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Rockets and People
included in a team that set up a “test station.”This fancy name was given to the
primitive stand they set up on the bank of an artificial lake formed by a factory
dam on a Chusovaya tributary.The stand was a contraption welded from iron pipes
and enclosed by plywood in which the wingless aircraft fuselage, including the
pilot’s cockpit, would be placed. The primary contents of the fuselage were the
tanks of nitric acid, kerosene, and compressed air.The tail of the fuselage containing
the engine was pointed toward the lake.The idea was that in the event of trouble
during the firing tests, everything tainted with nitric acid would fall into the
water.The water was covered with a thick layer of ice. For secrecy, the stand was
screened from curious onlookers by a tall fence.They started by performed filling
tests rather than firing tests. The snow cover around the bench took on a dirty
brown tint.
Nitric acid fumes saturated the clothing of those who had worked at the stand.
When Katya returned from work,her hole-riddled quilted jacket also filled the room
of our cottage with that noble scent. My parents had taken up residence elsewhere.
The local residents did not take in more than two to three evacuees per household.
During the very difficult last months of 1941, news about the crushing defeat
of the Germans near Moscow was moral support. In the depths of our souls, each
of us who had deserted Moscow during her most tragic days believed and waited.
Now people started to ask,“Did we need to evacuate Moscow?”
Only when we returned to Moscow did we understand how likely it had been
that the Khimki region would be captured.At the end of November, the fighting
had already proceeded east of Kryukov and the Yakhromskoye Reservoir, where
our patron had been sailing his yacht on the first day of the war. Only a good
twenty-minute drive had separated the German tanks from Khimki.
But the miracle in which we so firmly believed came to pass.
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