C Taylor - Nadya's War

She laughed stiffly. “I feel… different.”

“You should. There’s a new hole in your side. Or was, at least. They said they stitched it.”

Alexandra shook her head. “No, not like that. You know how normally you walk around this world and in the back of your mind, it’s how everything should be, like this is your home? I don’t feel that anymore.”

“It’s because you’re tired,” I said, knowing full well it was a lie. “Besides, you’re not allowed to go. Who will massage my arms and keep me out of trouble?”

“Maybe. But you’re strong enough on your own Nadya. Always have been.” She sighed, and right then I knew I’d done her a great disservice. As much as I feared everything she might say, in the end, I’m glad she didn’t retreat from the conversation as I had. “When tomorrow rolls in, promise me something Nadya.”

“Anything.”

“Promise me you won’t hate yourself.”

I turned my head, reliving every moment from the last few hours in vivid detail. How could I ever meet such a request after failing to look out for her? “I don’t think I can.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

I leaned over and rested my head on her shoulder. “I’m a terrible wing leader. I never should have gotten us separated.”

“No, you’re a human one.”

Her kind words kept me from entering an awful spiral of self-hate. Though she didn’t say it, her forgiveness couldn’t have been any clearer. I started to wonder when I’d cross paths with Rademacher again and who would win the encounter. History said I wouldn’t. Even if I did become the victor, what would that change? Avenging Alexandra, Tania, and Martyona wouldn’t bring them back, and it wouldn’t make me a good pilot. Skilled, yes, but not good. There was nothing good about war. It simply was.

“When I was three, I got lost once when I wandered out in the woods. I’d never been more frightened in my life, and it turned out I was only a few hundred meters from the house when they found me at night.” She paused to pat my head. “And now, you’d think this is my darkest hour, but I’m not scared at all, especially with you here. It’s like you’re taking me home, and isn’t that what a wing leader is always supposed to do? Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

I felt her breathing weaken and slow. “I’m so sick of all of this,” I said. “Every day it’s another bullet, another friend—family. We kill one of theirs. They kill one of ours. And for what?”

“To protect what we have and the ones we love.”

“I know, but that doesn’t make me any less weary. And thinking about Rademacher makes it worse. He could have killed us both, but didn’t. Who does that?”

“A man sick of war.”

I nodded. “Or a man touched with madness. I’m not sure which I believe. He never struck me as either when I met him.”

“My head is floating. Do me a favor?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Sing to me,” she said. She coughed, laughed, and hit me on the top of my head. “Because I’m so awful, the least you could do is serenade me once and show me how it’s done.”

I lifted my head off her shoulder. My stomach tightened. Any requested performance made me nervous, but a final one made my anxiety a thousand fold worse. I tried to think of something to sing to her, something meaningful and from the heart. Something she could listen to, relax to, fall asleep to. And that is how I settled on a lullaby.

My voice carried through the air like an angel consoling the frightened and lost. The entire room had quieted by the end, and when I was finished, I noticed Alexandra was asleep.

She never woke up.

I sat in that chair for countless hours, even when the bed was empty and later occupied by someone else. The halls filled with the wounded, and I learned a bomb had taken out the 895 thRifle Regiment HQ the day before and survivors were still being brought in. I eventually gave up my seat to a recent amputee who had no other place to rest.

Waiting gave me a lot of time to reflect. I’d been so hung up on the idea that being a good fighter pilot was my only path to happiness and self-worth that it took Alexandra’s death to make me realize I was chasing an illusion. What I’d been longing for since that last flight with Martyona was acceptance, not from others—certainly Alexandra and Klara gave that to me—but from myself. And no amount of Luftwaffe dead by my hands would grant me that. As depressing as all that sounded, for the first time I had a glimmer of hope I could heal. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to defend my home, I did, but I did that because of circumstances. What I was choosing at this point was to find a way to be comfortable in my own skin, scars and all. But with a war raging, I knew that would be far easier said than done.

During that time, I took no food, and the only drink that passed my lips was due to the soldier who drove me back to Rakhinka airfield the next morning holding a canteen to my mouth and tipping it up. Most of it wetted my jacket, but what liquid did find its way to my parched throat was soothing.

When the dawn’s light crested the horizon, I found myself sitting in my cockpit at the end of the runway, waiting to fly home. No one was there to hug me and tell me to come back safe. No one told me where I went, they would go. I had no God. No enemy. My only company was loneliness.

“Little Boar, this is Badger,” the radio said. “Repeat, you are cleared for takeoff.”

Mindlessly, I pushed the throttle forward. The plane picked up speed, and for a split second, I thought about letting my feet off the rudder. Without any corrective input, the plane would spin itself off to the side, and with luck, would take me in the crash. But those thoughts were born from frustration and anger. I wanted to live. I also wanted to keep my squadron’s reputation intact. I definitely didn’t want to be known as that Cossack girl from the 586 thwho left a dreadful mess. Silly, I know.

I was in the air and making my first turn toward Anisovka when I looked left and saw column after column of smoke rising from Stalingrad. Instead of continuing my course home, I entered a steep, spiral climb until I was just under the cloud layer.

“Little Boar—”

I flipped the radio off. Anything they said would cloud my thinking. I made a slow circle of the area, my eyes fixed toward the city. The fighting still raged, and I had to laugh at my own pity. Those dying for gains in the street literally measured in houses, if not rooms or even meters, would laugh at me being this distraught over the loss of one friend—sister in arms or not. How many had each of them seen killed? Hundreds? Thousands? More to the point, when had they stopped counting? I couldn’t imagine, nor did I want to.

But I could imagine something. Gerhard Rademacher’s 109 would be over those skies, looking to pounce on the Red Army Air. I checked my gauges one last time to ensure there were no surprises and put the plane on a direct course for Stalingrad. I wanted to find him, engage him, and put a close to it all, one way or another.

On the east bank of the Volga River, I spied countless Red Army artillery batteries firing into the city. Stalingrad rocked and burned with a violence second only to Mount Vesuvius’s wrath on Pompeii. Even from three kilometers up in the air I could see the fighting was as fierce as ever. The battle in the skies looked non-existent. Not a single Luftwaffe could be seen anywhere.