After the hot milk I had drunk I got warm on the oven and dozed off. Around midnight someone knocked on the door. Grumbling, the hostess flipped aside the door hook and let in a man in a short army fur coat.
“Where is Egorova?” He asked.
I recognised Listarevich’s voice and responded: “Here I am, Comrade Senior Lieutenant, on the oven.”
“Hard as it may be you’ll have to leave the warmth. You’re called to Front Headquarters. I’m off for a vehicle…”
“I won’t let her go”, my benefactor wailed. “Have you ever heard of a girl tormented so! She’s not had time to dry out, to get warm and you’re getting her up again. Is there no bloke to get up at night? It’s always her…”
I jumped down from the oven, quickly dressed, took my revolver and stuck a map in the leg of my flying boot as the vehicle came up. Senior Lieutenant Listarevich — executive officer of the squadron — deftly opened the door of the pick-up and said apologetically: “Sorry that we haven’t let you have a rest, Annoushka. You’re urgently called to the Front headquarters to report on the cavalry corps you found today.”
Listarevich was a very cheerful and joyful man by nature, liked to joke and laugh but over the last few days he had changed, as if into a different man. The Fascists had been committing atrocities in his native Byelorussia, in the Gomel Province: and his ancestral home was there — his old mother, a teacher and father, a postal worker. We could see Konstantin was worried but he wouldn’t show it and seemed to have become even more energetic and was working with tenfold zeal.
Our squadron, although designated ‘Communications’ nevertheless carried out intelligence duties over the front, searches for units and groupings that Front HQ had no information about. The Chief of HQ often had to stand in for the Squadron Commander. He would have loved to fly missions himself — flying was more to his heart than HQ work — after all he was a former fighter pilot, having flown an I-16. But he couldn’t: it was out of the question…
Our squadron was detached and it had its own kitchen, fuel, everything. We were fed well but you wouldn’t always be on time for dinner. Later they began to issue us bags of sandwiches. Listarevich controlled many services: engineering, the PARM (field aircraft maintenance workshop), technical and provision supplies. But the executive officer kept up with everything. He also found time to talk to us, the pilots, the navigators, to ask what we needed or to say simply, smiling, before a sortie, “Good luck!”
Listarevich and I arrived in Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy, where the Southern Front headquarters was located, after midnight and an orderly walked us into a brightly lit room straightaway. I saw a group of generals around a large desk and stopped in confusion not knowing whom to report to.
“Was it you who flew to search for the cavalry corps?” At last someone asked me.
“Yes, it was me.”
‘Show me on the map where Parkhomenko’s and Grechko’s cavalry are.”
I approached the desk seeing that two commanders had courteously made room for me. But unfortunately I couldn’t recall all the settlements the cavalry were in. Feeling nervous I moved my finger for a long time over the operations map, marked all over by coloured pencils, but nevertheless failed to find the necessary area.
“Permission to show you on my map?” I asked timidly, knowing everything was plotted precisely on it, and pulled out of my flying-boot leg my old large-scale one with routes drafted along its length and breadth but still intelligible to me. Everyone laughed boomingly and amicably and I relaxed — the tension had disappeared.
“Down here…” I pointed immediately.
Questions showered one after another and now I was answering clearly. I didn’t have time to notice who was asking the questions but I was addressing only one General. His kind broad face with beautiful luxuriant moustache attracted me. Smiling, this man pointed with his thumb to another General, behind his back, as much as to say ‘address him, he’s the man in charge here’. But I was dragged as if by a magnet and giving my report, addressed again and again the moustachioed General with the gentle eyes.
When I had showed and told everything they thanked me and let me go. Leaving the room I came across the head of Frontline Communications. He inquired, “How was it?”
“I gave a full report, Comrade General.”
“Well done…”
Korolev hesitated a bit and using the pause I decided to find out who the man was who was smiling at me. “Comrade General, who’s the Commander? Is it the one with the moustache?”
“No, that was General Korniets from the War Council. Why, did you like him?”
“Yes, very much so…” I admitted.
Listarevich and I got back from Kamensk towards morning. But I hadn’t managed to get warm properly and fall asleep when again an order came: “You, Egorova, will have to fly across the front line again to deliver a radio to the cavalry corps. You know the route, I hope you’ll handle it successfully”, Boulkin said.
But the route had got no easier for having been reconnoitred. There was the same blizzard, the same snow, the same almost blind flying. But to be honest, it was easy to position myself on the map knowing the precise location of the troops. However, I had to go quite a bit off track as there were no cavalry at the old location — they had already taken cover somewhere. Having lost hope of a successful search I decided to land the plane and question the locals. Landing near a small unremarkable hamlet and leaving the engine on, I ran across the snowdrifts to the nearest hut. I knocked on the window with frozen-through fingers and this made a kind of especially resonant and booming sound as if someone had tapped one icicle on another. An old man in an undershirt over his pants and in valenki came out at my knock A very old man but sturdy and upright… “Grandfather, have our men passed through here?”
The old man hastily interrupted me: “Get out as fast as you can, sonny! The Germans are here, came last night!”
He pointed and turning around I saw Fascists by the next hut. I should have run straightaway but my legs had become as if paralysed, somehow numb and wouldn’t move at all. The old man saved me, giving me a shove in the back and I rushed towards my salvation — to my faithful ‘cropduster’. The rattle of a machine-gun burst rolled over me from behind, I turned back and saw the old man in the white shirt crashing down into the snow. And whilst I ran to the plane he kept looming up in front of me — that sturdy man who seemed to have stepped out of a fairy tale. But another machine-gun burst reminded me that this was no fairy-tale. Then I nimbly jumped into the cockpit and revved up. My U-2 shuddered and quickly slid across the snow field on its skis. It took off under a hail of bullets and not all of them missed. The mirror on the centre-section stanchion was smashed and the percale on the right wing was rattling… I was very hot but my teeth were chattering as if from cold…
Not till the end of the day did I had manage to locate the cavalry again. I came across the now familiar colonel — the head of Intelligence — in the school building where the corps headquarters was situated.
“Congratulations on your safe arrival”, he greeted me and walked me to Parkhomenko immediately. “Comrade General, here is the messenger from Front headquarters”, the Colonel reported and handed the package over to the Corps Commander.