Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Hubert Griffith - R.A.F. in Russia - 11. Finale

R.A.F. IN RUSSIA; by HUBERT GRIFFITH; DEDICATED TO WING-COMMANDER H. N. G. ISHERWOOD, D.F.C., A.F.C., Order of Lenin, and MAJOR - GENERAL KUZNETSOV, Red Air Force ; to the Fighter-Boys of No. 151 Wing, R.A.F. and to their Soviet opposite numbers. LONDON 1942.

CHAPTER XI - FINALE
November-December

IT would be pleasant to end these notes on the North Russian Expedition with a record of some spectacular triumph - some sortie of the Wing at full operational strength with countless enemy destroyed-with something just one degree more spectacular than anything it had yet achieved in spite of a consistent record of successful fighting, successful teaching, and warm and friendly relationship with Allies. But unfortunately neither history, nor indeed the very conditions of the Wing's being in Russia, allow it. The Expedition was governed throughout by what must be called the " law of diminishing returns "-the longer the Wing stayed in Russia the more and more of its aircraft were handed over, by contract, to Soviet pilots. There was no question of any such thing as a last sortie " at full strength," for, several weeks before the Wing took its final departure, all Wing aircraft and equipment, even down to pilots' personal flying-helmets, Mae-Wests and dinghies, had been handed over by long pre-arranged agreement - and the Wing, as regards "aircraft strength" had simply ceased to exist.

A certain number of our pilots still went down to the aerodrome from day to day to help where they could in matters of instruction ; our engineering and wireless personnel found that it had plenty to do right up to the last days before sailing (and the Wing even left behind wireless and equipment detachments, a cypher-staff, and individual M.T.-drivers behind it when it departed.) But combative flying ceased for the Wing on the day that the signal went out, in response to urgent Air Ministry enquiries - the date was October 20th : - " All aircraft handed over to Soviet pilots." Thereafter, whenever German aircraft came over on stray daylight tip-and-run raids, it was no longer the Wing's duty or responsibility to go up and fight them. It could merely watch Soviet pilots getting increasingly expert in the technique of a " scramble " take-off - in the Wing's own former machines.

It may be asked, " Why did not the Wing stay out in Russia in view of its admirable record in fighting and flying, and the complete and warm friendship that it had now settled down to with its hosts ? " The answer was given by the Russians themselves. To keep a detached British Wing out in Russia, fifteen hundred or so sea-miles from its English base, would have needed a considerable amount of shipping-space once the original stores that we had brought with us had run out. (It is true that we had drawn mainly on the local sources for rations, but after the first weeks we had fed 200 airmen daily in our own " English " dining-hall off the English stores, and if the Wing had stayed longer than its budgeted three months, vast further supplies of food, equipment and clothing would have had to be sent out.) If this shipping-space were available, over and above what was basically essential for tanks, guns, munitions, etc., that the Allies were already sending - then the Soviet authorities roundly said that they would prefer it to be used for more Hurricanes. Three squadrons of Soviet pilots could now fly them - and fly them expertly enough to teach others, and the ground-staffs were competent at servicing and maintaining them. Personally, they liked us - there was never the slightest suspicion of ill-feeling, as a series of coruscating " farewell parties " most definitely showed - but the cry of the Soviet higher authorities was, equally definitely, " Give us more Hurricanes."

The Wing, in a word, carried out the function for which it was originally created from the beginning - to arrive, to get cracking, to assist others to get cracking on its own type of aircraft, and then to depart.

But there remained certain weeks of waiting, for the evacuation of an entire Wing is not worked out in a day-and the bright thought of sending us two thousand miles through Southern Russia to the Middle East was only abandoned after a long interchange of cables - and transport, either by sea or rail, to Archangel proved to be impracticable - and the Admiralty could not be expected, in the matter of minutes, to produce warships from up its sleeve to take the Wing off from Murmansk Sound. Ultimately the Wing embarked, in parties, some in Destroyers, some in Cruisers, between November 20th and December 1st.

What were the outstanding events - or even occupations -  of the intervening time ?

In the first place, there was the ever-present problem of keeping a Wing of 550 airmen, and fifty or so pilots, amused and interested after their main occupation, that of keeping aircraft in the air, had gone. Route-marches and rifle-shooting, football games and physical-training were all tried in succession - but all were limited by the conditions of the weather. The weather had by now become extraordinarily cold, temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (i.e., 27 degrees of frost) being registered. Route-marching became an impossibility in a certain condition of the roads - a time when the hardest frost had given place to a slight thaw, and this in turn to a hard frost again. At these times the surfaces of roads became as slippery as polished glass. P.T. (physical training) was started for all young officers at 8.3o in the mornings, rather as a gesture of defiance to the elements. (After all, " P.T. before breakfast, within the Arctic Circle, in the month of November," would read very heroically in all squadron record-books in after years. It was not actually so bad in practice ; it was kept very short and very sharp ; and the scramble across the half-mile of gleaming snow to breakfast warmed up anyone whose hands were in danger of frost-bite. The decree held good as long as temperatures were only 10 degrees below freezing ; when the temperature fell below this and a wind sprang up, then the practice had to be abandoned.)

Incidentally, it is to be recorded that no section of the Wing-personnel felt the cold really seriously at any time. The Russian system of double-windows to barrack-blocks, and wood-stoves in all rooms, was effective. Fuel was unlimited, for the whole country-side was wooded, and logs were to be had simply for the sawing and chopping (several of our airmen came in the end to, wield a very pretty axe. . . .) The health of the troops, in the dry, clear, bright atmosphere, remained unexceptionally good. The sergeant-pilots devised a song of their own with the refrain

" Hardships, yer bastards ?
Yer don't know what hardships are ! "

And the song, if satirical in intention, remained basically true. The increasing discontent of the young pilot-officers was not so easily answered. It was the discontent of inactivity. They grumbled, quite seriously, as though they were enduring all the tortures of the damned ; and it had equally seriously to be explained to them that campaigns and even wars themselves are not run exclusively with regard to the flying-time of young pilot-officers. (But at its worst the grumbling was no more than the result of idleness and frustration - the reverse side of the medal of which the face was the burning desire to be again shooting down Huns.)

On the whole, one retains an impression of marvellously high, good-tempered gaiety - interrupted by interludes of shouting and singing, scuffling and throwing cushions about when superfluous energy rose to boiling-point. Meals were always an " occasion." One used often to wonder what an outsider, a stranger new-out from England, would have thought if suddenly set down in that crowded electric-lighted supper-room. The boys would have walked their half-mile of snowy, slippery (and often icy) broken ground, across to the small, brightly-lighted and heated mess. The small hall outside would be piled high with shed flying-coats, flying-boots, fur hats and revolvers. Inside, the Russian waitresses - one of them a girl of great beauty - would be serving the boys with their meals. The babble of conversation would be incessant, and the jokes - silly enough in themselves - would be treated as uproariously comic. (There is no doubt but that ninety per cent. of the mess felt itself, in the dry, bright atmosphere of those parts, more physically healthy and " alive " than in the soddenness of an English winter.) The waitresses would have to have the jokes explained to them, where possible, by an interpreter. There would usually be a Russian officer or two dining with us, possibly having their legs pulled, and quite agreeable to having their legs pulled. Some of them frankly thought the English pilots quite mad in the things that they found funny, and some of them understood everything instinctively. It is possible that craziness among pilots is a universal passport to understanding.

It may be mentioned in passing that all these meals were now taken quite " dry." The so-called " vino," in early days served at the evening meal, had long since run out. All the gaiety that there was, was entirely the result of natural high spirits, and was not the fruit of the vine. If " parties " have figured in the narrative heretofore, it must be understood in fairness that they were special set-pieces, occurring only at the rate of about one a month, on a definite and given occasion. For the rest, the rule of the camp on working days, laid down by the C.O., had been " no alcohol of any sort, either at lunch or before evening dinner." The evening drink, usually the rum-ration served with hot water and sugar, was taken before going to bed.

There came the " November Celebrations " - the three-day festivities round November 7th, when the Russians celebrated the anniversary of the 1917 Revolution, that gave them their present Government and Constitution. Outwardly the show was normal enough, to those who were familiar with peace-time Soviet Russia. The General gave a formal dinner-party - that is to say, an invitation dinner to certain officers of the Wing, Safonov and other recently-decorated Russian officers present, with a scattering of interpretresses, in what would be called in England " afternoon-frocks," making up the female element. Afterwards, a move was made to the local village-hall - always, even in the smallest village, the " hall " took the form of a quite large theatre, where an entertainment, crowded to the doors, was in progress-speeches and a theatrical performance.

Nothing was abnormal about these things, the speeches and the performance - save only the time and place of their happening. The speeches were extraordinarily realistic and balanced ; figures of Russian casualties were given, amounting to nearly two-million, (November, 1941.) the prospects of the campaign were discussed ; the position of the battle-line was indicated accurately ; the fact was not minimized that Russia had an extraordinarily hard task ahead of her. And then the dancing began-the dancing, the singing, the theatrical sketches, the juggling-turns . . . all frankly and heartily enjoyed by crowded audiences of the local soldiers and the local village populace.

It was a lesson in " morale " that would be hard to improve upon. In that bitter Arctic peninsula, hundreds of miles from what is accepted as " civilization," and only twenty miles or so from its own part of the actual battlefront - a realistic statement could be given out to the assembled populace, mostly army-troops, which amounted in effect to a declaration that much of the industrial area of the country was in the hands of the enemy - the equivalent in England would be that an area including many of our greatest industrial towns and most fertile counties had been captured and over-run. The general position, and the tasks awaiting each one of them, was then explained to them. Then the dancing and the gaiety. . . . This was at a time, remember, when the Russian " advance " had not yet begun, and was, in effect, the most critical times of the retreat. And yet, one had the impression, at that time and at that time exactly, that if any member of the Russian audience had got up and suggested the possibility of ultimate Russian defeat, he would not have been put up against a wall and shot as a traitor - but would merely have been laughed at as a polite lunatic. . . .

The self-confidence of the Russians - in themselves, their resources and in their country - was nothing less than supreme.

Two last instances may give a further idea of it. Late one night the author of this book was walking back along the mile-and-a-half of snow that separated the village from the Camp. There had been a cinema-show in the village - an English technicolour film, that he personally had found insupportable (though the English and Russians both enjoyed it). Along the snow-covered road-there under the stars and the moonlight-he was passed by a train of lorries carrying Russian soldiers, singing loudly and exultantly. . . . It cannot have been done " to impress the English visitors," as we have been told in former times that so much is done in Soviet Russia. The writer happened to be the only Englishman within miles, and he was walking along in the shadow of a hillside, and the lorries were passing him at twenty miles an hour, oblivious of his presence. It was a lonely bit of the country-like an empty and frozen and deserted Sahara. And the singing, performed without an audience as the lorries careered along, seemed an extraordinarily convincing proof - in view of the place and the time - that the Russians were genuinely pleased with themselves and one another.

The last instance, known to members of the Wing personally. One day a Russian pilot - a man whom we had entertained in our own mess, and known to us as a friend - had a single-handed fight over the lines with two German aircraft. He shot down the first, and then rammed the second. (This is an authentic technique exploited by the Russians, and they have learned also the technique of frequently getting away with it.) He baled out himself, and then, landing by chance close to his opponents, faced the two occupants of the rammed aircraft. (It is necessary to mention again that the countryside up there is almost completely deserted apart from a few military posts. The crew of a German bomber that had crashed, walked for ten days in the snow without meeting a single soul.) The Russian pilot fought the two Germans on foot. He shot one with his revolver, and then shot the Boxer dog that the German pilot had brought with him. He then had a hand-to-hand grapple with the second German, had a few teeth knocked out and his face slashed open from the forehead to the chin -and then killed the German by firing his Verey cartridge-pistol into him at close range. He then walked back for four days through the snow, with his feet frost-bitten, and retired to sick-quarters. (Many of the medical details of this extraordinary achievement were substantiated by our own M.O., who visited the pilot in hospital. . . .) It was an achievement that was in its way heroic. It was the quintessence - the last or highest essence - of the spirit in which the Russians are fighting the war. They are there to exterminate all enemies, as long as those enemies remain on Soviet soil. . . .

*   *   *   *   *

These were the people, then, that we had impressed, and who in turn had impressed us ; and this mutual and growing trust, this acceptance and respect of one another's conventions, is probably as near as one can get to a definition of what is meant by the word " liaison." (In using the word " we " I stand detached from it personally. I am referring to the flying boys of the Wing and to our Commanding-Officer - whose easy and instinctive co-operation with the Russian General had been one of the chief successes of the expedition ; and to our technical personnel and their dealings with their opposite numbers. I had only a minor and administrative job with the Wing, and therefore had all the more leisure to observe it.)

Four members of the Wing were decorated by the Soviet Government with one of the two highest Soviet awards, the " Order of Lenin " - an order never before given to any foreigner : - Wing-Commander Isherwood, A.F.C., Squadron-Leaders Rook and Miller, both for their own brilliant services and as a collective recognition of the work of their whole squadrons ; and a non-commissioned pilot, Flight Sergeant Haw, (Now Flying-Officer Haw.) who had himself shot down three Germans " confirmed," the highest score made by any individual pilot in the limited time available.

If one mentions that the upshot of this was a party, given by us this time, one is only speaking the truth.

The long, echoing, first-floor corridor of our Kremlin - the only space in it large enough to accommodate the half-a-hundred Russians to whom we had sent written invitations, was laid out to " look like " a party - with tables stretching down it covered with white table-cloths, extra electric-lights installed for the occasion, some green-stuff plucked from neighbouring birch-forests draped round the lamps, and the tables groaning under bottles of English spirits and Russian edibles - an amateurish affair when compared with the hospitality of the Berkeley in London or the Metropole in Moscow - but serving its turn within the frozen rim of the Arctic Circle, and enjoyed by all.

As a party - like the small expedition as a whole - it was a classic.

*   *   *   *   *

Not so long afterwards, the Naval transports appeared in the bay to take us home. The Wing disappeared, as it had at first appeared, by various parties, escorts, and convoys. As the last and largest party embarked on a British cruiser, the air was still alive with the sound of Hurricanes, flown by Russian pilots by now. The General and Kapitan Safonov had, as has been remarked before, thought that it would be a nice idea for them to fly the farewell patrol themselves.

The Wing may be said, by the same token, to have achieved its immediate and limited objectives. It had got its pupils-for-the-minute interested in, and enthusiastic about, Hurricanes. It had shown them some flying of Hurricanes - and its record of victories had not been quite as easily achieved as may appear on paper. There had been long hours and days and weeks of waiting, in the freezing cold, " at immediate readiness "  - i.e., the pilots strapped into their cockpits out on the open aerodrome - before contact had been established in that strange northern climate. And best of all, it had made friends.

A small group of pilots of one nationality had come on terms of mutual regard with the pilots of another nationality - the pilots of our new Ally, a moment perhaps of greater significance than anything else in the Wing's records, when related to later events in the world.

The Wing embarked, having, even if in an infinitely small way, contributed to universal history.

March, 1942.