GUGAL

My name is Andrei Kimmowitch, nicknamed Gugal by my dear mother, because little Andrei looked like a duck when he was running – arms out and rear end up. Here is my boring story: Born in 1914 in Moscow my dear mother actually left me at an orphanage in 1917 as she concentrated on being part of the revolution. I haven’t seen her since. In 1934 I found myself delivering mail in a Moscow suburb for the Soviet Union Mail Service. I was issued a bicycle and, in my mind, a quite impressive uniform. One day I saw a poster in the Post Office: “Be a pilot in Aeroflot and deliver airmail for the Motherland”. I applied and after a medical check I was asked to show up at No. 1 Civil Aviation School in Leningrad. Somewhat to my own surprise I passed all the courses, and was now a soviet civil multiengine pilot. Shortly after, I received my Aeroflot assignment: Yakutsk, east Siberia. Not really what I had hoped for. I had imagined myself piloting ANT-9’s on the cargo/mail shuttle between Kiev and Moscow.

By train and truck I managed to reach Yakutsk. It was now springtime, 1936. The manager of the Yakutsk Post Office told me, that I would be responsible for establishing the first airmail service in the Yakutsk region, which was about the size of France.

I was taken to a more or less horizontal cow pasture outside the city. In a barn in the corner of the field I found my mail plane. It was an absolute obsolete Avro 504 biplane donated to the Motherland almost two decades before, by some philanthropic British socialists. Here it was, covered with half an inch of dust and an owls nest in the passenger pit.

Vlad and Vlod from the local regiment became my ground crew, and they actually managed to make the old bird look like an aeroplane again. They cleared the cows, swung the old wooden propeller, magnetos on, and spit spat – the old Bentley rotary engine woke up. After a day of test flying I was now ready to deliver airmail for the Motherland. It took quite some navigation skills to find the delivery spots spread out on the endless plains and deep in the forests. Usually I couldn’t land so I had to airdrop the mailbags. I slowly acquired the necessary skills to place the bags somewhat near the markers.

Sometimes I would make an overnight stop in some Klondyke village out in nowhere. That happened New Year’s evening 1936. With Vlod as my flying mechanic I stayed over in a pioneer outpost populated by two dozens crude lumberjacks. In the log house it was party time. I stayed away from the toxic smelling liquor I was offered, as I knew that the loggers brew could haze my eyesight permanently.

To begin with I thought that this party was only a man thing. But then I realized that the person serving the food was actually a woman. Because of the dim lightning, and what seemed to be an excessive hairgrow on her upper lip and her chin, it was at first hard to see, that this heavyset person was female. She started flashing “romantic eyes” in my direction, and soon she was seated right beside me: “Pilot, you are a handsome man. My name is..” Before I got her name she was interrupted by a now dangerously drunk logger. He had gotten a letter, telling him that his wife had left him. And now he wanted to take a swing at me, the messenger. But the femme fatale on my side stood up, and knocked the logger down with a firm fist. That was the signal they all had been waiting for, and in no time everybody was fighting everybody. I used the commotion to find an escape route. Well out of the door I tried to find my way to the interim cotton hangar, when I heard a call in the Siberian night: “Pilot….my tent is over here. I am waaiiiiiiiting…….”.
I unpolitely ignored the call.

Vlod had kept the 504’s engine warm with a petroleum lamp. We pushed her out on her skis and fired up the Bentley. The 504 immediately started moving on the snow so Vlod ducked under the wing and made a running dash for the passenger pit. As we gained speed I thought I heard a yell in the background: “Why are you leaving me…..”.

We just cleared the trees and headed for Yakutsk. Actually I felt bad leaving my saviour from the log house without saying goodbye. Little did I know then, that our roads would cross again. Back in Yakutsk the postmaster handed me a telegram: “You are immediately relieved from your Aeroflot assignment. Stop. You are immediately enlisted in the glorious VVS. Stop. Report to Chuguyev Military Aviation School, Ukraine – ASAP. Stop.”

I left Vlad, Vlod and my now beloved 504 and headed west. For the next several years the glorious VVS used me to ferry generals, kommisars, politburo members etc. around in assorted VIP ANT’s. As the Motherland started to shrink, and more and more VVS sharpshooters and ground pounders perished in the fight against the fascists, I was transferred to the =69.GIAP=. Barely arrived at the frontline airfield, I heard a familiar call: “Pilot….my tent is over here. I am waaiiiiiiiting…….”.

Postscript: Her name is Tasha, also known as the bearded lady. She is enlisted with the gits in the Yap wing, but she likes to look over the fence to the Shappers, real men who do the dirty work.