Foreigners were used to frighten children and stories of evil spies trying to harm your family and the Motherland started to become normal. Some of my poems were censored before they were published, much to my dismay. Fear started to become an everyday part of life along with poison-gas drills held at regular intervals. I, of course, was an instructor in the use of gas masks and was much in demand as a teacher.
Once again a shift in responsibilities with the parents, teachers, and leaders were blamed when a particular child misbehaved. That’s how many a spanking and beating was avoided by some of my more errant friends. Their parents were blamed for their misdeeds and their teachers were blamed for their woeful grades. It was an interesting twist to watch as an eleven year-old boy of high spirits. It worked in my family as I loved my mother and grandparents, and would do nothing to bring shame upon their heads. But for others, things were different. Eventually the parents caught up with the misdeeds of their children, and matters were rectified in time-honored ways.
I lived and breathed for the Young Pioneer Summer Camps and eventually became a staff member of the most prestigious of them all, Artek. This camp was started in 1925 and was situated on the Black Sea. It expanded every year and grew to be the largest and most prestigious camp of all. Because of the climate it became a year-round facility, as well.
When I first went there in 1933 it was a series of ten smaller camps, subdivided by age and interest groups. I attended them all at one time or another, and was a staff member at many. My favorite activity was the counselor hunt where the counselors and staff would hide all around the camp. The campers were then let loose from a gathering area such as the dining facility and spread out to capture as many staff as possible. When a staff member was caught, he was sentenced to getting pushed off the dock and into the water, by the camper who caught them. It was great fun for all.
In one instance my friend and I were hiding near the shore under a big tree. Another staff member decided to climb the tree and hide up there. He crawled out on a limb that overhung the water and proceeded to get comfortable as the campers were rampaging all over camp looking for the staff. The night before he had snuck out of his quarters and had raided the kitchen for some sweets. He therefore, was terribly sleepy. Just as a large group of staff-seeking campers came upon our area the counselor in the tree predictably fell asleep losing his grip and falling about nine meters down, straight into the cold water.
The large pack of campers was on him in a flash and he was caught as per the rules. Not only did he get wet from falling out of the tree, but had to then shiver in the cold night air until his fate of walking the plank was carried out, and once again he was subjected to the cold clear water. I never did ask him how he liked his sweets; just desserts and all that.
Camp was my home away from home, and eventually my home as I joined the permanent staff in 1939. In two short years I learned to love and became a man, when one of the nurses assigned to the camp took pity on my moans in the night and showed me the act of making love, and it was love for me. I loved that nurse and still do to this day. She was shipped off and joined the war against Finland. The last thing I had heard, she was killed in Leningrad later in the war. I can’t remember her face, but I do remember her body and the way she smelled. Not at all like the hospital that my father recuperated in. Not at all like that.
I became engrossed in the fervor of war and lied about my age to join the Red Fleet. When I was tested, something about my aptitude and schooling led the Navy to place me in a bomber regiment taking my training in a flight school that was attached to the Baltic Fleet. I was groomed to become a pilot and excelled at the task. I will not bore you with tales and the horrors of training and discipline as I’m sure you are all familiar with the concepts. That is what the military does, breaking a man down before building him up again in the image they need.
There was not much for a bomber squadron to do in the early days of the war but to avoid getting killed by the vastly superior Luftwaffe. Quite frankly not much was accomplished by our regiment, but we did survive relatively intact.
From what I understand, on 28 July, the People’s Commissar of the Navy recommended to Stalin that nocturnal raids against the German capital Berlin, be launched from Saaremaa Island off the western coast of Estonia. This was unknown to us, as it happened we were ourselves already planning such a raid. We had done all the calculations and plotted all the necessary routes. The maps had all been prepared when the Commissar came to us with the proposal. Without hesitating our Colonel produced the necessary information. It was a case of plan happening from both the bottom and the top.
On the night of 7 August, thirteen aircraft took off led by Captain Aleksei Efimovich Mazurenko, with Senior-Lieutenant Pyotr Ilyich Khokhlov as his navigator. I was piloting Il-4 number 284 and was third aircraft in the regiment. All went as planned. The German anti-aircraft defenses were taken completely by surprise and though we did only minor damage all of us returned safely. The following night we were joined by others and a flight of fifteen Il-4’s once again bombed Berlin. The flight was a total distance of 1,996 kilometers to and from Berlin. On both attacks we dropped both bombs and leaflets, which I’m certain only added to Göring’s embarrassment.
The Il-4 was a good airplane and I flew it throughout the war on a variety of missions. It always brought me home. It was a good medium bomber similar to the American B-25, but a little slower making up for that with longer range and a higher service ceiling. That is why I am sitting at the controls of a B-25J Lend-Lease bomber, at this very moment.
It started once again at 0400 hours in pitch dark all over the French, Benelux and Danish coast. The engines coughed to life, men shouting warnings and instructions, creatures of the night scurrying for cover and flocks of birds being disturbed into unwelcome flight. It had become a very recent, but pervasive, chain of events for the last several weeks. It also a most unwelcome daily event to most of the native inhabitants both wild and tame.
Bomber Command had run some highly-successful raids with night-flying Mosquitoes but this hardly made a dent in the masses of Soviet aircraft and crews that were practicing daily for the massive onslaught that would soon wash over the Island of Britannia, as well as the rest of the British Isles. In lieu of this event, “Bomber” Harris had made a proposal, and it was accepted.
Today five-hundred Lincoln and Lancaster heavy bombers escorted by five-hundred Spitfires, were going to attempt the carpet-bombing of four of the largest Soviet airfields along the French and Benelux coasts. Intelligence reported the presence of hundreds of ground-to-air missiles spread out in the area near the airfields along with the usual thousands of AAA guns. Harris knew that many of his bomber crews would be lost, but he was convinced that it was a chance worth taking. In his mind, the bomber forces currently under his command would either prove itself as a relevant weapons system or it would die a slow death, going the way of the battleship.
This was the last and possibly final, test of the relevance of the current stable of RAF heavy bombers and their survivability in the Third World War. To heighten his chances he had marshaled every single Mosquito, Typhoon, Tempest, Hornet and Beaufighter that could be put in the air. They were assigned to weather the metal wall sure to be present, consisting of 85-mm, 37-mm and 25-mm anti-aircraft shells thrown up by the guns around the known Surface-to-Air Missile sites. Their purpose was to suppress the Wasserfal missiles, hopefully minutes before the bombers were in range. In addition, the Soviets did have an estimated one million VT fuses. In preparation for the raid daily flights of chaff-laden aircraft dropped their curtains of foil at various times of the day to confuse, blind and lull the crude Soviets radar sets into ineffectiveness.