Osip Hotinskiy with his classmates

This is me with my former classmates Olga Pavlova and Galina Koretskaya.

After sending another train with armaments I was on my way back to my unit via Moscow and met with my former classmates. We were photographed for the memory.

This photo was taken in Moscow in 1944.

In late April 1942, near Moscow on the eve of 1st May, I was wounded. Then I developed a phlegmon and osteomyelitis… Basically, I can bear pain, but this time it was unbearable. I was sent to a medical battalion.

In the medical battalion they cleaned my wound and sent me over to the army hospital in the small town of Torzhok. I was to stay there 60 days according to procedures. If treatment demanded a longer period, doctors wrote ‘over 60 days’ on medical record books and sent such patients to hospitals in the rear.

I was sent to Moscow. A front line evacuation hospital was deployed in the Burdenko hospital. I spent about half a year there. Mama and Aunt Revekka often visited me in hospital.

When I was on my way to recovery, representatives of military schools began to come to our hospital inviting people to enter schools. They were looking for those who had secondary education. I was offered to go to an infantry school, but I didn't quite want to go there.

Then I got an offer from a medical military academy. I didn't want to become a doctor whatsoever after all I had seen in hospitals. I thought that since I had been thinking of becoming an engineer before the war, a technical school was the closest to this decision.

I entered the faculty of artillery mechanics of the Leningrad school evacuated to Izhevsk. I obtained a pass and tickets and took a train to Izhevsk. I studied for nine months and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

Upon graduation I became a military shipment forwarder. I escorted shipments with shells and weaponry loaded on rear storage facilities and sent to the front.