Daughters of the Night Sky(46)
“My Vanya will be here to collect me soon,” I said. “Your sweethearts, too. I think it’s best to look like we expect them home any moment.”
I did my best to keep up my cheerful facade for the girls. I never appeared outside the barracks without hair curled and color on my face. They began to pay more attention to their appearance as well, no longer bemoaning the loss of their long locks. I don’t know if they thought my efforts were sincere or bravado, but I felt it did a fair amount to help morale.
The improved mood made me smile. We took pains to alter our uniforms to fit better, the skilled seamstresses of the group being called upon to help those of us with less ability.
“You have a waist,” Taisiya commented as I appeared in my newly tailored uniform jacket. “Much better.”
“No woman wants to look like a rectangle,” I said, examining myself in the mirror and smoothing the fabric against my silhouette. It was a relief to wear my belt normally and not as a cinch that bound the excess fabric in clumps at my midsection, lest the ridiculous trousers fall in a green puddle at my feet.
“Too right,” she agreed, admiring her own form, looking kilos thinner and much more like a proper soldier in a uniform that suited her frame.
Oksana, assuming more duties as Sofia’s deputy, inspected our handiwork and nodded with approval. “You didn’t suit the uniforms, so you made them suit you.” The turn of phrase was telling. The Russian army had one uniform, made like cakes from a mold, each identical to the other. They were meant for one type of soldier—and there was no mistaking that we didn’t fit that mold. “Svetlana, what have you done to your collar?”
“I made a new one from some of the fur from my boots, Captain,” she answered, petting it absently. “I think it’s becoming.”
“I won’t deny that, but it’s not regulation. It’s one thing to make your uniforms fit you properly, quite another to alter them from standard issue. You’ll fix it at the next opportunity and not pull such a stunt again. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Captain.” She unbuttoned her jacket immediately and had her seam-ripper in hand before Oksana exited the barracks. Svetlana muttered under her breath, but I couldn’t fault Oksana’s reprimand. Those new to military life would not be well served by a gentle hand.
As we took to our planes that night, charged with bombing tanks as they advanced east, the evening air scratched at my throat. The west was on fire. There would be no way to harvest the crops as the Germans advanced, so the farmers and soldiers burned their wheat rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
I felt a wet warmth against my windblown face as we approached our targets. Tears streamed down, and I didn’t bother to stem the tide.
Russia was burning.
The acres of wheat lost would mean thousands of my countrymen would starve this winter. It would mean poor crops for years to come. Stalin was willing to send all of us to our deaths to save his country, and in that moment I couldn’t help but wonder if there would be anything left to save.
The German tanks below us rolled on over washboard roads toward a defenseless village, moving like a family of uncoordinated, greenish-brown turtles looking for the nearest entry point to their brook. Using the new chalk lines Renata measured out for me on the wings of the plane, I aimed my flare at the hillside next to a tank in the middle of the formation, hoping if Taisiya made her mark it would bring a fair amount of rock down around them. We wouldn’t be able to disable a tank, but we could make the roads impassable.
All I could do to support Taisiya was to throw grenades over the side when she released her payload. It wasn’t enough to cause damage most of the time, but it added to the chaos, which was the chief point of the exercise.
The whoosh of the descending bomb and the sickening rumble as the bomb made contact were audible even through our muffled ears. Taisiya pulled up as the bomb exploded, narrowly escaping the flying daggers created by the wreckage in the road. The tanks were now stranded in the rubble of the destroyed roadway. Once we were out of range, I took a calming breath and looked back to observe the destruction below. When I turned back around, Taisiya gave me a wave to let me know we were unscathed and that she’d seen our success.
Shards of metal and glass. Nothing more. I couldn’t allow myself to think that there were men inside those machines Hitler sent to flatten us. No more, I hoped, than they thought about the women protected by rickety wood and linen frames when they opened fire on us.
Our encampment, now farther west than where we’d trained and taken our first missions, was always buzzing with activity after dark. Summer nights in Russia were short, and we had to make each minute count. We had to coordinate our takeoffs and landings carefully, spacing them out by no more than ten minutes. Barely enough time to maneuver around one another.
As soon as we landed, Renata and Polina rushed to us. Using a code of their own invention, Taisiya updated Polina on the aircraft’s status while Polina assessed any damage Taisiya couldn’t have seen in flight.
After asking me about the quantity of my flares and grenades, Renata set to work replacing the bombs and ammunition. She lifted hundreds of kilos a night. The largest bombs weighed fifty kilos and required the help of two other armorers to load. In turn she helped load them for the other teams. She never stopped. Strong before the war, hardened by work on her family’s farm, now her arms were chiseled like the arms on a statue of a Greek god. I knew she ached—her efforts were inhuman—but I also knew she was proud, so didn’t attempt to coddle her.