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scans_daily The first story in Garth Ennis' anthology series about different perspectives of the Second World War, Night Witches focuses upon the fighting between the Germans and the USSR on Eastern Front, specifically on titular female night bombing squadron. The main character of the story, Anna Kharkova, actually becomes something of a reoccuring character in the series, which is understable as she's actually pretty neat.
The storyline itself is roughly split into two halves, one half with Anna and the other half with the German soldier Kurt Graf and his unit. Although Kurt's perspective is fairly interesting, as it emphasises that not all Germans at the time were actually Nazis, I'm going to be focusing more on Anna due to the page limit.
We begin with an introduction to the main Soviet characters...
They get to work cleaning out their quarters, which Anna's friend Zoya comments still smells like manure, and that their male comrades put them there because they think of them as cows. Anna dismisses this, saying that they'll get used to them eventually, that they're thinking of their sisters and "sweethearts" when they look at them at the moment. After all, she says, Stalin himself said that men and women are equals, as it's one of the founding corners of Marxist-Leninism.
Zoya then asks why, if they're equal, the men fly the most up-to-date aircraft (which appear to be donated spitfires from the RAF, I'm not really a plane-guy) while the women fly antique bi-planes that look like they're left over from the previous war?
Time passes, and Anna's group goes on their first bombing run. Barely any make it back alive, and Anna's friend Zoya knows why...
Meanwhile, some comrades of Anna and Zoya end up crashing near Kurt's troop, who following experiencing being on the receiving end of their bombing run, aren't exactly in the best of moods...
The storyline itself is roughly split into two halves, one half with Anna and the other half with the German soldier Kurt Graf and his unit. Although Kurt's perspective is fairly interesting, as it emphasises that not all Germans at the time were actually Nazis, I'm going to be focusing more on Anna due to the page limit.
We begin with an introduction to the main Soviet characters...
They get to work cleaning out their quarters, which Anna's friend Zoya comments still smells like manure, and that their male comrades put them there because they think of them as cows. Anna dismisses this, saying that they'll get used to them eventually, that they're thinking of their sisters and "sweethearts" when they look at them at the moment. After all, she says, Stalin himself said that men and women are equals, as it's one of the founding corners of Marxist-Leninism.
Zoya then asks why, if they're equal, the men fly the most up-to-date aircraft (which appear to be donated spitfires from the RAF, I'm not really a plane-guy) while the women fly antique bi-planes that look like they're left over from the previous war?
Time passes, and Anna's group goes on their first bombing run. Barely any make it back alive, and Anna's friend Zoya knows why...
Meanwhile, some comrades of Anna and Zoya end up crashing near Kurt's troop, who following experiencing being on the receiving end of their bombing run, aren't exactly in the best of moods...
