The site features 193 wartime stories and photos

The Frontline Album Grandpa was a good shot My grandfather and grandmother Anatoly and Lyubov Lebedev, influenced me more than anybody else did. I was named for my grandfather and this makes me really proud. My grandfather, who was a first lieutenant in a guards units and a civil engineer, fought in World War II. My grandfather had always wanted to be a pilot. But he failed the vision test at a pilot school. His eyesight was poor because he could not eat properly at the time. My great-grandmother Alexandra Andreevna did her best to improve my grandfather’s health, giving him liver and carrots to eat. His eyesight was quickly restored as result. However by that time, the pilot school did not accept documents any longer. My grandfather, who served with an artillery unit near Riga, was to have received his walking papers in the fall of 1941. He was still there when the war started…>> Old Man Took Prisoner Staff of German Goering Tank Division Viktor Stepanovich Larin. I met this man in the underground. He was wearing a very old jacket and dusty pants. This is how he looked from behind when I walked into the carriage after him. But when he turned around I was rooted to the spot. I saw an order of Alexander Nevsky. What’s more, there was a slat! Few people can read them but slats speak volumes. A plastic slat or an old one made of cloth will show whether its bearer was sitting in some headquarters earning awards for long service, or he was risking his life at the frontlines. His slat made of cloth had two Orders of the Red Star and four Orders of the Patriotic War, and, on top of all that, the medals “For Courage” and “For Military Exploits”...>> My Grandfather miraculously escaped injuries during World War II My Great Grandfather, Sergey Alexandrovich Shipkov, was a Guards senior sergeant. He was called up for military service in November 1941, and graduated with a degree in radio. He was sent to the field on March 19, 1942, served in the 48th Guards Mortar Regiment and was dismissed from service in the end of 1945. I keep his Red Army card, a trophy machine gun, a cotton soldier’s blouse, greatcoat, forage cap and high boots...>> Story about Elk, Northerner and Squall of Fire Both of my grandfathers fought throughout the war and both survived. Their names were Ivan Vasilyevich Treatyakov and Vassily Grigoryevich Pisarev. The latter had a silver soldier’s Georgiy for World War I. Granddad Ivan fought beyond the Polar Circle and finished the war as Colonel in Koenigsberg. He was wounded. We kept a celluloid pattern of adjustments with a hole from a fragment. This map-case saved his life…>> My Brother’s Last Combat Experience My brother, Guards Lieutenant Leonid Bobrov, commanded a platoon of the 314th Guards Rifle Gdynsk Regiment attached to the 102nd Guards Rifle Novgorod Pomeranets Division, a bearer of the Orders of the Red Banner, Alexander Suvorov and the Red Star. He fought for more than three years. As early as in 1943, he predicted his death in a letter to me: “If I am not wounded, I’ll most probably die in the last days of the war. This is my premonition and I’m seldom wrong.” He was right. I called him Lyonya and for me he was more than a brother. In 1938 our Dad, a Red Army commander, was arrested, our Mom went to prison as a wife of the “people’s enemy” and we were kicked out of our apartment. Since that time, 16 year-old Lyonya replaced everyone for me. He was the only one I listened to and obeyed...>> But for a Bad Habit, My Grandpa Could Have Been Killed My grandpa seldom talked about the war, but when he did, we could not listen to his stories about life in captivity without tears. But he was strong in spirit, and after a while he tried to escape with his compatriots. He and two other men made it, but many met their death in Germany. His crossing of the frontline alone deserves a separate story... >> Childhood in the Years of Nazi Occupation My mother told me that when the war started, her father was called up to the army, and she stayed in Moscow with two daughters, waiting for another child to be born. What do you think she did in that situation? She went to her native village of Gryaznoye, not far from the village of Prokhorovka [the site of the largest tank battle in World War II], just 1.5 km away. This happened in 1941. My mother thought at that time that it would be easier to find some food for the family there…>> My Grandfather Served in “The Black Death” He began fighting in 1940 against the Finns and took part in the famous landing at Hango. The Finns had machine guns and the Russians only had rifles. But Russian marines are different from anyone else because they do not fear anyone anywhere. They took Hango and soaked the Finns in blood. My grandfather used to say that Finns were a more cunning and skilled enemy than Germans. Finnish soldiers are courageous and stubborn, not afraid of difficulties, just like Russians. Besides, they fought for their own land. Every time I visit Karelia I remember my grandfather: had he and his comrades been less courageous and brave, we would not have seen this beauty. Russians forever discouraged Finns from venturing into what was originally Russian land…>> Grandfather Returned To His Wife After 43 Years My aunt’s husband went to war in September 1941 and was taken prisoner two weeks later in Maloyaroslavets. As a prisoner, he dragged taken through all of Europe. In 1947, he found himself in France, where all captured Russians were sent to Odessa via the Mediterranean and Black seas. They had presents for their families, but Russian guards in Odessa took them away. Former prisoners were taken to Kyrgyzstan by train. No one could leave; they were forced to work at uranium mines. He asked his wife to come and live with him, but she refused. Before the war she had given birth to a son, Vova… >> My Uncle Returned from War on His Wife’s Wedding Day My dad remembers his father only from a photograph. When my grandfather, Alexei Adonin, was killed in Oryol in 1941, my father was only 2. His mother, Antonina Yefimovna, never married again, and raised four children, the youngest of whom was born in the fall of 1941, alone. Mother was born in 1945, but until 1952, she saw her father, Grigory Sereda, only during his short leaves: in 1945 he had been drafted for seven years (military service was long after the war). My grandmother, Anna Sereda, was 16 when, during a bombing of Kharkov, a shell exploded in their yard and she and her sister saw their mother wounded. She still weeps when she tells how they buried her there days later in the same yard...>> 1.. 2.. 3.. 4

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