Part 27 (1/2)
Senior Sergeant Matryona Yurodjeva-Samsonova a” airplane mechanic The young women of the 46th Taman Guards flew old wooden biplanes called Po-2s. These had been designed just as training planes, without c.o.c.kpit covers, radios or sophisticated instruments. They were fitted with four small bomb racks, but didn't get parachutes or self-defence machine guns until near the end of the war. Air crews flew in scorching summer weather and in the bone-bitter cold of Russian winters, when mechanics struggled to keep the fuel from freezing . . . and their own fingers from rotting with frostbite.
The Po-2s were nicknamed *flying sewing machines' and *flying coffins'. On the ground the women were sometimes mocked by men who couldn't believe mere girls were capable of such stamina and bravery. As for the Germans, they came up with the most evocative name for the air crews that buzzed and bombed them every night. They called them nacht hexen a” night witches a” saying the whoos.h.i.+ng noise of the planes sounded like witches on broomsticks pa.s.sing over.
My spirit has always been emanc.i.p.ated, unconquered and proud. I was spell-bound by the mystery of flight. I thought of it as my integration with the universe.
Snr Lt Yevgeniya Zhiguelnko.
Superst.i.tions about witches and magic were driven underground by communism in the Soviet Union, along with most religious beliefs. They did not disappear completely. Spring still revived old rituals of offerings to Mother Earth, and tales were still told of the most powerful witch of all a” Baba Yaga.
Witches were said to summon their power from the earth, where the dead are buried, never from demonic sources. I first came across Baba Yaga as a child, reading the eerie story of clever Va.s.silisa, a girl who survives her visit to the witch's lair and is rewarded with supernatural help.
In stories, Baba Yaga is often portrayed as an ogress with stone teeth who devours children in her house raised up on chicken legs and surrounded by a bone fence. More impressively, the mythology also hints that she holds power over night and day, and that she guards the fountain of the water of life. She flies not on a broomstick, but in a mixing bowl called a mortar, speeding her way through the skies with a pestle.
Despite their communist upbringing, some Russian night-bomber girls tried fortune-telling in the magical darkness of New Year's Eve. They followed dream messages, and trusted in a mystical power to keep them and their comrades safe. After the war, a statue of Baba Yaga was sculptured showing her as an Air Force mascot complete with modern flying goggles!
They converted the whole great country into a big concentration camp of life-term inmates. They would turn people into programmed robots stuffed with slogans and cheers for the great Stalin.
Senior Sergeant Anna Popova a” flight radio operator.
Witches were not the worst thing to fear in Soviet Russia. Josef Stalin's communist rule brought tremendous change and upheaval as the vast country was forced to abandon old ways and dedicate itself to a new kind of society where all were supposed to be equal, and work for the common good. Under Stalin a ma.s.s surge of industrial advances gave Russia the strength and equipment to beat back the superior technology of German forces. Modernisation came at a terrible price. Stalin demanded total obedience. Secret police and networks of neighbourhood spies meant it wasn't safe to say, or do, or even dare think anything individual. There was an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. Arrests were common. Those arrested were rarely seen or heard of again.