This photograph was taken in the vicinity of Kandalaksha in the north of Russia in Zapoliariye in 1944.
I am the 3rd from the right with my comrades in the middle of impassable marshes and woods. Lieutenant colonel Butaenko, division engineer officer is at the bottom of the picture (sitting). Vladimir Costrov is behind him. He was born in Krasnoyarsk in 1915.
After war he was the head of the military chair at the Saratov Medical Institute. Headquarters commander Ivan Zorin is next to him. He was born either in 1910 or 1912.
Lieutenant Krivich (Kuzmich), first from right, was born in Ukraine either in 1910. He was the deputy commander on politics. In 1943 he was transferred to paratroopers. I do not know anything about his further fate.
I took part in the Great Patriotic War from its very beginning. On 16th October 1941, when panic started in Moscow, Stalin ordered the formation of an officer battalion and sent it to Klin. There were minor collisions.
Later I was ordered to move to Tihvin where I took part in combat action. Then I moved to Lodeynoye Field. I was a battalion commanding officer there. We took our defense, and then I fought south of Lake Ladoga.
When the 'Road of Life' was constructed, we patrolled it on skis. Then we relocated to the Transpolar area. We fought near Kandalaksha, took part in the defeat of a German grouping in this area.
In 1944 I had a battalion under my command and was acting chief of staff of the division. I was responsible for the division strategy, its movement and actions. I reported to the headquarters of the regiment.
Then we relocated to the vicinity of Budapest from the 2nd to the 3rd Ukrainian Front. Then we were near Pecs, when Germans stroke a blow there.
At the end of the war I was on the border of Austria and Yugoslavia in the direction of Zagreb.
