The ferry bumps up against the dock in Engels and suddenly everyone is all business—shouting, pushing, rolling trucks and equipment off.  Time to get moving!<br/><br/>Across the Volga, Engels Airdrome is still 4 kilometers away. While a truck is waiting for Captain Lobodeva and the other soldiers in uniform, we are told to walk. Hopefully we wore sensible shoes.  The skies overhead are filled with airplanes—sleek new Pe-2 bombers shining in the sunlight, stubby, aggressive-looking Yak-1 fighter planes, and plodding old Po-2 biplanes. These look ridiculously out of date, and their tiny engines sound for all the world like sewing machines. As we near the Airdome, footsore and hungry, we see for the first time how massive and busy it really is. There are hundreds of planes here, and hordes of Soviet aviators—many of them women.<br/><br/>No doubt able to flag down a car and ride the way up, Captain Lobodeva nonetheless walks just like the rest of us.  She stands tall and proud, and seems like a real leader of the People.  We soon lose sight of her though as she enters the Airdome unchallenged, unlike us.<br/><br/>When we reach the main gate of Engels Airdrome, a Fourth Air Army military policeman reviews our papers and tells us all to report to Sergeant Kataeva in Logistics Area Six and request the following items:<br/>Service uniforms, flight boots, one week’s rations and directions to the 588th’s trainee barracks<br/><br/>We are each instructed to repeat the list before we are ushered forward with no clue where to go in the busy skydrome.