Christened With Crosses

THE BALLAD OF THE WOODEN PLANE

THE BALLAD OF THE WOODEN PLANE

I can’t remember how I ended up in the orphanage right before the war. My Godfather uncle Janek took me there. Or perhaps I was taken away from him. I don’t remember how the war began either. I remember that all of us little mites, as the adults called us, suddenly started playing at war. The other kids made me, who lisped and barely understood Russian, along with two others, a red-headed Tatar and a second large-eyed, black-haired mite – Blackie – into Germans. We were attacked every day, and we surrendered. We were led around the rooms with our hands up, like enemies, and then, shot one by one, we were made to lie on the floor for a long time. I didn’t like the game very much.

I remember how the portions of breakfast, lunch and dinner became smaller. And when it got cold and the snow started falling, the kids stopped playing at war.

Then something strange happened. In winter, some enormous Gulliver-like guys came to the orphanage in quilted jackets and earflap hats, and swiftly took away the nine most emaciated boys, four or five-year-old mites. The men had us lined up against the wall, examined us attentively, and ordered the teachers to dress us quickly in the warmest clothes. They hastily put clothes of various sizes on us and gave each of us a heavy woolen blanket. Then, dressed, we went downstairs and out of the building, where a large rumbling bus stood waiting. Two of the guys lifted us up into it in turns. There were a few more adults in the bus in quilted jackets and earflap hats. On the first two seats, seven boys were sat down, and the wall-eyed Snotty and I, the last in line, sat among the guys on the back seat. To my right sat the senior Gulliver. He was in charge of everyone, and everyone obeyed him.

Winter that year was early, snowy and very cold. The entire city was covered in snow. The mounds of snow by the road sides were three times taller than me. None of us knew where the bus was going. When a boy nicknamed Stinky asked where we were being taken, the guy in charge replied:

“To the plane.”

“To the plane? That’s great! So we’ll fly in the air!” we said happily.

“Yes, you’ll certainly fly! You’ll fly over Lake Ladoga.”

We drove through the city for a long time, slowly, without stopping anywhere, even after the sirens howled and the bombing began. It was starting to get dark when we drove out of the city into an enormous snowy expanse, which was crossed only by our road. Suddenly the guys started to get anxious, and the drone of a plane could be heard. The driver increased his speed, we began to be shaken around and thrown from side to side, especially on the back seat. The road turned out to be broken up under the snow. The drone of the plane approached.

“It’s a ‘Messer’” the driver said. “It’s going to follow us.”

“Put the children on the floor under the seats right now!” my neighbor ordered, and as soon as we had been pushed under the seats, the bus was riddled with machine gun fire. We probably didn’t hear the shots, the motor was humming and growling so loudly that we only realized the Messerschmitt had attacked us by the holes in the roof.

The first attack did not claim any victims. The driver squeezed the last juice out of the motor, to get out of this damn field as quickly as possible. The ‘Messer’ returned and, at low altitute, it attacked us again. The guy standing by the cabin fell down, and one of the boys screamed horribly… I instinctively looked out from under the seat, and suddenly the ‘Messer’ moved to the side of the bus and fired a round at the windows on the left side. We were literally showered with a huge amount of glass shards. One of them stuck into my eyebrow above the bridge of my nose. The commander who was sitting next to me immediately lifted me onto his knees and pulled out the shard. Gulping blood, I lost consciousness.

When I came to, I was lying on a bench in some wooden hut. Out of the window, I could see a large white field surrounded by forest. I looked at the world with one eye; my other eye, along with most of my head, was bandaged up.

At that time, I still didn’t understand Russian properly. The fur-hatted guy in charge took me from the bench and sat me down next to him, closer to the burning stove, and said something to comfort me. Boys were grouped around the stove, and with serious adult looks they stared at the living flames. After a few minutes, a large copper kettle boiled on the stove, and a little later we were given a metal cup, a sugar cube and a piece of bread. A ferocious fellow with a moustache and beard poured tea into the teapot right out the packet, and stirring the boiling water with an enormous knife, he began pouring a little into our cups. When we had finished our tea, all the Lilliputian boys were told to get dressed, do their buttons up and go into the yard to answer the call of nature. Then each one of us began to be packaged up, wrapped in a wadded cotton state blanket, turning us all into babies stuck into pouches. There were seven of these pouches. Why not nine? Where were the other two boys? – I didn’t know how to ask. Perhaps they were seriously injured, or killed when the bus was fired on.

In the darkness, the big guys carried us, like infants, to the plane that was waiting next to the forest. It was quite a large plane, so at the time it seemed to me, and a lot of guys were loading boxes into it, handing them to each other from trucks. The pouches containing us were also put into the plane in the same way, from one pair of hands to the next.

Inside the plane, we were placed in our wadded pouches on wooden benches with backs, attached to the two opposite sides of the plane, and with ropes were firmly tied to them. Between the benches, there was a shooting frame, resembling a stepladder. In the center of four wooden beams that stuck into the ceiling, there was a platform made out of boards with steps. Above it, there was a hole in the ceiling, into which a large machine-gun was fastened. On both sides of this gun there were wooden frames, from the floor to the ceiling and from the right side to the left. Durable boxes were attached to them with ropes. All of the space, apart from the aisles, was filled up with these boxes. This plane had probably been hastily converted from a passenger plane to a cargo plane. The portholes in the form of ovular rectangles were covered with pieces of metal on the inside. The salon was illuminated with two dull flashing lamps. The same guy who had sat next to me on the bus was giving the orders. Everyone else, including the pilots, carried out his orders.

I was bundled up opposite the legs of the shooter, although from below I could only see his enormous black fur boots.

I recall everything that took place in the plane in fragments. Either I lost consciousness from my injury – the shard of glass in the bus had after all hit me hard – or like the other mites, I was given sweet tea with alcohol in it, to stop us from wriggling.

I don’t remember our plane taking off. I was probably under the influence of the drink. I woke from the terrible shuddering and severe pitching of the plane, good thing that we had been tied up with ropes, otherwise we would all have slithered across the floor.

How long we flew, I can’t say. A weak light was shining through the machine-gun hole – it was probably already getting light. Something was happening to the plane. The guys stood there holding on to the beams of the frames. The shooter was firing his machine-gun from the step-ladder directly opposite me. I didn’t immediately realize that he was shooting at the enemies who were following the plane. The pilots, trying to evade attack, began to maneuver in the air, rolling onto the left side of the plane and then the right. At these moments, we dangled from the ropes in the air in our pouches. I don’t know how long the unequal battle with the “Messers” lasted. I passed out again. After a while I saw with one eye, as in a dream, that the shooter’s step-ladder was being colored swiftly with something dark red. Blood. But where was it pouring from down the ladder, I wondered in my delirium. And suddenly, following the blood, the soldier’s body slid down the pine steps onto the floor, his head shattered by a bullet. It began to smell of burning in the plane.

This was the first death that I saw, and I saw it up close. Perhaps because of my injury I didn’t really know what was going on. Or perhaps after two and a half months in the blockade, I had already got used to the concept of death. But for some reason I wasn’t afraid for myself, or for others. I accepted the soldier’s death as a fact. War stupefies people. After the strafing of the bus, and the sight of that blood, something broke off in me – I was stupefied. The only feeling I had was one of cold. My legs in the blanket pouch had turned into frozen drumsticks.

Our wooden plane had evidently been hit. It started burning from the tail. The guys were trying to put out the fire with fire extinguishers. Suddenly a terrible pain pierced my ears – we were descending headlong. I disappeared from the world once more, losing consciousness. I came to when my blanket pouch was torn from the cabin with a savage force. All of the men who had been putting out the fire tumbled to the floor, evidently hit. The plane sliced into the snow-covered bank of a lake, and began sliding across it on its belly. I even remember the strange squeak-hissing sound of the sliding. I remember cries (I didn’t understand the words) that the guy in charge made to the pilots from the floor, when the plane braked. After this he got up, crossed himself, as it seemed to me, and started giving orders. He ordered some of his subordinates to quickly remove the pieces of metal from the portholes, break the windows and push us boys through them, and take us fifty meters or so from the plane. He ordered others to save the boxes, pushing them through the windows and doors, and others to put out the fire outside and inside, until the entire plane had been evacuated. He ordered the pilots to remove all the devices, and take the instruments out of the plane, along with the sheets of iron, the dry rations, alcohol and everything valuable they could. The people, like ants before a storm, bustled around the plane, taking boxes, instruments, food and other things out of its belly. I remember that the ropes with which we were tied to the benches were chopped through with axes, and the pouches holding us were pushed through the holes of the windows. I remember that we were all placed on the snow together, in a row.

As soon as the main cargo had been taken out of the burning plane, and dragged away from it as far as possible, the plane exploded. I lost consciousness again for a long time. I came to from the harsh smell of alcohol. In a hut made of boxes and tarpaulin, the adults were rubbing our frozen legs, arms and faces with alcohol. To warm us up inside, they ordered us to drink hot medicine – water with alcohol.

Throughout the day, all the adults built a camp in the snow, resembling a round fortress. In the center of the circle they built a fire, which on the next day was joined by a metal oven assembled by handy men from pieces of iron off the plane. They made spades out of the remains of the metal, and small doors fordugouts. Everything that remained from the plane was used. Around the fire and stove, there appeared five dugouts with walls made of boxes and a floor of fir branches, covered with tarpaulin. I remember that the adults crawled into the dugouts. The warmest dugout belonged to us kids. With each day, our camp improved, and became cozier and warmer. I don’t remember how many days we lived in it, but it was quite a long time. Initially we got water from the snow, and then made a hole in Lake Ladoga. To get logs, a road to the forest was cleared in the snow. The guy who was in charge sent the pilots to the nearest villages. They were dressed more warmly and had maps. They had to force their way over ten kilometers through deep snowdrifts.

During the first days we ate the remains of the dry rations, made porridge from rye flour and seasoned it with egg powder. The food was delicious. On the third day, the pilots returned on skis, and brought potatoes, cabbages, carrots, onions and other tasty things on sleds from the village. In honor of them, a feast was organized. We also took part – we were put on benches that the guys cut out of pine trees, and were given a mug of the tea that came from the village. And a whole carrot for each boy, although not all of the boys knew what to do with it.

Not until several days later, two enormous covered vehicles on caterpillar chains came for us. We were packed into the blankets once more, and together with the tied-up boxes, we were put into the all-terrain vehicles. We drove away from the camp as it began to get dark, and we reached a railway station by noon the next day. I remembered that the guys were very careful with the boxes.

Later, at the station, or perhaps in the train, I heard that they contained the blueprints and calculations of our new destroyer plane, and that the guy in charge was the engineer who had created this plane. The engineer was called Sergey, and his surname was Yeroshevsky or Yaroshevsky.

But why did he collect us, state orphans, and not just normal children, in his plane, and take us from blockaded Leningrad? It was strange. Why did this kind Gulliver single me out from all the other Lillputs, and even bandage my head himself? Because I smiled at him with one eye? Or because I was wearing a cross?

We were taken by train to Kuibyshev, and put in the NKVD orphanage. The local teachers took the cross away from me, the only thing that I had left from my mother Bronya.