Title: Senior Lieutenant_x000D_ Branch of troops: Armored and Mechanized troops_x000D_ Alexander Popov was a part of the heroic and terrible combat at the Kursk Bulge. He graduated from the Ulyanovsk Ordzhonikidze Military School. In 1942 he was sent as a Junior Lieutenant to the Kostenevsky tank camp near Moscow and was appointed Commander of a command platoon. Their 64th Tank Regiment was sent to the Leningrad Front, to the Staraya Russa Region, where the Regiment joined the 3rd Mechanized Corps, commanded by General Katukov at the time when the Nazis besieged Leningrad. _x000D_ According to my grandfather, the enemy covered them with artillery fire, bombed them from the air. It was hard for the tankers. Swamps and forests are everywhere. In January 1943 they broke through the siege of Leningrad. _x000D_ After the combat of Stalingrad, Popov A.A. was transferred to the 3rd Guards Stalingrad Mechanized Corps as Platoon Commander. They were stationed in the town of Oboyan, which is near Belgorod. Here the enemy inflicted a powerful tank strike with seven hundred tanks of selected tank divisions. On 5 June, a fierce tank combat broke out. The Nazis launched an offensive at dawn. Hundreds, hundreds of new heavy "tigers", "panthers", self-propelled guns "Ferdinand" were thrown against the Soviet troops. Our medium tanks against these colossus, dying in flames without hesitation, without a doubt in their hearts, rammed these colossus. In that combat, our artillery ground the enemy with “Katyusha”. But the Nazis concentrated huge forces there, the battlefield was covered with smoke of conflagrations. _x000D_ My grandfather was part of the most fierce combat near Prokhorovka of the same the 3rd Stalingrad Mechanized Corps. 1200 tanks fought on both sides. They knocked out and rammed each other, converged "armor on armor". Many kilometers were burning with the stench of burnt human flesh. The enemy did not pass, German wermacht had lost the combat on the Kursk Bulge. _x000D_ In that combat on the Kursk Bulge, the corps was left practically without tanks. In this combat, Alexander Afanasyevich earned the Order of the Patriotic War of 1st degree. The second Order was for capture of the city Belgorod, when his corps captured 22 German "tigers" and turned them against the Nazis. Having received reinforcements from the rear: the columns "Stalingrad kolkhoznik" and "Azerbaijani kolkhoznik", set off further, clearing Gadyach, Akhtyrka, Zolotonosha. Having reached the river Dnieper, Alexander Aanasyevich, in the first boat crossed the river and laid a connection to coordinate the fire. A mention of this military action is described in the book "From the Volga to the Baltic" by A.M. Samsonov. _x000D_ The boat was covered by the enemy’s fire at the very shore. Division Commander, watching the forcing through binoculars, saw human body parts flying after the explosion. Нe nominated Alexander Popov for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. But suddenly the connection was restored, and, after all, the grandfather remained alive. Somehow in the fire of war his military action was forgotten, but my grandfather did not fight for the title after all. In the ranks of this Guards Mechanized Corps, Alexander Afanasyevich walked along many military roads and ended the war in China with three orders of the Patriotic War, the Order of the Red Star, numerous medals and posthumously not awarded title of the Hero of the Soviet Union.