Stepnoy. Escape From the Germans. Dusya. 1942

 
( Memoir of Petriakova Galina Aleksandrovna, born 1929)

   Summer 1942. Collective farm Stepnoy. We were fleeing the incoming German military. We were ordered to save from Germans the herd of cows as well. Three families were able to fit onto our wagon: us, the Rodins, and the Akimovs. Akimov's aunt Dusya was taken as a shepherd to replace two shepherd boys who had gone over to the Germans, betrayed us, and were tempted by the German rations. The Germans dressed and fed the traitors well.

There were families of other milkmaids in other wagons. In total, there were ten milkmaids. Each milkmaid had twenty cows—200 cows in total. Makhota's aunt Fedora was a calf-keeper. There were only two men in charge: foreman Bakan and livestock specialist Chubaty. But he suddenly changed his last name during the trip and told everyone he was no longer Chubaty, but Kubaty. Out of fear, he began to teach us religion, making us learn the prayer "Our Father." He showed us the cross around his neck and told us that his father used to be a priest. We knew that Chubaty was a communist.

Kolka Rodin (born in 1928) took the reins in his hands, shouted "Tsob-Tsob," and the bulls started moving. I didn’t understand what "Tsob-Tsob" meant, and they also added "Robe-Gay." Whether it was out of fear that we couldn’t get far from the Germans on bulls, or the memory of our previous escape from the city of Taganrog, I wasn't interested in anything. I was very tense and kept nervously adjusting the straw to make it softer to sit and sleep on the cart.

When we entered the first village, we went to bed since the cows also needed to rest. It was hot and stuffy during the day, and there was no rain. The milkmaids who drove the cows didn’t have time to milk them. It was a terrible sight. The cows, with their udders overflowing with milk, cried piteously, begging to be milked. Except for Akimov's children, all the children helped milk the cows. We knew that without the cows, we would have nothing to eat. We loved them. I was able to milk only one cow, named Gazeta (Newspaper). She was a soft-sucking, calm cow—she didn’t butt or kick. "Gazeta, my dear, I will help you now," I said, petting her, and milked her right onto the ground.

We were in the middle of the steppe, with no one to give the milk to. Everyone in our group drank as much milk as they could, bloating up like spiders. They also filled their troughs and basins, even bathed in the milk, and then poured the rest onto the ground. Aunt Dusya’s six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter Lyuba enjoyed bathing in the basin of milk. They soaked in it, and when they wanted to drink, they drank straight from the trough.

Meanwhile, German planes flew over from time to time. Hearing the heartbreaking sounds of "Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo" from afar, we prepared to run for cover. The only cover in the steppe was the cornfields. Soon, the herd of cows, along with the milkmaids, moved ahead of us, and we, the children, trudged behind with the slow bulls. We were afraid of losing sight of our parents, but there was nothing we could do to speed up the bulls, as they, tired from pulling the heavy wagons, barely moved their legs, breathing heavily. As soon as the bombers dropped their bombs, the terrified bulls ran in all directions.

Farther down the road, we picked up a woman, a former teacher, and her ten-year-old daughter. She was an adult but of little help. Her heavy, 200-pound suitcase and the two of them added about 400 pounds of extra weight. But we could not refuse them; we could not leave them stranded on the road, crying. The two of them had a kettle full of boiled eggs, and they kept cracking the eggs and eating them, making our mouths water. I don’t remember them giving anyone a single egg, while we gave them milk to drink.

Suddenly, yet another large group of bombers appeared above. Dozens of SC 500 bombs had rained down. They were recognizable by the huge, wide, and deep holes their explosions left in the ground. When such a bomb hit a house, there was no longer a house or yard — only a round, huge hole filled with water. It seemed to us, the children, that the bombs had fallen on a herd far ahead of us and on our mothers.

We began crying in six voices—it was a terrible howl. Akimov’s children, Vova and Lyuba; the Rodins, Kolka and Manya; and my sister Lena and I, were horrified and crying. Only a strange girl, a passenger, did not cry. Why should she? Her mother was next to her. They buried their faces in the blanket so as not to hear the explosions of bombs and shells. Although Lena and I were Petryakov after our father, at the state farm we were called, in the Ukrainian manner, "Vidmedivshchyny divchata," after the last name of our mother, Medvedev, since she married our stepfather right at the start of the war. The children of the Rodin family were called "katsap’ski dity" because they were Russian, and Aunt Dusya Akimova’s children were called "bisovi dity" (children of evil). Oh, those collective farm workers—sarcastic and so kind... not.

We, the children, shouted in different voices: "M-o-o-m, mommy! Oh-oh, they are nowhere to be seen, maybe they are no longer alive, oh, what should we do?" We completely forgot that we were supposed to recite the "Our Father" prayer. And our teacher, the zootechnician Kubaty, had run off to the Germans, taking advantage of our confusion.

At that moment, our foreman on horseback rushed toward us and shouted from afar: "Don't cry, don’t roar! Your mothers and cows are alive! I finally found you!" He told us that at the fork in the road, the herd had turned right, and the bulls had turned left. "You turned left, that’s why we parted ways a long time ago. During the bombing, we hid in the cornfield. Your mothers are there now, crying about your fate. They think the bombs fell on you! Now we’ll turn right and catch up with them in 2-3 hours."

We couldn’t calm down for a while from the stress. Soon, the teacher and her daughter reached their village and got off our wagon. We, the kids, went easy on the bulls, got off the wagon, and walked beside them, handing the reins to little Vovka and Lyuba. They quickly forgot their grief and, taking the reins in their hands, shouted endlessly: "Tsob-Tsob!" "Tsob-Tsob!" And little Lyuba, instead of "Robe-Gay!", squeaked in a high-pitched voice: "Lobe-Gay!"

It is very difficult to describe our meeting with the herd and the mothers. You had to see it. We threw ourselves into each other's arms, hugged, kissed, and cried not in six voices, but in nine. Three of our mothers also cried next to us.

"Now we will not rush to drive the herd, or we will save the herd but lose the children. The authorities abandoned us, and we cannot abandon the cows. Where is the justice? They gave us bulls instead of horses—it's a laughingstock, a disgrace!" Aunt Dusya Akimova screamed.

After the heated meeting, my mother told us how they also howled in three voices and cursed the higher authorities for leaving by plane and cars, forcing the milkmaids with children to flee on bulls. The main issue was that all the carts, except ours, followed the cattle, and only our heavy cart tired the bulls, who were old. That's how it all happened.

There were still not enough buckets or containers to collect all the milk. Aunt Dusya told the foreman that wounded Soviet soldiers had been brought to the hospital in several railway carriages—there were hundreds of them—and that there wasn’t enough dry rations, and milk would be very welcome. The clever Aunt Dusya had already managed to ride the foreman’s horse to the railroad and find out everything.

"We have canisters," she said. "Give me your horse and a two-wheeled cart. Four cans, 37.5 liters of milk each—that'll be 150 liters. Just think how many soldiers will get fresh milk to drink right after the morning milking!"

"You're such a biksa, Duska!" the foreman rejoiced. "Take the horse, harness the two-wheeled cart, get yourself an assistant, and head to the station."

Then he added, "And watch out, don't drive the soldiers crazy, or I know you."

For a long time, I wondered why Aunt Dusya was called "biksa"—maybe it meant something bad. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I heard from front-line soldiers that a "biksa" is a nurse's bag, where everything is kept: bandages, cotton wool, ointments, and other supplies for saving the wounded. Well, Aunt Dusya was compared to this bag because she had everything: for men, for work, and for the home.

Aunt Dusya loved me very much, though I didn’t know why. She was glad that the foreman allowed her to go to the station with the milk and called me over: "Anyway, Galchonok, you won’t help anyone here, while Lena will be able to drive the cows and help your mother. Will you come with me to deliver milk to the wounded?"

I agreed happily. I washed my face, combed my hair, we drank a glass of milk, and off we went. I held onto the handles of the cans so they wouldn't shake, and Aunt Dusya took hold of the reins. On the way, we sang: "Oh you, horses, you steel horses, dear friends of the tractor," and so on. She herself was a tractor driver. She always wore overalls. They suited her. She was a beautiful thirty-year-old woman, and men stuck to her like flies to honey.

Her husband, who was fighting at the front, came home one day to visit her and the children. He found her with another man. He loved her so madly that he beat up her lover, kicked him out, and didn’t even touch her. The rumor spread through the state farm, and everyone found out—even we children, since she lived in our barracks as the wife of a front-line soldier. But everyone was shocked when he left for the front again. He hugged and kissed her in front of everyone, and then, turning to the others, said they should take care of his wife Dusya and not allow that "katsap"—the one he didn’t finish off—to set foot in the state farm. Otherwise, they would have to deal with him. That was it.

Dusya was always cheerful. When she walked past us, we greeted her loudly: "Hello, Aunt Dusya!" and she would reply, "Zdorovenki, my dears," wishing us good health. It wasn't just "Zdorovenki, my dears" in Ukrainian, but "Zdorovenki," with the stress on the second "o," making it sound more like a Kozak's dialect.

Dusya and I arrived at the train station just in time for lunch. We didn’t know whether the wounded soldiers had eaten, but they were slowly emerging into the open air, crawling, stumbling, most of them bandaged — some on crutches, some limping on one leg. When they saw a young woman in front of them, and four cans of milk nearby, they began to approach us, smiling. Aunt Dusya said, "Come on, come on, we’ve brought you fresh milk so you can recover quickly and go back to the front to drive the enemy away, not run from him." Those who had flasks filled them with milk, while others asked for a drink right there. We poured milk into our mug, and they drank in turns. More and more of them kept coming, and we didn’t have time to give everyone a drink with one mug, so we started using the lids from the cans. One soldier shouted, "Yes, pour it right into my cap!" and held out his headdress. Soon, everyone was shouting, "And for me, and for me, in my cap!" So, we handed out the four cans, which amounted to 150 liters. All this time, the soldiers joked and called Aunt Dusya a beauty. Those who asked for her address wanted to know if she had a gentleman or a husband. And when they saw me, a scruffy girl, they asked if I was her sister. "This is my assistant," she answered proudly. We, pleased, began to leave, and the wounded waved their caps, wet with milk, at us for a long time. I have no doubt that while I was pouring milk, she gave her address to someone. I remember how she later told the women, "My husband isn’t with me, and the soldiers are so handsome you can't resist."

We came to the railway station two more times, but the soldiers were very different by then. They were not wounded, they were retreating, while the Germans were advancing. The wounded troops prior didn’t have mess tins with them because they were being taken to the hospital. On the other hand, when the troops were retreating, they had their mess tins. We filled their mess tins with fresh milk, and some of them said in Ukrainian, "Oh, that’s enough for two, thank you, girls, thank you..."

On the way back, Dusya and I sang a patriotic song: "And the nimble regiments went forward, to beat the Germans and drive them to the end! It was not the blizzard that was sweeping, white bayonets were swirling, the song of a dashing fighter was pouring out!" etc. As we approached our herd, we saw the Germans near the carts and frightened folk standing around.

(Historical note: In 1942, Nazi bomber raids on Russia typically involved several hundred aircraft, with the exact number varying depending on the target and mission, but generally ranging from a few hundred to over a thousand aircraft depending on the scale of the operation. It was part of a larger campaign known as Operation Barbarossa.)

Sound of german Nazi Bombers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMo1OSadI1I