Read Leningrad 1943: Inside a City Under Siege for Free Online

who were all more or less privileged persons – were allowed in. And what an introduction to Leningrad – hungry, half-starved Leningrad, as some still imagined it to be! The devushka always bright and cheerful like all canteen devushkas, brought us three big mugs of very sweet tea, and with it three large slices of very black and damp rye bread, and three enormous pats of butter, nearly the size of the hunks of bread, nearly a quarter of a pound each. It was a case of eating butter and bread rather than bread and butter. No doubt this was a privileged air force canteen – but still, things couldn’t be very desperate at this rate. The ceiling of the hut was made of new plywood, and on top of the newspapers pasted on the walls a poster had been pinned with a Russian soldier trampling on a swastika, beside which also lay a dead and particularly loathsome-looking Hun. Through the only glass pane in the window – the rest had been replaced by plywood – we could see the crimson sunset with the fir trees silhouetted against it. ‘Pleasant evening’ observed the podgy man with the tie-pin, wiping his penknife on the bread and closing it, and abandoning half his butter in the unequal struggle.
    The sun had nearly set as we took off for the third time – this time for our non-stop flight to Leningrad. Again we flew over miles of dark-brown bogs and forests that now looked black in the last rays of the setting sun, and when they had faded to a faint glimmer on the horizon in front of us, everything turned dark grey, the land and the sky. We were flying very low now. Since our last landing a machine-gunner was stationed in the centre of the plane and was now looking round into the grey sky in all directions. The earth was black now, and the sky dark-grey; down below there were a few lights, and outside one house a bonfire was burning. ‘We sometimes fly this stretch with fighter escort, but no fighters were available tonight,’ said one of the crew. ‘It’s all right, though. When we fly so low, it’s very difficult for them to spot us in the twilight.’ The lights down below suddenly became more numerous, and we flew over a winding canal, running parallel to a coastline. ‘Ladoga,’ somebody said. Now, above and below, everything merged into one – a dark pearly-grey. We were almost skimming the smooth surface of the water. We could see a faint coastline before us – behind that coastline was Leningrad – and a thin line of fir forests in the south. In the distance, the red beacon of a lighthouse was signalling – was it signalling to us? And down below, in the water, were tiny little islands at regular intervals with anti-aircraft guns pointing upwards. This seemed a whole chain of little artificial islands built in the shallow bottom of the lake. Or were they floats? It was hard to make out; but one realised that here was one of those little things in the organisation of Leningrad’s defence which had made the city impregnable.
    And then, suddenly, the machine-gunner in the turret became very fidgety. He grabbed the machine-gun and began to twist it about, as though taking aim. There was a moment of suspense. Then he relaxed. What had happened? In the darkness he had spotted a plane flying straight at us. Later he explained what had happened. It had turned out to be another Douglas, coming the opposite way. But for a couple of seconds in the almost complete darkness, he wasn’t sure.
    And then we reached the opposite coast – the Leningrad coast. For several miles we flew over what looked like more forests; I strained my eyes to see the outline of the city somewhere to the left, but all was dark. Then suddenly several patches of ground were lit up, and a green flare shot up into the air – yes, a flare just like those they fire in Moscow on victory nights. The zoom of the engines began to soften, the propellers turned more slowly, and with a slight bump we landed on the patch of light. Then the