guts to approach the door marked “Entrance examination”.

“Who are you waiting for, young lady?” A serviceman in a flyer’s uniform asked me.

I couldn’t see his face: my eyes were fixed on a gold-embroidered badge on his sleeve — the Air Force emblem… Many years later POW airmen in the Kostrinskiy concentration camp would present me with exactly the same emblem. They braided a handbag from the straw they slept on and embroidered the Air Force emblem (an airplane propeller) on it with my initials: “A.E.” — Anna Egorova — and passed it to me in secret… But back then I began to say, stammering, that I longed to join the aeroclub’s flying school and had even brought an application.

“An application is not enough”, the airman said. “You need references from the site, from the Comsomol organisation, a medical certificate, an education certificate and a birth record. When you collect all the papers, come with them to the credentials committee. The committee will decide whether you’ll be accepted or not.”

Having thanked the airman, and inspired by making a start, I dashed outside and running at full speed rushed towards the Red Gate, to the pit. The Comsomol committee approved my decision but in the brigade…

“What’s got into you?” Vasya Grigoriev gloomily commented. “You’re better off going to an institute to study — let blokes do the flying.”

“And this weakling wants to be a flyer! She hasn’t got over her electric shock yet!” Tosya Ostrovskaya declared.

And her my bosom friend! We even slept together, so to speak — our beds stood next to each other in the dormitory, we worked in the same brigade, studied together at the workers’ faculty. Even our skirts and blouses were ‘interchangeable’: one piece for both of us. One day she wore skirt and blouse and I wore a dress, the next day it would be the other way around. Tosya dreamed of becoming a doctor but I hadn’t decided yet what to do and we used to argue a lot because of this. Running ahead I’ll say that Antonia Sergueevna Ostrovskaya would become a doctor and spend the whole war at the front as a surgeon. But back then she was keen for me to go to medical school together with her.

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