Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Hubert Griffith - R.A.F. in Russia - 7. Routine
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 VII ROUTINE
September 11th onwards
A STEADY routine was now settled down to - or perhaps " comparatively steady routine " would be a more descriptive phrase ; for in an operational camp, on foreign soil, in the autumn Arctic, making first contact with new Allies, so much was strange, unexpected, impromptu, and not-covered-by-any-known-procedure that each day had the quality of being strikingly different from its predecessors in at least one or other important respect. Problems arose. Problems were settled. But at least, except towards the very end of the stay, nobody could complain of lack of variety.
There will be inevitable questions asked :-What did the Wing eat ? -What were its quarters ? -What did its Camp look like ? - How did it communicate, if at all, with its Soviet opposite numbers. - Was life a round of gaiety, or the bleakness of desolation ?-Was the Russian mode of Air-Force life more like our own, or less like our own ? How, in short, did Anglo-Soviet collaboration proceed in the northern solitudes ?
Extracts from various Wing day-to-day journals may give a hint of it. If one factor alone survives - that contact with our Ally was intimate, constant, generous on their side, and fruitful in results achieved and for future results to come, then the main point will have emerged clear.
September 12th
First fully operational day, as recounted already. Our score : three certain, one probable, one damaged. Loss : - one pilot killed. Many alerts ; several Huns over the Camp. No bombs dropped.
September 14th
Dull day. Hardly any flying. Funeral of Sergt.-Pilot in " Cemetery of Soviet Heroes," on high ground over-looking Murmansk Sound. We sent a firing-party ; the Russians sent a firing-party. The Russians had also, unasked, made and dyed the British White Ensign, and the coffin was carried through the village and up to the grave with the British Ensign and the flag of the Soviet Fleet Air-Arm draped side by side over it. The English Funeral Service was read by F/Lt. Fisher. A quiet and curiously impressive ceremony of the first British casualty on Soviet soil.
September 14th
" Two patrols-nil engagements, nil casualities." Another funeral - this time of a Russian air-ace and a Soviet Sergt.-Pilot. The Wing sent a firing-party, and our Commanding-Officer and some of his officers attended. The local brass-band turned out and played Chopin's Funeral March. The occasion was made a political one, with speeches at the grave-side, lasting from 5 o'clock till long after dark, a matter of nearly three hours. Impressive - in a different way.
Back in the Mess. F/Lt. Michael Rook (cousin to S/Ldr. Rook) had been testing his Hurricane. Asked if he had made a good landing :-" Perfect, old boy ! Put her down as light as a gnat's whisker ! . . ." Seeing that a twelve-gun Hurricane weighs nearly four and a half tons, the phrase had great verbal charm, if some exaggeration.
Dozens of fresh eggs have appeared in the Mess, served, fried, in plates of three. Michael Rook eats three, then is pressed by the Russian waitresses to take another plate of three, and complies. Then is pressed to take another three, but declines :-" I can eat a Flight, but-not a Squadron. . . ."
September 17th
Second full day's flying. Four certain victories ; no loss. Score now seven to one. See " Northern Lights " in the sky at night - like bent searchlights - continually shifting their beams.
September 18th
The Camp continues to develop. This is roughly its layout. It is nothing whatever like the typical English R.A.F. Station with concrete runways, miles of straight, wide concrete roadways, brick hangars half the size of Olympia, and so forth. The Russian camp seems, in comparison, to have grown up of its own accord, scattered, haphazard, and almost entirely unconnected by formal roads. Its site is a sandy plateau surrounded by low hills a couple of miles inland from the Murmansk Sound. The plateau itself is covered with a silver-birch plantation. The trees for the most part have been left standing - which adds still further to the impression of casualness in lay-out - to go from the Headquarters building to the airmen's barrack-blocks or to the Mess, one walks nearly half a mile through the birch-plantation and finds each of the other buildings set up in its own clearing. The general effect is pretty enough when there is a dash of sunlight on the scene, and is admirable from the point of view of dispersal and camouflage. There are no hangars on the aerodrome, each aircraft has its own wooden-built bay, screened by a few branches. The effect of all this is that no one single bomb could do very much collective damage - the whole set-up is so scattered that the personnel of the camp are never in one place together at any one time. The disadvantage of the scattered camp is the strain that it puts on the transport. Aircrews and ground-crews have to be conveyed large distances back and forth to meals, sometimes several times a day. Except for one single metalled road running a mile into the camp, the rest of the roads are of a quality almost unknown outside Russia-mere paths and tracks among the trees, by now, owing to the autumn rain and the passing of heavy transport, knocked into axle-deep mud-holes. The transport has got a rough time ahead of it.
The main " Officers' Building " is a large, gaunt, two-storeyed, red-brick affair, half barrack, half country-house, nick-named by the Wing, for no discoverable reason, the " Kremlin." Its ground-floor is used as Wing H.Q., orderly-rooms, sick-quarters, and stores. The upper rooms, all opening off the same long, echoing, uncarpeted corridor, are used as officers' sleeping-quarters (three or four to each large room), an ante-room, and a bar. The whole building is double-windowed and central-heated-that is to say, snug and warm except when the central-heating takes into its head, as it does occasionally, to go off duty for a few hours. On the whole, as officers-quarters go, they are bare and unluxurious compared with the best type of R.A.F. station in England ; but clean and habitable, far better than an English hutted camp, and far better than we had reasonable cause to expect. The disadvantages are two : - no running water or fixed baths or basins anywhere (therefore officers use canvas camp-kit and don't do much washing but patronize instead the local village-baths - of which more anon) ; second, the uncarpeted corridor positively multiplies and amplifies all sounds made in it. - the cough of a fly at the other end of the building becomes like the banging of a door. Hence any larking about or singing late in the evening by one roomful of young pilots can keep half the officers of the Wing awake. Hence, larking about and singing after a certain hour in the evening have to be severely rationed. Beds, blankets, and linen sheets (spotless) are provided by the Russians.
Officers and airmen's dining-halls are a third of a mile away through the plantation. The staff is Russian and the messing is Russian - on the whole good, rich (rather over-greasy, until suggestion got this altered) and plentiful. The menu varies as to how much, and of what quality, stock is available. On the first day of all, before the Wing-Commander arrived on the scene, our hosts evidently wanted to open in a splash of hospitality, and three hundred airmen were provided with a break-fast that included steaks, champagne, and glasses of brandy. (This procedure was immediately stopped by the Wing-Commander on his arrival.) Typical meals have now settled down to : breakfast, meat of some sort often in the form of rissoles (the revival of the " Archangel cutlet "), white bread, butter (excellent in quality and unlimited in quantity) and jam ; midday dinner - hors d'oeuvres consisting almost monotonously of smoked salmon (again of excellent quality and unlimited in quantity), caviar (usually the black, pressed sort) and very good cold ham ; soup - the traditional " Borshtsh " or " Tschee " - good vegetable soups such as one gets in any French farm-house ; then a meat course, with the meat usually very tough - but by this time diners have usually got enough inside them not to suffer from starvation even if the meat course is neglected ; and as sweet, that is usually known as " compot," preserved fruit of some sort, served in a glass with syrup. Supper is much the same, with or without the meat-course. Odd things occasionally make their appearance - omelettes, dull and pancakey when made with egg-powder, delicious when made with real eggs ; goose (frequently) ; fried steaks (the young pilot-officer's real delight) from time to time. Tea - Russian-fashion, in a glass, is served with all meals. No drinking of alcohol of any sort is allowed in the camp until the evening meal, this by the Wing-Commander's orders. At the evening-meal the Russians provide the officers' mess (free) with large decanters of a Port-like wine which is simply called " Vino "—very drinkable.
There are two reactions to this type of messing, and the reactions are conflicting. In general the slightly older officers, who have mostly travelled much abroad, and are therefore used to accepting the " dishes of the country," appreciate the smoked salmon and the caviar and the soups, and approve of the diet. Several very young officers, however, who have lived most of their short adult lives in R.A.F. messes, and whose ideas of dietetic bliss are limited by eggs-and-bacon and grilled steaks, and grilled steaks and eggs-and-bacon, have an almost pathological horror of the strange and unaccustomed, and have been heard to remark on taking their seats at table, " Hell, here's that . . . smoked salmon again." On the whole, though, there is not the slightest sign of any member of the Wing losing weight ; and it is obvious that, in view of all the local conditions, the Russians, both in high quarters and the local staff, are doing their very best for us - they are, in a word, treating us as honoured guests.
This was made evident by a slight passage-of-arms the other day. The problem involved was the airmen's messing-accommodation. (As regards the food, they are given almost identically the same as the officers.) The airmen mess in a dining-hall capable of holding only just more than a hundred people at a sitting, and as there are more than five hundred of them, meals have to be arranged in five sittings - breakfasts taking place, for example, at 7, 7.30, 8, 8.30 and 9 o'clock. This involves a terrific strain on the Russian staff, who have done their best to live up to it and to keep punctual. To lighten their labours, and save them washing up endless utensils between the sittings, it was suggested by the Wing authorities that airmen should bring to the table their own knives, forks, spoons, and mugs - as is done on every R.A.F. station in England - and should take them away and wash them themselves. The manageress of the Russian staff flatly refused to recognize this order for several days. When finally challenged on the subject, she gave as her reason that it was not " the thing " that guests should bring their own knives and forks to the table. . . . The argument was misguided - for it failed to allow for the fact that the operational flying-programme must at all costs be kept to - but it at least indicated an extreme of zeal, co-operative willingness and hospitality.
The airmen's living-quarters are two-storeyed, red-brick barrack-blocks, also double-windowed, electric-lighted, and with wood-burning stoves in each room. They are rather overcrowded - five to eight airmen according to the size of the room - but not unbearably so. They are exactly as comfortable as the airmen choose to make them - that is to say, if the kits are stacked tidily, and windows are opened during the daytime, they can be kept clean and clean-looking. (The airmen also are given by the Russian clean sheets once a week.) When the airmen are slack, get up in the morning leaving the black-out undrawn, turn on the electric light, and try to keep the embers of last night's fire going, the quarters look (and smell) like a slum. There are strenuous Wing-orders about opening the windows.
The barrack-blocks, recently evacuated by Russian military in our favour, are scrupulously clean, except for a couple of rooms that have been fumigated. Less so certain older wooden-built out-buildings, just outside the boundaries of the camp, that the Wing has had to take over as Sergeants' Mess, airmen's recreation-room, and store-houses. There have been countless nondescript Russian workmen living in them, building the camp, and strong counter-measures have to be taken to anti-bug them. (Old wooden-built buildings are notoriously a problem.)
All things considered, the camp might be very much worse than it is. The airmen had been carefully pre-pared on the voyage for what they might have to expect - Nissen huts in a mud-swamp - so on the whole they are much relieved.
Isolation and lack of Communication
The wooden-built village of Vianga is about seventeen miles from Murmansk (which is 170 miles within the Arctic Circle). The Camp itself is about a mile and a half from the wooden-built village of Vianga. Vianga village consists of some brick-built barracks for troops, a couple of hundred wooden-built dwelling-houses, a bath-house, and a large wooden-built cinema, capable of holding four or five hundred people, with club-rooms leading off it. There is reputed to be one shop in the place, though as most airmen questioned on the point appear to be very doubtful about it, the emporium cannot be a large one. Airmen and officers can go twice a week (Wednesdays and Saturdays) to see pictures - sometimes Russian, sometimes old American. This finishes the social life of Vianga. No airman or officer has yet been as far as the local metropolis, Murmansk itself, for a variety of pressing reasons-the amount of work to be done in Camp, shortage of transport for the seventeen-mile drive, lack of Russian passes - which, in this technically " front-line " part of the world, need photographs and signatures and a long-delayed process of registration.
" Front-line " regulations govern everything here - for the enemy are not so very far away, and the loosely-held line may be in continual process of changing. Everybody in the district, civilians and women included, are in direct military employ - that is to say, that the waitresses who wait on us, the civilian pioneer-corps who are digging the trenches and building the roads about the camp, are all part of the army organization. There are Russian sentries on the gates of the camp, with rifles and bayonets, and a Russian sentry, with rifle and bayonet, on guard at the door of our own Kremlin (he also answers the telephone when Russian calls come through). All British officers are required to wear revolvers even when walking about within the camp. This is partly in case of emergency, partly as a sort of badge-of-office - if anybody in an officer's uniform is seen to be without a revolver he is automatically taken to be an enemy prisoner escaping - and Russian sentries are said to be remarkably quick-on-the-trigger in such suspected cases.
The Russian bomber-crews and ground-crews who are flying off the same aerodrome have their own accommodation in a camp some distance from our own. Russian technical officers - colonels, majors, captains, and their interpreters, however, continually drop into meals in our Mess. Some of them have a few words of English. All of them are good-tempered. It is remarkable that the technical officers of both nationalities seem to have discovered a means of communication without actually knowing a word in common - our Wireless and Engineer officers, " Meester Feesher " and " Meester Gittins," seem to be able to explain the most abstruse points of wireless and engineering to their opposite numbers with complete mutual comprehension. After all, it is not inconceivable. People who understand the same thing understand one another. It is possible that a couple of painters, of different nationalities, could stand in front of the same masterpiece and explain to one another, by mystic means, what each of them felt about it.
The question of relative ranks presents a minor problem. The Russian ranks are comparatively simple : " General-Maior " ; " Polkovnik " (for Colonel), " Maior," and " Kapitan." The English " Squadron-Leader " and " Flight Lieutenant " are apparently found most foxing by the Russians. In all politeness, they have fallen back instead on the universal " Meester."
