Leningrad 1943: Inside a City Under Siege Read Online Free PDF Page B

this year, when he was ordered to return to his old job at the Foreign Office.
    It was nearly four o’clock. We were over the great forest area, somewhere east of Kalinin. The sun had come out, and over us was a blue, almost cloudless sky. The country was a greenish-brown, and in this marshland the fir trees were small and meagre. Then we flew over a string of dazzlingly blue little lakes; and then over many more miles of forest. There had been few villages on our route, but here was one at least – a large village of log huts by the side of a large blue lake, and a big white church with golden crosses glittering in the sun. By the side of the lake a herd of cows was grazing. But how thinly populated this area is between the two capitals of Russia! And small wonder, when you look at these vast expanses of marshes and forests, stretching as far as the horizon, that there should be in existence whole partisan regions in northern Russia, almost inaccessible to the enemy for lack of roads. And how depressing these endless forests of northern Russia must have been to the German invader!
    Another half-hour or so, and then we flew along a wide blue river, with reedy banks, winding its way through the marshes and forests. On these marshy banks were several little log-hut villages, undamaged by war. And then we flew over the still blue waters of another lake in which were reflected the autumn tints of the red and golden trees. We were flying towards Tikhvin.
    Somewhere not far from Tikhvin we stopped for half an hour at an aerodrome that looked from the air like an ordinary field. The soil was sandy, and around the airfield were tall slender pine trees. It was still sunny, but cold, much colder than in Moscow. ‘Beautiful air,’ I said, breathing the cold scent, of the pines. ‘Rubbish,’ said Colonel Studyonov, ‘you’re in the Leningrad Province now, and Leningrad is notorious for its foul air and filthy weather.’ He was an incorrigible Muscovite, and provided the first example that day of the old rivalry between the two capitals. Three sturdy youngsters, attached in some capacity to the airfield, came up and scrounged a few cigarettes from us. ‘Miserable trees,’ said the colonel.
    There was something pleasantly leisurely about that flight to Leningrad. We walked among the pine trees for half an hour; then we were told to take our seats on the plane, but the girl with the red beret had disappeared behind the trees and we had to wait for a few minutes till she turned up, looking slightly embarrassed. Then we took off and again flew low over miles of forest. At one point we crossed a railway – was this the Tikhvin–Vologda line? Forests, marshes, little lakes. It was from this soil – ‘from the darkness of the forests, from the soft watery marshes’ as Pushkin wrote – that St. Petersburg rose, ‘proud and luxuriant.’
    At sunset we landed at another airfield. It also looked like an ordinary field, without hangars, and with only foliage-covered netting forming camouflaged sheds for the aircraft. Around was the real north Russian scenery, with a very muddy road fringed by small fir trees and yellow birches, and a few izbas, some of which had been destroyed by bombs and other badly damaged. ‘Where’s the buffet?’ said the colonel. A bearded old man pointed to a dilapidated izba on the other side of the road. Here, at several rough wooden tables, some people were drinking tea. We sat down at the same table as a podgy little man with a high starched collar, a tie and a tie-pin, and a little Hitler moustache. The hut must have been newly repaired. The walls of the large room were covered not with wallpaper, but with newspapers of May 1943 – the Front Paper, the Red Star, and Pravda, the last containing pictures of the speakers at the All-Slav meeting in Moscow – among them the Metropolitan Nikelai and Wanda Wassiliewska. This was a sort of air force canteen, but passengers of the Leningrad plane –