The Fighters

It was a grand event — the Soviet Army began drafting women for military service! In the beginning of 1963, 55 very young, mostly rather pretty girls arrived at our unit, assigned to the medical post, staff, and communications. At first they were all out in the open: they marched in a funny way, practiced drill songs, went to the firing range, and then, after finishing the basic recruit course, they scattered to their places of service. And somehow everything settled down, and gradually the general interest in this, naturally unusual, event started to fade. It became, this interest, more hidden, individual, personal. I wasn’t swept up in this anti- wave at first, but Boltyara immediately began trailblazing a path to the women’s barracks, or rather to the gathering spot in front of it, of course in full view of everyone around. That barracks was located exactly between ours and a two-story hotel. Slava, of course, was not the only one calling on our girls, but once he sat down comfortably on a bench among the girls, a little performance would start. The brazenest of the pranksters, in a rough voice, would shout through the window of our barracks something like, “Sherushilo, to the phone!” Ignoring a call to the phone was impossible, and the crowd’s main role was to hear the unmistakable plaintive cry: “So, what is it with you?” Youth can be cruel, or maybe it only seems that way now?

In the early summer of 64, our regimental PT instructor, Captain Sasha Medvedev, a very conscientious comrade but unfairly nicknamed “the brake of Soviet sports,” persuaded me to stay on for him during leave. At that time the range spartakiad started, and I had to run around, drive our unit’s team to the competitions, and personally be there. And on the athletics team there was a female radio operator, private Elena Ivanovna Kharchenko. I’ll admit I had already singled her out before, by her external, geometric features, but this time I looked at her more closely…

It turned out that she worked in shifts as the duty radio operator at our command post in the MIK. Her character was not Nordic; she was prickly and proud, and that appealed to me.

The unit, while preparing satellites and missiles and carrying out launches on space-related topics, was simultaneously on combat alert. By then, a storage site for four strategic 8K74 missiles had been built next to the MIK. All four were tied into a package and placed on railroad cradle rails. Externally, this storage looked like the MIK. Transfer them to the MIK in turn, run autonomous and comprehensive checks, then take them out to the launch pad. Strike the States¹. On the third floor of the MIK they equipped two rooms for the command post and nearby, behind a wall with a small window, a radio-operator room. In each radio shift sat 3 operators. And those poor fellows sat, with headphones still on their heads, for 4 hours straight, continuously monitoring Morse-band traffic. Their task was to pull signals out of the interference in the “Monolit” command system—the command system of the strategic nuclear forces—and immediately pass them for decryption to the duty officer of the Command Post.

Radio operators and telephonists.

As for this CP, I visited it no fewer than once a month as the assistant duty officer, and through a small window into the radio room I could see everything needed and even exchange a couple of phrases, despite the regulations. Gradually, little by little, I began paying more and more attention to this woman, but I didn’t spread my tail around and kept watching carefully. It started with an invitation for an evening walk—more precisely a night walk, after the radio operators’ midnight shift. At first I decided to do it on foot, then I changed my mind and came to the date looking my best, on a bicycle, trying to show seriousness and the whole weight of my intentions. To be honest, the intentions in the early stages of courtship were, in a certain way, quite clear… I waited at the junction of the main road coming from the MIK, put the girl on the frame of my one-seat ride, and we rode into the night, immediately down a steep slope that was decorated with a huge poster of a plump Nikitka Khroushch preaching Leninist immortal words: “You are on the right path, comrades!” I misjudged the speed on the night highway, started braking hard, zigzagged, and skidded. The girl, brave girl, just sat there, trusting her suitor. In short, both of us ended up on the roadside shoulder. We laughed and didn’t get hurt. It seems our subsequent dates never again went without the bicycle and always took place in the dark, in the evening or at night. We observed complete secrecy. This is how my romance with Elena Ivanovna began.

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Footnotes

1. Let me remind you that 8K74 consists of the first two stages of the modern Soyuz space system, which to this day puts cosmonauts and “Progress” spacecraft into space. From the outside, it is a known rocket shortened by one quarter.

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