Three members of their family left to defend their homeland from the enemy in 1941. Vasily and Nikolai gave their lives when they were still very young: one died a brave man in Stalingrad, the other in the Kursk Bulge.
A cavalryman became a gunner.
And Fyodor, you know, was born in a shirt. He went through the entire Great Patriotic War; She ended up for him in Czechoslovakia after Victory Day and returned alive to his village, where his wife Vassa Fedorovna and their three children who had grown up over the years were waiting for his wife.
Fedor was born in Opalikha, he never rushed to distant lands and left his native village for a long time alone when he served in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. He returned home, started a family and, before the war, mastered the profession of a combine operator. In the fall of 1941 he threshed crops in the fields of his native Trudovik collective farm, handed over his equipment and went to defeat the Nazis.
Born with a shirt
In the army, the former cavalryman had to learn a new profession: he ended up in the artillery. He graduated from school, his suspenders were decorated with sergeant’s stripes and he joined the unit.
He received baptism of fire near Voronezh. It is impossible to count how many bloody battles Senior Sergeant Fominykh went through. How many times did the bony man with the scythe pass by her? A gunner is almost a kamikaze, the gun is a visible target and most of the time it is stationary. They were hit again by tanks, enemy artillery and shelling. Of course, the sergeant was injured and received four electric shocks, according to the documents. Once it affected me so seriously that only three months later Fyodor Lavrentievich was able to recover and leave the hospital.
The war continued for him on the Kursk Bulge, as the front-line soldier later recalled, he had never seen such fierce battles that did not subside either day or night. Our attacks were repulsed, many Panthers and Ferdinands were burned, but in the end only 12 people from the battery remained alive. Then, the crossing of the Dnieper, when they were among the first to cross to the other bank and, covering their own, opened fire on the enemy from their wheels.
Chest in orders
Our compatriot fought bravely and skillfully, and it was not in vain that he received 11 commendations from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. And in his tunic there was less and less free space: four blood-deserved medals, four military orders, including the III degree of Glory at number 10. That is, he was one of the first to receive such a respected award among the soldiers of the Red Army. In that same battle, the battery commander was killed and Fominykh had to take command. They completed the task and defended their positions.
The Russian peasant had the opportunity to fight in old Europe, with his weapon he crossed Poland, Germany and everything ended in Czechoslovakia. Well, then demobilization occurred, the artilleryman returned to his hometown with his wife and children, worked as president of a collective farm and did what he liked most: he became a forester. For almost a decade and a half he protected Mother Nature. He and Vassa Fedorovna had three more children and gave the front-line soldier the rank of officer, but, thank God, he no longer had to fight. When the town dried up completely, we moved to the regional center.
The reward was “cut”
And in a peaceful life, Fyodor Lavrentievich was known, appreciated and respected. But there was an episode in the life of the veteran that he himself, apparently, did not know about or, in any case, did not tell anyone about. It turns out that for the battles near Berlin, our compatriot was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. This information was obtained by an experienced Yoshkar-Ola search engine, Dmitry Shipunov.
Well, here in front of me is the text of the award sheet for Guard Sergeant Major Fyodor Lavrentievich Fominykh about his nomination for the title “Hero of the Soviet Union”.
We are talking about the battles of the last days of April 1945 in the vicinity of Berlin, when a large group of German troops made a desperate attempt to escape from the cauldron, but our soldiers stood in their way, including the battery in which Fominykh served.
Red Army soldiers repulsed 12 attacks, the crew of the sergeant major destroyed an enemy tank and an armored personnel carrier. The next day, as soon as it dawned, it began again with an enemy attack; With the first shot, a compatriot’s cannon knocked out the Tiger with a direct hit. And in total, in that continuous two-day battle, as the commander of the tank destroyer regiment, Colonel Tarasenko, wrote in his presentation, the Fomins crew destroyed three tanks, two self-propelled guns, four armored personnel carriers, 17 vehicles, 40 wagons loaded and killed up to 260 soldiers and officers.
The award sheet was signed by the division commander and the army artillery commander, but at the front command level the award was “cut back” and instead of the Hero’s Star, Fedor Lavrentievich was awarded the Order of the Red flag. The staff officers probably decided that this would be enough for a simple sergeant.
Dmitri Shakhtarin
