The engine stalled and I was going straight for landing. And the Messers82 kept shooting at us. All the time the strong and gusty wind strove to catch the plane’s tail, to turn it upside down or at least break its wings. Generally speaking it was a simple task for a good stepnyak83. A U-2 was not a large machine — just plywood and percale. The wind was stubborn but I was not the complacent type either: I was the determined type too! I held the lever tightly and we landed safely. I jumped out of the cockpit to assist the General who was dressed so warmly that he couldn’t climb out by himself. But the Messers’ blood was still up. Heart-chilling bursts of fire were thrusting into the snow right next to our plane. At last we stopped the plane and ran towards the forest. We were stumbling, falling over, getting up and running again. My General had already run completely out of breath forcing his way through the deep snow drifts — his clothes and age were definitely not suited to cross-country running. Suddenly everything fell silent… Hearing that, I asked the General to wait for me behind the trees.
“What are you saying, wait for you till the cows come home?” The artilleryman interrupted me angrily, catching up with me. “In this weather I’m not going to do that! We have to leave the machine and look for some dwelling before it’s too late.”
We again reached the plane, which shuddered convulsively at every squall of wind. I looked at it anxiously, turning a deaf ear to my ‘passenger’s’ words, and thought to myself: “If it blows a bit stronger it’ll break the machine, carry it away. We have to tie it down immediately”. And I climbed into the cockpit.
“What are you going to do?” The artilleryman was surprised.
“I’m going to get the hawser from the fuselage — we’ll be tying the plane down.”
“I’m sorry but this way we’ll be tinkering with it till dark. And we’ll be done for in the dark!”
“Till dark or not, I have no right to abandon my equipment in this condition.”
“Well, you know…”
But glancing at my face, my ‘passenger’ understood I wouldn’t back away from my decision, and took the rope from my hands. We managed to drag the plane, tail forward, up to the forest with great difficulty. Only here did I examine it properly. Well, all in all the Fritz had crippled my U-2 pretty badly. The holes didn’t matter, the main thing was that a propeller vane had been shot off, one cylinder of the engine was gone and the oil and petrol tanks were breached. Strange that it hadn’t caught fire!
At last we had fastened the machine, tying it to the tree trunks, and disguised it with branches. Together we handled it quickly. Having finished, picked up the documents and plotted the necessary direction on the map, we went deep into the steppe. Oh, that night march was a hard one. We walked for an hour, then another, then a third… Snowy wool kept tumbling from the sky with no end as if from a torn sack. It was becoming harder and harder to walk. But the worst thing was that fatigue was accompanied by indifference. I hung my head low to hide my face from the tiresome snowflakes. Only they kept me aware of reality. “Or maybe it’s a dream after all?” — importunate thoughts were crawling into my head. “That’s the staccato thumping of rock breakers I hear, the faint shouts of miners in the tunnel, the jokes of my girlfriends from the brigade. I hear Tosya Ostrovskaya whispering something into my ear. I can’t understand what she wants and then Tosya begins shaking me by the shoulders. But I still can’t understand… And why is there snow in the tunnel? It tickles my cheeks so tenderly, wraps my hands so warmly. I really don’t want to free myself from its comfortable arms. And again Tosya shakes my shoulder… But this is not my girlfriend — she can’t have this manly bass…”
“What’s your name?”
“Anna.”
“You have to get up, Comrade Anna, get up and walk now.” Now I could discern the words clearly. “It won’t take you long to freeze like this…” But I hadn’t the strength for even a step, and I sat in the snow again.
“I’m not going any further. You go on your own…”
“Get up, get up, Anna,” the General kept tugging at me. “You’ll fall asleep and freeze to death!”
“Yes, yes, need to walk”, I replied automatically. At last I understood what was dream and what was real.” I’ll get up soon, for sure…”
My mind knew what to do but my legs refused to obey me. How could I find the strength to stand upright, so as to walk across this hostile snow-clad steppe? But the artillery General stretched his hand to me and I walked, managing to overcome my deadly fatigue… I held on to him for the first several metres but then felt more and more confident with every pace. The dead point was behind me and I found my second wind. And the howling of the wind no longer seemed to me so ominous, and the bottomless darkness was no longer so scary.
By dawn, with frostbitten faces and hands, we had come across our soldiers. They were artillerymen from the unit to which I and Frontline Artillery Commander Zhouk were flying. They walked us into a hut wherein an iron stove was burning and soldiers were sleeping all over the floor. I fell asleep as soon as I sat down by the threshold. In the morning the signalmen reported my location to my squadron, and mentioned that the plane needed serious repairs. Soon after that Spirin, the pilot, flew over to me with Dronov the mechanic and on a second trip he brought all the stuff necessary for repairs to the engine and plane.
It had taken the whole day to find the plane in an unknown forest (fortunately, a big patch of spilled oil on the snow had helped out) and tow it by horse to a village. Konstantin Sergeevich swore for quite a while examining the damaged plane. He wished a thousand damnations on the German flyers and on Hitler himself, promising to bury the Führer on an aspen stake. But at the same time he went about his business, quickly installing something like a tent over the engine to protect himself from the wind.
When I saw that for ease of working he’d taken off his gloves I began to assist him.
“Comrade Commander, what are you trying to do with the engine with such a frostbitten face, eh? It’ll get scared and won’t start”, my mechanic joked. Indeed my face was scary: it had turned black all over. I daubed it with grease and on top of that put on a mask of mole-fur. Such masks had been issued to all airmen but we didn’t like to wear them — the furry skin on its lining with cutouts for the eyes and mouth made us look as if we were at a carnival.
To send me off to warm up Dronov was inventing various ruses but then he gave up and the whole business went faster. Aircraftsmen are an amazing lot! As a rule they are great masters of their craft or as it is said now, ‘craftsman with golden hands’. They wouldn’t go to eat or sleep until a plane was fully ready and then, having handed it over to a pilot, wouldn’t leave the aerodrome but would patiently wait for his return. He would begin to tidy up the parking lot — he would roll up the aircraft covers, carry brake shoes to the right place, then would simply smoke so the waiting time didn’t drag on so long. And he would cast glances at the sky time and again — is he coming back yet? A mechanic would recognise the approach of his plane from afar — by a note in the engine’s roar known only to him. And then he would run to meet it! How happy these modest aerodrome labourers were when their pilots came back to the ground alive and in one piece. And there would be no limit to their grief if their pilots had not come back from a mission… No, I could not have become a plane mechanic — I wouldn’t have had the strength to wait! Especially at war when all possible time for return is up and all hope rests on a miracle but the mechanic still waits, peers into the sky, listens, hopes…