This is me and officers of the artillery regiment 55. I am sitting on the right. We were photographed at the meeting in the regiment headquarters before an offensive in Byelorussia in 1943.
On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. On the second day of the war I was assigned to a fighting battalion of Voroshylov district. We patrolled the town, excavated trenches and chased after spies. On the first days of the war the Germans bombed our institute (Institute of Sea Transport Engineers) and the dormitory. At the end of July 1941 I entered the artillery college in Odessa. On the last days of July the college was evacuated to the Urals. We studied artillery, topography and logistics. In February 1942 we moved to Novosibirsk where we continued our studies. At the end of July 1942 we went to the front. I started my military career as a platoon leader and was promoted to commander of battalion. I was at the First Byelorussian Front.
