Galina Mistetskaya

This is my future wife Galina Mistetskaya, nee Drinkovskaya, photographed near her house in Lipovets in 1945. I entered the Leningrad Military Communications School evacuated to Uralsk, in 1942. We had advanced eight-month training. After finishing the school we went to the front. On 11th May 1944 we liberated Lipovets district and entered the town of Lipovets Germans were in six kilometers from Lipovets. I ran to the battalion headquarters to get a battery for my radio, when they told me there was no telephone communication and asked me to restore it. I went out to search for a tear. I was thirsty and went up to a house asking for water. A teenage girl gave me some water and I asked her name. She said her name was Galina and asked me why I wanted to know her name. I said that we might see each other again one day and left. Of course, I didn't think we would ever meet again. I didn't know then that this morning I met my future wife Galina. The war was over and peaceful life began, but this was not the end of military service for me. The recruits, born in 1924, were to finish their compulsory service. In September 1945 I received an assignment to the 159th artillery fortification unit in Ostrog Rovno region. I was appointed commanding officer of the communication unit. I demobilized in 1952. I was appointed director of cattle breeding stocks in Lipovets. When going to the office I passed a house that seemed familiar to me. I recalled how during the war a fair-haired girl had given me some water in this house. I even recalled her name: Galina. When I came into the house, I asked the woman, who had opened the door for me, whether Galina was at home. She replied that Galina studied in the Pedagogical College in Uman. This woman was her mother Yefrosinia Drinkovskaya. When Galina came home on vacation, I went to see her. She welcomed me warmly. Galina was born in 1928. We began to see each other. Then we got married and I moved into her house. After finishing college Galina went to work as an elementary school teacher in Lipovets.