The Last Soviet Airwoman Remembers

The history of World War II that I learned growing up was mostly about how America saved the world from Nazi Germany.  My college history courses introduced me to the idea that the Soviet Union also contributed to that victory and my subsequent readings tell me that while both US nor Soviet efforts were necessary for Germany's defeat, neither was sufficient on its own.  I also learned about the scale of Soviet casualties (almost 479,000 Soviet dead and missing in the Battle of Stalingrad--more than the 437,000 American dead and wounded in the entire war).

What I did not learn about was the role of women in the Soviet war effort.  I knew the stories about how women contributed to America's war effort--Rosie the Riveter and even the women pilots who ferried aircraft in the US to free male pilots for combat.  In 2013 I came across the obituary for Nadezhda Popova, one of the most famous women pilots who flew combat missions for the Soviet Air Force.  Wanting to know more, I found an oral history of Soviet airwomen, A Dance With Death.  I always knew that the Soviets were formidable warriors but the exploits of their female combat pilots showed me that strength was widespread.  In case I needed further proof, Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Face of War dramatically drove home that point, documenting the wide variety of ways that Soviet women served in the war--from laundry workers and cooks to combat medics and snipers.

So reading about the last surviving Soviet airwoman remembering her and her comrades' service in The Great Patriotic War (the Soviet/Russian name for World War II) on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the German surrender brought that history back to mind.  If nothing else, it's a reminder that Russia has a long history of defeating invaders in no small part to the valor and determination of its people.

Post-Soviet Russia may be a kleptocratic oligarchy but I would never bet against the Russian people.

postscript

The historical novel, The Huntress, offers an accurate description of the life and times of a Soviet airwoman as one of its sub-plots.  The novel is a combination adventure-mystery-historical story with fully developed characters that  becomes more compelling and fast-paced as it moves toward its conclusion.

From Battlefield to Park

While I was in the east I visited  Civil War battlefields near Richmond, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness and Antietam.  I am drawn to these places in part because I was a soldier and in part by fascination with history.  I first visited the battlefields around Richmond in the 70's when I wanted solitude and a short drive.  I went for the for solitude but spent much of my time there reflecting on what happened on those battlefields and comparing my own combat experience.  Despite the terrible violence those places endured, they are now at peace.  I find comfort and hope in that transition. 

On this trip I found history at all three battlefields, solitude at Richmond, commercial development around Chancellorsville and The Wilderness, and complete restoration at Antietam.  And at each place I could not escape the scale of the fighting and was eternally thankful that my experience was nothing like the meat-grinder slaughter of the Civil War.

Greg Moser and I went out to Fort Harrison and Malvern Hill south of Richmond on a cloudy drizzly day.  Originally part of the Confederate defenses around the capitol, Fort Harrison fell to Union forces in September 1864.  Walking the interior of the fort amid the remains of earthen walls and artillery positions looking into the woods that have filled in their fields of fire in the past century-and-a-half seemed claustrophobic in the muted afternoon light.  Malvern Hill was much more open--deadly open to the Confederate troops that charged into well-placed Union artillery on the high ground in what was the last of the the Seven Days Battles in 1862. Looking down the barrel of a Union cannon into an open field of charging Confederates  was a stark reminder of war's grim efficiency.

My visit to Chancellorsville and The Wilderness was mostly a drive-thru on my way to Elizabeth Furnace.  I stopped at the Chancellorsville visitor center on Virginia Route 3.  Traffic all the way out from Fredericksburg was heavy through a sea of big box and strip mall development.  I was happy to turn into the calm of the visitor center for a lunch break.  Since I was short on time I palnned to get out and walk at The Wilderness but missed the turn-off and did not backtrack.  What the visit demonstrated to me was the extent to which Virginia was contested land.  Chancellorsville happened in 1863 and is regarded as Lee's greatest victory.  The Wilderness was a year later and was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.  I saw the same cycle in Richmond where Confederate victories early in the war were matched with defeats in subsequent years.

Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland is not a place to find solitude.  Lots of people were there on a Friday afternoon in June when I visited on my way north out of Virginia .  Pat Doyle came over from Frederick, Maryland and joined me for the visit.  While waiting for him I attended an orientation.  The walls on three sides of the room were floor to ceiling windows that offered a view of  virtually the entire battlefield.  The view added to what was a well-informed and lively presentation by a young ranger.  He knew the history of the battle and the larger campaign, what the commanders where thinking and trying to accomplish, and what happened when those plans collided.  In that room, the ranger could walk from side to side, point and say this happened there, that occurred over there and explain the errors and plain good luck that happened throughout the battle.  And we could see the places he was talking about.  The orieintaion offered a good understanding of events that gave meaning to the detail we would later see throughout the battlefield.

Our tour was mostly by car but we were out and walking at various sites.  The day was sunny and hot, unlike the day of the battle which is reported as cloudy and dreary.  Our conversations varied, much of the time we spent visualizing a very different landscape than the one we were viewing.  Instead of the few odd tourists at pull-outs, thousands of men contended here in desperate combat.  The Antietam battlefield has been restored to its condition on September 17, 1862 so the landscape we viewed was as it appeared on the morning of the battle.  All very peaceful, very neat.  Not at all how it appeared that evening, strewn with the carnage of America's bloodiest day.  These days the landscape is strewn with monuments and memorials to the units that fought here.  I saw many for units from my family's native state, Pennsylvania.  Often Confederate and Union memorials were on either side of a road marking what had been the epicenter of one part of the battle.  One notable memorial is for Clara Barton who tended casualties here.

We finished up at Antietam National Cemetary.  Union battle dead are buried here in honored glory along with a few interments from later wars.  The centerpiece statue has what appears to be a correction or maybe repair:  a white stone insert that adds the numbers 6 and 2 to the date of the battle.   By the time we returned to the visitor center it was closed and most everyone was gone.  The day's heat was beginning to break and the light had softened.  Good news for me as I headed west to Cumberland, Maryland.

A visit to a battlefield park is a sobering experience for me.  Sure it's a park--peaceful, orderly, usually interesting, often quiet, generations removed from the day of battle.  But the place is infused with the presence of men who fought and died in that place.  Their presence comes with every visualization and remembrance of the event.  Lincoln's words at Gettysburg apply here, too:  the soldiers have consecrated these places.

Centennial

The Christmas Truce of 1914.

BBC magazine provides a lot of detail in its article about the French attitudes about the truce.  Surprisingly, so does the Washington Post.  I had not expected to see anything in the US media since America was not involved.   The Post story links to a photo archive of the event.  In some of the photos I cannot distinguish between the two sides, a testament to their shared humanity.

"...on each end of the rifle we're the same."

Jesus Stuff

My reading choices in the past few months have focused on 1st century Palestine. It all started when a friend recommended Christopher Moore's Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It's fiction and a clever work of imagination but Moore did some decent research to serve as the basis of his narrative.  He has a pretty blank slate work with since not much is known about Jesus until about age 30.  Apparently some tradition suggests that he traveled east in his earlier years, an idea that Moore expands with no small amount of humor.  I read Moore's A Dirty Job years ago and found it wildly inventive and funny.  Moore does a good job with the Jesus story.  I give it as much credence as the Bible and it's WAY more readable.

About the same time I was reading Lamb I found  A Jew Among Romans: the Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus by Frederic Raphael at the library.  I vaguely recognized the name from a classified add that often appeared in The Nation claiming to offer proof (for only $1 and a self addressed-self stamped envelop) that Jesus Christ was an invention of Flavius Josephus.  I figured I might learn what that proof was.  What I learned was that Palestine was was awash with Jewish nationalism, factionalism, messianism and terrorism in pursuit of the promised Kingdom of Israel in the years before and after Jesus of Nazareth.  I learned that in 66 CE (most any time actually, since they often profited from the Roman occupation) wealthy and educated Jews, including Josephus, thought that rebelling against the Romans was very ill-advised.  I learned, too, that many other Jews would kill anyone who questioned the rebellion.

As governor of a city besieged by the Romans and defended by zealots, Josephus was was a dead man no matter what he did.  What he did was manage to survive by making himself useful to the victorious Roman general Vespasian.  Josephus ended up in Rome as historian when Vespasian became emperor.  Josephus wrote history that flattered his patron but it serves as a valuable chronicle of 1st century events.  A Jew Among Romans taught me some history I did not know and added context to the familiar history and myth I do know.  I never learned if Josephus invented Jesus Christ.

Well before reading either of these books I had a request in at the library for Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Resa Aslan.  It drew attention when it came out a few months ago; from  Fox News wingnuts coming unglued about a Muslim writing about Jesus to and religious scholars/authorities who question Aslan's research.   Whatever it's quality and interpretation, Aslan's research is extensive--53 pages of notes and 10 page bibliography.  Aslan examines the historical record, which excludes the Gospels and other New Testament accounts written after the fact with a point of view, to place Jesus of Nazareth in the messianic and revolutionary traditions of 1st century Palestine and questions whether Jesus intended his message for non-Jews.  That said, Aslan acknowledges that Jesus of Nazareth is the only one of the several messiahs of his era who is remembered and the religions created in his name have flourished, even if the remembered Jesus is not the actual Jesus.

Reading Zealot immediately after A Jew Among Romans added to Zealot's credibility.  Both relate the same events without contradiction.  Zealot focuses more narrowly on Palestine and events in Jesus's life but offers a rich background of the era's politics and culture.  A Jew Among Romans is more broadly focused, as Josephus life events took place on a larger stage than Jesus.  The two books reinforced my belief that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure.  I don't need him to be anything more than that.

Another version of the Jesus story is "The Ballad of Mary Magdalen".  Mary figures prominently in Lamb, the most readable and fun of the three works.  Seems only right to end with her story.



"The Ballad of Mary Magdalen" is written by Richard Shindell.  It's one of many fine selections on "Cry, Cry, Cry"  by Shindel, Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplansky.

At War At Christmas

Here at Unsolicited Opinion thoughts of war are part of my Christmas.  That's why John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches" spoke so strongly to me when I first heard it in 1984.   McCutcheon writes and sings evocatively of human beings  in war.  Not a meaningless Christmas song but rather an honest lesson in the reality of war.

The story bears repeating.  Here 'tis on this Christmas Eve 2013 with all best wishes.

Red Star Aviatrices

A while back I noted the obituary of Nadezhda Popova, a Soviet bomber pilot and commander in World War II.  She was one of many.  The obituary mentioned an oral history,  of the three all-female bomber and fighter regiments that served on all major fronts throughout the war.  A Dance With Death tells the stories of the pilots, navigators, armorers and mechanics.  Working on metal surfaces with bare fingers in 40 below zero weather and skin sticking to the metal.  Flying in white out conditions.  Living in dugouts.  Dodging fascist fighter planes.  Crash landings.  Losses.  This is war at its most brutal.  These women experienced it.

The stories do not become repetitious even though many recount individual experiences of common events.  Each story adds depth and detail that builds a larger narrative.  The women are patriotic, strong and fighting for their homeland, wanting to serve well, dealing with hardship, even finding time for fun. They are also telling the story almost half a century after the fact and after the collapse of Communism.  That allows them to offer perspective on their nation's history and leadership but none doubt or question their service.  It was after all, The Great Patriotic War.

I was surprised at how many Soviet women learned to fly airplanes and gliders and to parachute before the war.  A number of the women mentioned the admonitions to Soviet youth to develop a skill that would serve society.   Aviation was a cutting edge technology which made it an attractive and interesting way to fulfill the state's request.  Not a few of the women mentioned wanting to fly at first sight of an airplane.  As it was, they got to fly a lot.  Hundreds of missions.  Thousands of hours.

Best of all, A Dance With Death includes 67 portraits of the Soviet airwomen taken in 1990-91 by author Anne Noogle, a fomer Woman Airforce Service Pilot.  The women are in their late 60's-early 70's, same age as Maggie's mom who was born in 1921.  The text has WWII photos of some of the women and I found myself flipping back and forth at times as I read the story.  The portraits are in turn charming, thoughtful, revealing and familiar.  Here are a few examples.

Nadezhda Popova, 1921-2013

Another historical detail I did not previously know:

Nadezhda Popova, a Soviet aviator who became one of the most celebrated of the so-called “Night Witches,” female military pilots who terrorized the Nazi enemy with their nocturnal air raids during World War II, died July 8. She was 91.
[...]
Ms. Popova was among the first female pilots to volunteer for service in the Soviet military during World War II and became a squadron commander in her swashbuckling all-female regiment. She flew 852 combat missions — including 18 during one night — and was honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union, one of the nation’s highest decorations.
[...]
The pilots achieved a degree of surprise by shutting down their engines in the last stages of their bomb runs; the Germans heard only the hiss of the air flowing across their wings and, likening the sound to that of a broomstick in flight, referred to the women as Night Witches.

Godspeed, Commander Popova.

postscript

Women also flew for the United States during WWII.  Not in combat like the Night Witches but as WASPs.   

All of the Romance. Little of the Reality.

Even non-history buffs are likely to encounter the Gettysburg Battle lollapalooza over the next few days(*) as the nation "celebrates" three days of carnage in 1863. No doubt this year's event will be less violent but it's far too much of a pageant for my taste.

Which re-enactors do you think will play the part of the Confederates who kidnapped free blacks in Pennsylvania and took them into slavery after retreating from Gettysburg?

Hat tip for this little known bit of Confederate gallantry: The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Laveen. Secrets may be historical fiction but the the history is true.

(*)Update: Now that I look at the reenactment site, I see that the event won't even take place on the actual dates--July 1-3--of the battle. The reenactment will be July 4-7, no doubt a more convenient time for spectators, participants and maximum media exposure but another step away from reality. Hell, by July 4, 1863 the Confederates were heading south.

A Straightforward Account

If you've ever wondered why Haiti seems to be such as desperately poor nation, Laurent Dubois' history, Haiti:  The Aftershocks of History, will tell you why.  Dubois is clearly a sympathetic chronicler of Haiti's long, tortured road from slavery to free republic.  He fully recognizes the significance of black slaves overthrowing their French colonial masters even as he acknowledges the class divide between a small elite and the largely uneducated masses, divide that retarded progress for much of the nation's history.  He explains how Haiti came to owe a crushing foreign debt France and the US that profited few Haitians and many international bankers. 

Dubois is especially cognizant of the extent to which the former slaves, who were largely denigrated by elite, were able to create a sustainable economic system based on independent land ownership that strongly resisted any attempt to coerce them into any form of wage slavery.  At least until the US Marines occupied Haiti from 1914 to  1934.  The Americans managed to weaken and dismantle this system--something generations of Haitian leaders could never accomplish--and make Haiti, if not safe for foreign capital, certainly far more vulnerable than during its first hundred years of nationhood.  By the 1950's Haiti was ripe for the cult of personality created by Francois Duvalier.  And we all know how that turned out.

Dubois' keen understanding of Haitian culture is especially evident in his description of Americans' view of zombies:

...[M]aking zombies into generic horror-film monsters...obscured the fact that in Haitian folklore, the zonbi is a powerful symbol with a specific, haunting point of reference.  It is a person devoid of all agency, under the complete control of a master:  that is, a slave.  Sometimes the term is used as an insult--to this day, independent farmers in Haiti might call wage workers zonbi, insisting that to sell your labor is to sell your freedom... [T]he American zombie cliches...have function[ed] as a kind of intellectual sorcery.  They took a religion developed in order to survive and resist slavery--one that had served as a central pillar in the counter-plantation system--and transformed it into nothing more than a sign of barbarism, further proof that he country would never progress unless it was guided and controlled by foreign whites.

That pretty much says it all.

"Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train
 'Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again"

No doubt you heard these lyrics in recent days' stories about Levon Helm's death. That opening line is probably the source of most exposure that my hometown, Danville, Virginia, ever gets even if most pay it no particular mind.

I picked up on the significance immediately. My hometown prided itself on its fleeting role of the Last Capitol of the Confederacy after the Confederate government evacuated Richmond a week before Lee's surrender.  Danville is where the Danville train led.  Jefferson Davis could maintain some hope that Lee would somehow work another miracle.   Then it ended.

Levon Helm delivered those opening words directly and starkly. His voice commands your attention as he begins his story.

Because his story includes a bit of my own geography, I pay close attention.

Update: 

Danville is also noted for the Wreck of the Old 97. The old roadbed for those tracks ran along a ravine just behind houses across the street where my family lived. As kids we used to follow the abandoned grade from the end of our street to a nearby ball field.  A historical marker on nearby Route 58 marks the site but the high embankment and textile mill I saw there as a kid did not look like the pictures I saw.  Years later, it dawned on me that the wide path we followed was the old grade leading to that ill-fated trestle.

A Small Victory

Chile's center-right government has backed off its attempt to convert Augusto Pinochet from a military dictatorship to a "regime". The change was proposed by the National Educational Council and explained by Education Minister Harald Beyer as being "...about using the same expression that is used around the world, a more general term such as military regime." His words suggest that this is a small technical matter, nothing of significance.

Chileans knew it was bullshit and reacted strongly. The government caved quickly. The wounds left by the dictatorship are too real in the memory of many Chileans who lived through the Pinochet years. Telling them that Pinochet was not a military dictator was bound to ignite opposition. Even the hapless Mr Beyer admitted that he personally "had no problem" in recognising that Gen Pinochet led a "dictatorial government".

The current government is Chile's first conservative government elected since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship. The right wing of that center-right coalition no doubt includes some who look back on the dictatorship with at least nostalgia if not righteous and complete justification. Perhaps the attempt to lessen the stigma associated with Chile's leaders during those years was a favor to those members of the governing coalition.

It won't be the last attempt to re-write Chilean history. History is constantly revised by time, distance and knowledge. Chile's living memory of the dictatorship is the knowledge that strongly defines that history at present. As the living memory fades, opportunity arises to create alternate understanding of and apologies for the Pinochet years. The proponents of the textbook revision (or their successors) will be there.

This small victory keeps the truth of experience and memory alive to contend with future lies.