Military of the medical service, Ensign Ekaterina Ivanova. Photo: Pavel Bednyakov/POOL/TASS
Today there are hundreds of disinterested acts, consistent with those committed by Soviet soldiers and officers on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Here are just three of them. The parallels arise by themselves.
Ensign Ekaterina Ivanova
Ekaterina Ivanova.
He graduated from the Belgorod Medical College, having decided to connect his life with the noble cause of saving people. During a special military operation on February 28, 2022, a paramedic from the surgical department, Ekaterina Ivanova, provided assistance to wounded soldiers and commanders near the village of Chupovka. The ensign personally removed three servicemen from the shelling, and the ambulance then came under heavy mortar fire from Ukrainian nationalists. The fragile girl covered the wounded man with herself, but she herself was wounded. Awarded the medal “For Courage”.
Senior Sergeant Vera Koshcheeva
Among the 44 military doctors awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their bravery and heroism during the Great Patriotic War, 17 were women. One of them is Vera Koshcheeva from the Altai Territory. In 1943, near Stalingrad, at the age of 20, Vera Koshcheeva carried 20 wounded soldiers off the battlefield with her personal weapons. She later excelled in the battles for the liberation of Ukraine and accomplished her feat by crossing the Dnieper. She was injured, but she saved the fighters from the raiding parties, inspiring them to win. On February 22, 1944, she received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and the rank of lieutenant.
After the war, she married an officer, worked as a nursery director. She died in a car accident in 1975 with a young grandson at age 52. She was buried in Apsheronsk, Krasnodar Territory.
Senior Lieutenant Anton Starostin
Anton Starostin.
Anton Starostin was born in 1995 in Kaliningrad. In 2020, he graduated from the Kazan Higher Tank Command School.
In a special military operation, from day one. As commander of a tank company of a separate coastal defense brigade, he participated in the capture of a crossing near the dam of the North Crimean Channel. On the morning of February 25, 2022, the enemy tank battalion tried to recapture it. But the Starostin crew, having taken a tactically advantageous position, destroyed eight armored personnel carriers and dozens of enemy soldiers with aimed fire. In the battle, Starostin’s tank was attacked by the crew of the American Javelin missile system, and he himself received a shell volley. The officer did not give up the battle, he destroyed two more Ukrainian tanks with the crew and held the crossing.
“I did my job and I don’t consider myself a hero,” the officer said.
The Star of the Hero of the Russian Federation was presented to Senior Lieutenant Anton Starostin by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Captain Timofey Alexeychuk
Timofey Alexeychuk.
Timofey Alekseychuk was born in 1921 in the village of Komariki, Bryansk region. In June 1941 he graduated from the Tashkent Infantry School. During the war years, he fought as part of the North Caucasian troops, 1st Ukrainian Front for the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions. He was wounded three times.
The captain, the battalion commander, achieved his feat on December 26, 1943 in the battle for the village of Studenitsa. He was wounded by shrapnel from a German mine to the cheek and neck as he raised soldiers to attack. Despite his wound, he did not leave the battlefield, but walked ahead of the soldiers, inspiring them to a feat. “As long as my heart beats, I will not leave the battlefield,” he told the fighters who wanted to take him to the medical unit.
On December 31, 1942, Alekseychuk’s battalion was the first to break into Zhitomir, where it destroyed 10 German tanks and 300 Nazis.
January 10, 1944 Captain Timofey Alekseychuk was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war, he continued to serve in the army, taught at the Moscow Institute of Economics and Statistics. He died in 2010 at the age of 89.
Major Viktor Dudin
In 2010, Viktor Dudin graduated with honors from the combat department of the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots, named after the Hero of the USSR AK Serov. He was assigned to the 23rd Fighter Regiment of the 303rd Order of the Smolensk Aviation Red Banner of the Suvorov Division.
By 2022, it had over 1,500 flight hours and was flying combat missions in Syria. He became the first pilot to be awarded the title of Hero of Russia for courage and heroism displayed while performing tasks during a special military operation.
He hit his first air target – the Ukrainian Su-27 in a duel battle already on the first day of the NMD, which prevented an attack on our troops.
After that, more than once, on his Su-35, he thwarted the attacks of the aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, destroying several more enemy air targets. Also, Major Viktor Dudin destroyed the Buk-M1 mobile anti-aircraft missile system, falling to a height of less than 400 meters.
“My father was also a military pilot, since childhood I have been at a military airfield, where the dream of a profession was formed,” the commander of the Hero of Russia Viktor Dudin told reporters after the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, will reward you personally.
Air Marshal Alexander Pokryshkin
Alexander Pokryshkin.
Alexander Pokryshkin was born in 1913 in Novosibirsk.
In the first years of the Great Patriotic War, he proved himself a skilled pilot and innovator of tactics in air battles in the Kuban. In April 1943 alone, he personally shot down 10 enemy aircraft, and on May 24, 1942 he was awarded the first Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. He received the second exactly three months later, bringing the score to 22 downed enemy aircraft. In 1943 he defeated the enemy over the Donbass. In June 1944, Alexander Pokryshkin, with the rank of colonel, took command of the 9th Guards Mariupol Fighter Aviation Division. On August 19, 1944, he became the country’s first three-time Hero of the Soviet Union.
In total, during the war years, our ace made 650 sorties, conducted 156 air battles, in which he shot down 59 fascist planes. After the war, he became an air marshal, upon retirement he headed the USSR DOSAAF and wrote several books. He passed away in 1985.
Materials from the Russian Military Historical Society were used.
