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28 Order of the Red Banner We flew mission after mission. They never seemed to end. "Yegorova, your mission is to search for 'Katyushas'!" "Yes, sir!" I repeated. Katyushas had just appeared at our sector of the front. The commanders had described the exact location of the heavy trucks loaded with the sheathed rockets I was to find. I was also to deliver a classified packet to a General Pushkin. Spring had come, and with it the mud and foul weather. Heavy rains poured unceasingly. Visibility at the aerodrome was abysmal, around a hundred meters. When I took off, dense fog closed in, and the rain turned to sleet. I climbed to nine hundred meters, where the fog was a bit thinner. Suddenly , the aircraft began shuddering violently. Glancing outside, I noticed that the wings, fuselage, and even the propeller were covered with an even crust of ice. The engine was still turning, and the control surfaces still worked, but the plane didn't respond to my inputs. I was losing altitude. I pushed the stick forward to descend more quickly, but something told me the ground was quite close already. Houses flashed by, then a forest, a river, a ravine. I shut down the engine, pulled back on the stick, and Bam! The airplane slammed down, heavy with ice. I did everything I could to slow the airplane down, although the U-2 didn't have any brakes. Finally, the U-2 rolled to a halt. Silence. I couldn't see two steps in front of me through the thick fog. I was afraid I would lose the plane if I walked away from it. I would have to wait until the fog cleared. I cleaned the ice off the plane and calculated my approximate location based on my speed and the duration of the flight. When the fog finally dispersed a bit, I noticed a haystack right in front of the aircraft's nose. How had I missed it? I never did find General Pushkin and his "katyushas" that day. On the way home, I flew into another snowstorm. I somehow managed to land in utter darkness, but I couldn't even see to taxi. I only found the parking ramp because my mechanic heard the "voice" of his plane and ran to meet me. The squadron commander gave me a lengthy scolding. "Tired of living, are you?" he raged. The other pilots regarded me with gloomy silence. They had apparently turned back because of the weather. But the liaison com- 100 RED SKY, BLACK DEATH mander of the Southern Front, General Korolev, congratulated me, and an official from the political unit handed me a package. It was one of those parcels randomly sent to front-line soldiers from kind souls back home. The box was full of wonderful things! Neat little packs of tobacco, a bottle of vodka, knitted wool socks, beautifully embroidered towels , a bag of dried fruit, and, most interesting of all, a hand-stitched tobacco pouch with an embroidered inscription on it: "To a dear soldier, from Marusya Kudryavtseva -a keepsake." Inside the pouch was a photograph of a good-looking young woman and a letter asking the "dear soldier" to whip the Fascists quickly and return home after a quick victory. At the bottom of the box lay a notebook with ten envelopes, all addressed to Marusya, the city of Mary, Turkmen Republic. I gave the tobacco and vodka to my mechanic and the towels to the hostess with whom I was staying, and I kept the dried fruit and socks for myself. I passed on Marusya's hopeful photograph, letter, and envelopes to Viktor Kravtsov, a handsome twenty-two-year-old Kuban Cossack. No matter where we based, the village girls couldn't take their eyes off him. He pretended not to notice them. "Viktor, have a look at this photo." I teased "Isn't she a lovely girl? You should write to her. I'll bet she'd rather get a letter from you than from me. It would make her so happy to know that her package made it into the hands of a handsome young soldier, a pilot even!" "Ridiculous!" he muttered, but he did accept the notebook and envelopes. On Red Army Day, our squadron gathered to celebrate. Chief of Staff Listarevich solemnly read a decree from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet: Lieutenant Spirin was awarded the Red Star, and Junior Lieutenant Yegorova, the Order of the...

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