Anna Timofeeva-Egorova - Over Fields of Fire

Editor’s note — literally, ‘grey hare’; a nickname for someone with typically Russian looks.

Translator’s note — abbreviation for the All-Union Communist Party (of the Bolsheviks).

Translator’s note — leading from Vladikavkaz to Tbilisi.

Editor’s note — the classic nickname for German Focke Wulf Fw 190 fighters in Russian military slang. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the planes of the ‘Fokker’ design.

Translator’s note — a network of special shops organised to supply military servicemen.

Translator’s note — home-made liquor or ‘moonshine’.

Translator’s note — a city in Siberia.

Abbreviation of Mobile Aviation Maintenance Workshop.

Translator’s note — a famous Soviet test pilot who died in a flying accident shortly before WWII.

Anti-tank bomblets.

Editor’s note — a line used to indicate a corresponding auxiliary branch of military service (technician-lieutenant; engineer-rear-admiral; colonel, medical service, etc.).

Editor’s note — the normal combat load of ammunition for the rear 12.7-mm machine-gun in an Il-2 was just 250 rounds.

School for Junior Aviation Specialists.

Translator’s note — a Soviet playwright.

Editor’s note — ‘The apple’, a then-famous folk dance.

Translator’s note — one of the most famous and emotional wartime poems in the USSR.

Editor’s note — this is indeed true: the ratio of losses in Sturmovik pilots and gunners was about 1:5.

Editor’s note — a frontier conflict between Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

Editor’s note — in this area the historic battle of Poltava, between Peter the Great’s army and the Swedish army of Charles XII, took place in 1709.

Translator’s note — a deputy commander in political affairs.

American B-17 Flying Fortresses flying missions over Eastern Europe sometimes used Poltava.

Translator’s note — words of the feminine gender in Russian.

Translator’s note — a state-owned collective farm in the USSR.

Translator’s note — diminutive form of Vladimir.

Translator’s note — a slang word for exemption from military service.

Translator’s note — collective farmer.

Editor’s note — in Russian, one would say ‘motherland’.

Translator’s note — abbreviation for the Workers and Peasants Red Army.

Translator’s note — one of the Soviet Marshals executed during Stalin’s purges in 1937.

Translator’s note — brigade commander.

Translator’s note — one of the senior members of the Soviet Government.

Translator’s note — this Army distinguished itself during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Translator’s note — a woodland in Byelorussia.

Translator’s note — Polish Roman-Catholic churches.

Translator’s note — Polish Armed Forces fighting on the Soviet-German Front.

Translator’s note — a Polish, Belorussian and American national hero, 1746-1817.

Translator’s note — mother of God.

Translator’s note — little Miss.

Translator’s note — division commander.

Editor’s note — another common diminutive for Anna.

Editor’s note — see V. Emelyanenko, Red Star against Swastika. The Story of a Soviet Pilot over the Eastern Front published in 2005 by Greenhill Books, London, UK.

Translator’s note — Springs.

Auxiliary policemen.

Translator’s note — now Kostrzyn.

Abbreviated from the German word ‘Krankenrevier’ (meaning ‘sick bay’ or ‘dispensary’) this was a barrack for sick concentration camp inmates. Most of the medical personnel were inmates themselves.

Translator’s note — comrade.

Sergeant.

Editor’s note — for many decades, the most popular Soviet newspaper.

Editor’s note — ‘Sister of Medicine’ is a term for nurse in the Russian language.

Translator’s note — abbreviation of a special security service of the Soviet Army, also nicknamed ‘Death to the Spies’.

Translator’s note — ‘quick’ in Ukrainian.

Translator’s note — the rebellion of the Red Baltic Fleet naval personnel against the Bolshevik dictatorship ‘for Soviet Power without Communists’ in 1921, thwarted by Red Army troops.

Translator’s note — Russian steam-bath.

Editor’s note — Russian nickname for grandmother.

Translator’s note — Division Commander.

Editor’s note — where Order of Suvorov stands for the unit award (as was the practice) and Berlin is an honorary title.

Translator’s note — the former riding school of the Tsars in the centre of Moscow.

Translator’s note — policeman.

Translator’s note — Stalin’s younger son — an Air Force General.

Translator’s note — held in 1956, Stalin’s ‘excesses’ were condemned there for the first time.

Editor’s note — District Committee.