Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [8]
Yelena was not on her own at the school for long. In 1946, Lev Mikhailovich Bespavlov joined the school to teach maths and physics. A new father figure had now arrived in Yuri’s life. Speaking to an Australian journalist in 1961, Yuri described Bespavlov as ‘a wizard, specially when he’d fill up a bottle with water, and seal it, then take it out into the freezing air outside, so that the water would turn to ice and expand, shattering the bottle with a satisfying bang. Bespavlov could float pins on water, and make electricity by combing his hair.’3 Perhaps the greater part of his appeal lay in the faded airman’s tunic he sported, for in the chaos and terror of the war years, Yuri had encountered one thing so wonderful, so magical, that it seemed for a moment to transcend the horror all around – an aircraft; and even when this piece of magic had been dismembered and taken away, its memory remained.
There had been a dogfight, two Soviet ‘Yak’ fighters, two German Messerschmitts, with the score levelling out at one-all. The stricken Yak came down in a patch of marshland half a kilometre outside the village. One of its landing legs buckled on impact, and the propeller was twisted completely out of shape. The ground was soft, which made for a very poor landing, and although the pilot survived, he grazed his leg quite badly. Immediately, a crowd of villagers ran across to help him. They put a bandage on his injured leg, offered him a drink of milk and fed him some pieces of dried bacon.
After a while another Russian aircraft, a Polikarpov PO-2, came down safely in an adjacent clover field with firmer ground. Airmen called the PO-2 a ‘cornplanter’, because its lightweight plywood construction enabled it to make landings in rough fields. Today its apparent ‘rescue’ mission was somewhat double-edged; the PO-2 crewman was supposed to check on the health of the downed Yak pilot, then ensure that his fighter did not fall into German hands, if necessary by destroying it.
Yuri watched all of this, mesmerized. According to Valentin, ‘Some of the older boys in the village were sent into the clover field with whatever dregs of petrol they could scavenge, to refuel the PO-2. The pilot had some bars of chocolate, which he gave to Yuri. He divided them among several other boys, accidentally keeping none for himself, obviously much more interested in the planes.’
As the light faded, the two pilots were invited to shelter in a dug-out, but chose instead to spend the night huddled near the PO-2 to keep watch over it. They tried to keep guard throughout the night. Inevitably, cold and bruised, they fell asleep and awoke early next morning to find Yuri staring at them. In the light of day, the damaged Yak fighter did not really seem worth guarding any more, so the pilots set fire to it, then struggled back over the fields to the PO-2, the injured pilot leaning on the other’s shoulder for support. They coaxed the ‘cornplanter’ into the sky without too much trouble and flew away, while Yuri watched, fascinated, as a tall column of smoke billowed from the wreck they had left behind.
Now the boy’s teacher, Lev Bespavlov, carried with him some of that special magic in his uniform, which he had rightfully earned as a gunner and radio operator in the Red Army Air Force. Yuri looked up to him, listened and learned.
Yelena recalls Yuri being a good pupil: mischievous but honourable. ‘Like all children of that age, he did some naughty things, but if ever we were asking the pupils, “Who did it?”, Yuri would always say, “It was me, I won’t do it again.” And he was very vivid. Recalling those