Night Witches - Bruce Myles (DTB)

If you've never heard the term "Night Witches," you aren't alone. Up until a few months ago, I'd never heard of them either. Recently, I was introduced to an incredible band called Sabaton. If you're a fan of rock music and you love history, PLEASE check out this band. The theme of their music is history, and they're really good at it. One of their songs taught me that the Soviet Union had women flying planes in WWII. If you have seven minutes to spare, check out the Sabaton animated music video, Night Witches, on YouTube. If you're still interested after that, Sabaton has a history channel where you can learn even more. Anyway, the song and history videos led me to want to learn more, so I went in search of a book.

I chose this particular book because of the mention of interviews with actual women who served in the regiments. Some of the writing seems fictionalized, but it's mostly things like descriptions of scenery or what the weather would've been like. The few pictures included aren't high quality, but the book was published in 1990, and the pictures are much older than that, so it's understandable.

I am not really a person that enjoys nonfiction books. I normally avoid them like the plague, but I just had to know more about these brave young women. I'm glad I got this book, because I enjoyed it so much. You know ahead of time that some of the women are okay, since the author speaks to them. Others don't make it, and I don't remember being this emotional while reading a book in a long time. I remember telling my girls that I was afraid a particular girl wasn't going to make it, and I was going to be upset. I was right.

I read this book fairly quickly. The chapters were longer than I normally like, but I didn't care at all. The pages flew by, and before I knew it, I'd read the last page. The war was over, and there was nothing left to read. I still feel a strange sense of loss.

My only complaint is that I wanted more. More pictures, more stories, more biographical updates at the end. The book was way too short for me. It wasn't a short book, it's 272 pages, it was just such an interesting and unknown story that I couldn't get enough. It's a story I wish more people knew of. I wish I'd known of it sooner. Great Book!