Daughters of the Night Sky

We cleared the German camp, but it seemed like hours before we reached our own. Again and again I glanced behind us, certain I could hear the whirr of German engines, ready to retaliate for their destroyed munitions, but they launched no counterattack. We saw a spire from the church in the nearby town, and I felt myself give in to my trembling.

As I clambered down from the cockpit, the ground seemed too firm, too real. I felt Taisiya’s arm around me, and while the onlookers would think it a gesture of consolation or solidarity, it was the only thing propelling me forward.

Sofia was white as bleached cotton when we touched down and staggered back to the throng that awaited us. Renata and Polina looked horrified by the condition of the plane they’d so painstakingly prepared. The wings would need hours of patchwork. It was a miracle we’d been able to return unscathed.

“Darya and Eva?” Sofia asked quietly when no one else could find their voice. She’d been at the head of the formation, unable to see for certain what had happened.

“Gone,” I replied. “We saw them going down. If they manage to land, they’re only a few meters from the German camp. There is no way they won’t be found.”

“They did their duty,” Chernov said, emerging from the darkness to join us. “And the mission was a success. You’ll all be up tomorrow night.”

We nodded as the general retreated to his quarters. This was what success would look like. This was why we couldn’t contemplate failure.

CHAPTER 14

Early August 1942, Sorties: 27

The evening of our first mission rehashed itself in my mind like a newsreel played too slow on the projector—the first glimpse of the enemy base, watching our bombs turn their munitions into useless piles of rubble, our haphazard escape on shredded wings—forever etched in my brain. It was the sight of Darya and Eva’s plane, the engine enshrouded in flames, that was the most prominent memory. I could not look at our campfires or even the flame of a gas stove without remembering the terrifying screech as their plane went down.

Now the missions blurred together. Five to eight sorties in a single evening. Bridges, ammunition, hoards of supplies—all destroyed. Better, we kept the Germans awake, and they had to hate us for it.

“Congratulations, ladies,” Sofia said as we sat down to an early supper before dusk gave us the cover our missions required. “According to the latest intel, you’re considered a priority target.”

“That’s a comfort,” Taisiya said with a wry smile.

“Isn’t it, though? They’ve given us a charming nickname to go along with it, too.”

“Oh, don’t keep us in suspense,” a pilot named Zoya said with a giggle as she cut into her potatoes.

“Die Nachthexen,” Sofia replied with an admirable German accent.

“The Night Witches?” I said, remembering the German vocabulary from my language classes before the academy. I was unable to control my giggles as the peals of laughter from my comrades floated up to the trees. “How fitting. I think it suits us.”

Even Oksana, usually so solemn and quiet, smiled with the rest of us. They meant the nickname to be demeaning. They sought to make us sound like something inhuman with their taunt, likely so they would feel less remorse about opening fire on women. We knew the truth, though. If they went to this trouble, we were affecting them. It was exactly what we wanted.

“We also have a new order from Comrade Stalin,” Sofia announced. She kept her voice steady as she read the decree:

Form within the limits of each army 3 to 5 well-armed defensive squads (up to 200 persons in each), and put them directly behind unstable divisions. Require them, in case of panic and scattered withdrawals of elements of the divisions, to shoot in place panic-mongers and cowards and thus help the honest soldiers of the division execute their duty to the motherland.

Panic. Cowards. Easy words for advisers to bandy about in boardrooms and safe houses hundreds of kilometers from the rain of mortar shells and bullets from German guns. Harder to stomach when it was you who had to constantly fight against your gut instinct to flee from the inferno of hate that sprawled to the west. That the generals didn’t want troops to flee made sense, but to ban retreat was tactically questionable—and to assign troops to shoot anyone who even appeared to withdraw was worse than cruelty. It was madness.

“Can he mean such a thing?” Svetlana, now promoted to navigator, asked after a long moment of stunned silence.