Rank: Red Army Soldier. Branch of Service: Armored and Mechanized Troops._x000D_ Pavel Taranenko was my grandfather. He was born in the village of Lenin's Way of Nikolaevskiy District, the Volgograd Region. Graduated from 4 classes School and courses of tractor drivers, worked for a collective farm._x000D_ In the second half of the 1930th, he served in the Red Army, took an active part in the liberation of Western Belarusians and Ukrainians from the Polish landlords, and in 1940 he fought with the white Finns._x000D_ In 1941, while defending Moscow, he was wounded in both hands and was treated in a hospital. After that - again on the front line. In one of the battles, he was seriously wounded and captured, ad got in a POW camp located in Belarus, in the village of Fanipol. On November 6, 1943, he and his comrades escaped from the camp, taking a machine gun along the way. Then he was fighting for his Homeland in the partisan detachment named after the 25th Anniversary of the October revolution, showing himself to be a fearless and courageous fighter._x000D_ In the detachment, he was a machine gunner. More than once he went out with the partisans in ambushes, on sabotage, took part in battles. Not far from the location of the detachment was a road. The command decided to make an ambush to destroy an entire column of enemy vehicles. In this operation, the partisans destroyed 54 trucks, 2 armored cars and more than 200 fascist soldiers and officers. In the last battle, covering the retreat of the partisans and protecting the vital cargo for the detachment, he was left alone, fighting to the last cartridge. Pretending to give up, he let the Nazis get closer and detonated an anti-tank grenade, destroying more than 20 Germans and policemen. It was on May 4, 1944._x000D_ My grandfather was considered missing, and we only learned about his fate in 1971, thanks to the work of Belarusian pathfinders and his fellow soldier V. Morozov. There is a mass grave at the place where Pavel Taranenko died, in the village of Sloboda in the Uzden District of the Minsk Region. My grandfather's self-sacrifice saved the lives of 13 of his comrades. His feat was not awarded. The memory of him is in our hearts.