Lilya

A work of fiction

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Lydia Vladimironova Litvyak was shot down and presumably killed in a dogfight over the Ukrainian Steppe on the eve of the world's greatest tank battle a mere seventeen days shy of her twenty-second birthday. In a bit over fifteen months she had amassed twenty-six aerial victories in the hotly contested skies over Stalingrad and Kursk. In a conflict claiming about two million lives so many niceties went unperformed. She was officially recorded as lost and given posthumous citations, but in fact her death was never confirmed. Her body was never identified and there were plenty of reasons for a survivor not to return to serve a maniacal psychopath.

Numerous books were written on the subject of her disappearance, one claimed she somehow made it to Switzerland and raised a family there. It's a nicer thought than dying in a wreck on the tundra or being captured and shot. Her nickname Lilya (Lilly) came from her penchant for that flower she often wore one in her blonde hair.

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This is a work of fiction, therefore in the best journalistic tradition I made up the eighty percent of the story that I did not know and changed half of the known facts to fit my narrative.

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This especially includes the sexual activity all of which occurs between characters at least 18 fictional years of age.

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The sky over Krasnyl Luch, Ukrane 2 August 1943.

Lilya hadn't seen the two 'Messers' up there in the sun flying high cover for the flight of bombers that she had jumped, and she wondered if Lady Luck had finally abandoned her. She didn't depend on luck she knew that luck would abandon her one day as it had already abandoned everyone else important to her. Skill was required to survive this maelstrom, not that she even expected to survive. But luck always helped.

The German fighter's cannon and heavy machine guns quickly shredded the phenolic laminated plywood of her starboard wing and in doing so significantly degraded the flight characteristics of the little Yak. But power diving in their heavier and more powerful 'Bavarian knives' from above and behind her camouflaged by the bright summer sun the Huns quickly overshot her as she made a practiced tight coordinated turn to her starboard, her torque favored side and went down to the deck in a desperate attempt to escape.

Assessing the damage to her wing, she was amazed that she wasn't currently spinning to her death. She thought briefly for some reason of the God that her father and young Yevghenney believed in, and she thanked him. Sweet young Yev, he had told her there were no atheists in war. Then she thanked God for Yellow 44s' automatic wing flaps which were currently fully extended on her left wing while being jammed in the full retract position on her shredded right wing. That difference had to be the only thing keeping her doomed fighter marginally controllable.

She thought of her beloved, sainted Alexsey who was flying wing a year ago for Boris Levnovich his friend and commander. Together they had taken on seventeen Germans back when the situation in Stalingrad was hopeless. The Huns had their troops advancing southward down the eastern bank of the Volga north of the city. Shot up and without ammo the two of them had to crash land their wrecked LaGGs but between them they had claimed nine of the invaders. Her Alexsey walked away from his crash in order to die another day. Lilya needed the physical strength to do just that right now, as her Yak's flight controls got incrementally heavier with the airplane's decrease in airspeed.

Young, sweet, polite, inexperienced Yev who either didn't remember that his plane while marginally slower also had a much lower wing load and was significantly more maneuverable than the much heavier all metal German fighters... Or he had been too badly shot up to make a turn following her starboard turn. He reacted by pulling his little fighter up into a steep high angle climb, bleeding airspeed. In flames Yev stalled his craft winging over very hard to port and falling, spinning into the Steppe below.

Lilya saw his canopy come flying off of and something... Was it Yev or a part of the crippled craft... Something jump or fall out of... Or fly off of his burning plane. She didn't see a 'chute open but at the time she was consumed with fighting the stick. Concerned with just keeping her own crippled plane level and separated from the ground. She might have just missed it opening. He might have survived, although perversely that might not be the best available outcome for a true believer like Yev.

She was keeping her plane in the air, but the situation was rapidly deteriorating. With the power pulled back to keep the craft from shaking itself apart the controls were impossibly heavy. She was trading altitude for airspeed to produce enough lift to stay in the air, but that was not a sustainable plan. Half of her starboard wing was shredded she could not guess at what airspeed she would stall, spin and die. If the Hun had hit her left wing instead of her right she would already have been dead. Altitude being lost precipitously she was already too low to jump. She would have to find a survivable place to crash land.

In this huge autonomous prison called a nation woefully incompetent officers like the one who killed young Valeria... Having her bodily lifted into the cockpit when a child could see she was too ill to fly. Those officers were promoted to Major and reassigned to a cushy Wing or Group staff position. Lilya supposed that if you killed a sufficient number of your own pilots you would be sent to Moscow to serve on the General Staff.

Those who were killed in action were given the appropriate posthumous medals, five for 'Order of the Soviet Union,' twenty-five for 'Hero of the Soviet Union,' and received glowing eulogies disguised as informational pieces in the press. Those who were shot down over enemy held territory while performing their patriotic duty and then somehow managed to survive and to escape capture were vilified upon their return, suspected of being spies and traitors.

If they evaded capture and made it back to their base, they did so only to find themselves grounded, their duties restricted while they were investigated as being potential German agents. Those unluckily enough to fall into enemy hands caused their families to be the ones scrutinized by the NKVD. Either way their names, or the names of their loved ones were added to the not-so-secret list of those destined to disappear in the next purge, just as her own father had disappeared a dozen years earlier.

Lilya was losing altitude, and with every meter lost was another chance to survive was lost. But what was survival anyway, all of those close to her were already dead. Mariya that she flew with in the 9th Guards. Sweet young Mariya whom she hunted with and killed with and then privately afterward sought to affirm life with. Through love to affirm the simple existence of their lives in the constant shadow of the angel of death with.

Mariya, her second lover who helped her survive Raisa's death, Mariya who had lost her lover as well Major Dimitri Nikolayevich Usmanov, 'Order of the Soviet Union.' Mariya drowning her sorrows not in the homemade vodka the technicians made but in the natural juices Lilya made. Mariya kissing her auburn pubes, pulling her thick outer labia the left and then the right into her mouth, nibbling on them. Mariya kissing her entrance, and her smaller inner folds.

Sucking on the apex of those smaller inner folds and causing her pearl beneath to stand proud. Washing Lilya's center of pleasurable feelings with her warm saliva, tickling it with her skillful tongue. Lilya reciprocating, diving into the ambrosia of Mariya's sex. Duplicating her ministrations, nibbling and suckling her labia, kissing and then projecting her tongue into her depths. Suctioning her bud while penetrating her with three fingers.

Lilya had loved the warmth of Mariya's body and the warmth of Alexsey's, but both of their bodies were currently cold and dead as were Raisa's and Katya's. She hoped but dared not believe Yev's body still produced warmth. She remembered the prayer young Yevghenney said when she spoke of her lost loves. "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu," he taught it to her when Alexsey died, "Adonai Ehad."

Lilya's dead lover, handsome young Captain Alexsey Frovovitch Solomatin, at least he had been spared such ignominy as an uncertain demise. Alexey having thirty-nine aerial victories to his credit before dying in aerial combat over their very own aerodrome fighting three "Messers" back in May. He was given the honorarium of 'Hero of the Soviet Union.' Her beloved Alexsey who had been promoted to command of the 73rd Guards Squadron when his friend and commander Boris Mikhailovich Solynet died just over a year ago.

Boris... Lilya had not actually known Boris in-person. Boris who having nineteen victories was posthumously awarded the 'Order of the Soviet Union' after he was killed just about the same time that Lilya arrived in Volzhskly to join the 9th Guards. Boris who Lilya knew better than many whom she had actually met from Alexsey's poetic recounting of their shared adventures. If she died would Boris die a second time with her. With her parents Alexsey and Yevgehnny gone, with Maryia, Raisa and Katya dead who would even know that she, Lilya had ever lived.

Would her fate be the same as Boris', death and a posthumous medal, or as Alexsey's on that same day fifteen months ago, nursing a crippled fighter back to base, to forestall the angel of death for another year.

Fifteen months and everyone Lilya really truly knew and cared about was dead, with the twice removed possible exception of Yev. He was a really nice boy of twenty, inexperienced, tender and kind, thoughtful and caring, she imagined Yev being like her own father, a nice 'Yiddishe boy' when he met her mother. But while they had become close recently, he was still a replacement pilot, she had not known him all that long. Besides which he might be and most probably was, dead. She didn't actually see a 'chute opening even though she thought she saw him jump from the burning airplane.

As she neared the steppe her mind became a place of congregation for the dead. For her lost friends and loves. For her Raisa who had been with her in the 73rd Guards and who took six Germans with her before she went down in flames over Stalingrad after the tide had turned. Raisa whose kiss was so soft, innocent and sweet, whose aim was so deadly. Six kills in twenty-four sorties. Raisa with whom she giggled and bleached her hair with the Hydrogen Peroxide surreptitiously obtained from the nearby field hospital.

Raisa who would reach into her Khaki trousers whenever they were alone, finding Lilya's center and gently folding her protective folds over and under, back and forth. Raisa sending Lilya to another level of existence with her thoughtful manipulations of Lilya's own skin. Raisa who never made it to twenty-two staring through Lilya's eyes into her soul as she played with Lilya's sex making her juice and then climax as her lover stared into her eyes.

Raisa who then would lap at Lilya's folds and her greasy lubricated entrance, the one she gave to Alexsey and later Yevgehnney. The one that might never feel the touch of a lover again. Lilya realized that today she was the exact age Raisa attained but did not exceede. Raisa who eventually convinced her to reciprocate and in so doing opened a new world to Lilya.

Nearly losing control as the little fighter buffeted, pushing the yoke down to forestall the inevitable stall, Lilya was in a lost battle with altitude. Her Yak's flying characteristics were unpredictable at such low airspeed with such extensive damage. Not by design but by necessity each Yak built was virtually a bespoke item. The Yakovlev factory had been moved and then moved again in the face of the German advance. Then it was burned to the ground by those bombers that she had just tried to destroy. That they made working planes at all was amasing.

That those planes were made from assorted parts from a multitude of suppliers, some with little to no parts making experience, and that the parts were constantly being changed and substituted was understandable. Thinking about it the planes of her squadron had had a multitude of different non-interchangeable landing gear, slats, fuel systems and weapons. The snipers, the huntresses like Lilya preferred the craft with the VAK cannon or UBS heavy machine guns giving up ammunition capacity for greater hitting power. The new bloods like Yev got the smaller caliber revolvers with their greater capacity and insane rate of fire.

As she selected a spot to put the crippled Yak down she remembered her Katya shot down last month on the same horrible day Alexsey died. Katya who had flown with her in the 9th Guards. Katya who had survived the crash landing of her Yakovlev but was still dead all the same. Katya dead from German bullets as she had been unable by herself to staunch the blood flow they caused. Katya so shy and demure, so hesitant in love, fearful of Lilya's response but completely without fear of the Hun's bullets.

Her Katya removing her khaki blouse and her utilitarian bra, standing before her shaking, quivering, offering herself and pleading with her eyes for Lilya's acceptance. Katya's warm inviting mouth and eager tongue. The beautiful natural raven-haired forest within Katya's khaki trousers. Katya's sweet musky fragrance as Lilya pushed her palm against that forest and rocked her hand to and fro. Their sweet kisses and meaningful touches, each saying to the other "today I am alive" while knowing that tomorrow they will go forth to kill or perhaps be killed.

The Yak struck the moss and skidded sinking in and striking rock and wood hidden by the lichen. Pieces flew about the cockpit as the craft began to disassemble itself before eventually coming to a halt. Quickly assessing her situation Lilya did not think she had been hit by a bullet, but rather by a part of the aircraft as it disintigrated. Little 'Yellow 44' had made its last landing but as Mikhail Dimitrovich, her first flight instructor had said, "any landing you can limp away from is a good one."

She had learned a vital lesson from Major Marina Malinova, who like Mikhail was among the multitude thus far who had fallen in defense of the Motherland. Marina her first commanding officer, Marina who had nearly frozen to death in Siberia five years ago after bailing out of a Tupolev without her survival kit. Lilya had her Escape and Evasion kit with her. She told herself that would make it after all she had survived being shot down this far while everyone else that she had truly known or loved was dead.

Perhaps Lady Luck might remain with her for one more journey. A journey of necessity to be made by foot. She looked at the remains of little Yak, torn asunder by shot, shell and forest. There wasn't enough left of her plane to risk her detection behind the German lines by burning it, so carrying her E and E kit and her parachute she limped into the nearby tree line and wondered to herself...

So where does Lilya go from here.

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Lisa Ann