Free A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle Page B

antiaircraft guns stopped, and a
German fighter plane came and shot down four of our aircraft as
each one came over the target. Our planes were burning like candles. We all witnessed this scene. When we landed and reported that
we were being attacked by German fighters, they would not let us
fly again that night. We lived in a school building with folding
wooden beds. You can imagine our feelings when we returned to our
quarters and saw eight beds folded, and we knew they were the beds
of our friends who perished a few hours ago. It was impossible not to
cry. It was a great loss and pain but none of us surrendered, and we
were full of anger and decided to pay the enemy back for the loss of
our friends.
    On one airfield where we were stationed there were two regiments,
one female and one male. We had the same missions, the same aircraft, and the same targets, so we worked together. The female regiment performed better and made more combat flights each night than
the male regiment. The male pilots before a flight started smoking
and talking, but the women even had supper in the cockpit of their
aircraft. Once one of the German prisoners said, "When the women
started bombing our trenches we (Germans) had a number of radio
nets, and the radio stations on this line warned all their troops, Attention, attention, the ladies are in the air, stay at your shelter."'
    Nobody knows the exact date when they started calling us night
witches. We were fighting in the Caucasus near the city of Mozdok;
on one side of this city were Soviet troops and on the other, German.
We were bombing the German positions nearly every night, and none
of us was ever shot down, so the Germans began saying these are
night witches, because it seemed impossible to kill us or shoot us
down.
    Once when I was looking for an auxiliary airstrip for a night landing, I couldn't know from the air that there were a lot of mines on this
field. I landed, and an officer, calling to me and waving his hands,
approached my aircraft and said, "Can't you see this field is mined!"
Then I saw there were mines, but fortunately I landed between the
rows of them. When I chose a field, it had to be convenient for landing
and taking off at night. It also needed some space for about two
hundred ground personnel and the maintenance battalion with its fuel, bombs, and ammunition. I had to take care that there was camouflage at night and to foresee all those things. And you are landing
on this field with fear, but it is your duty.

    The women in the regiment were very friendly and caring with
each other, and it helped us to stand our situation. When I would see
that one crew was caught by artillery fire and spotlights and I was
flying behind them, I would start bombing these projectors and positions and help them to escape death. So friendship, mutual support,
and love of our motherland helped us to endure and to await the
victory. It is a surprise that during the war none of us had ever asked
for a rest at the hospital for some illness. They paid attention to the
women's situation in our regiment, and the girls had the right not to
fly. But the women didn't report to the regimental doctor or tell
anybody about their problems-they kept on flying. After the war we
had a lot of headaches, could not relax, and had very hard problems
with our sleeping, because for nearly three years we turned over the
day and night. During daytime we could sleep for only about four
hours, and that is not enough. Then, with training and briefing, there
were a lot of sleepless nights. For the first year after the war everyone
had problems with sleeping, and I know there were no sleeping pills. I
couldn't sleep for at least three months.
    I could go on talking about it because we had been fighting for one
thousand nights-one thousand nights in combat. Every day the girls
became more courageous. To fly a combat mission is not a trip under
the moon. Every attack, every