Rank: Lieutenant _x000D_ Branch of troops: Artillery_x000D_ SubDivision: 68th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division_x000D_ _x000D_ Popov Anatoly Grigorievich, 1920 year of birth. Drafted for military service in the Red Army in 1940 after graduating from the physical education and pedagogical college in the city of Sverdlovsk. Place of recruitment is a military enlistment office of Tobolsk, Omsk region. He started fighting on August 25, 1941. _x000D_ In September 1941 he was wounded, then he returned to the front again. He went through almost the entire war. He fought on the Western, Bryansk, Belorussian fronts. He had the military rank of Lieutenant, Battery Commander of 173rd Guards Artillery Regiment of 6th Artillery Division, member of the Komsomol. He crossed the Dnieper, Bug, Vistula rivers, where there were very heavy combats. _x000D_ He was killed in military action on October 15, 1944. He was buried in Poland, in Warsaw at the Military Cemetery-Memorial to Soviet soldiers. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree. _x000D_ Anatoly was an artilleryman and recon. He was very brave and cheerful, the soldiers loved him for his cheerful disposition. He also danced great, and everyone thought he was Ukrainian. Once he was sent to reconnaissance through a field mined by the Germans. There he was blown up by a mine. He lived for only 30 minutes. It happened on October 15, 1944. He was buried with military honors in Poland, near the village of Kobylki. A few years later, the Soviet soldiers were reburied in Warsaw, at the Warsaw Memorial Cemetery in a mass grave. _x000D_ Extracts from the award lists: “Acting as chief of the Division's reconnaissance, Lieutenant Anatoly Grigorievich Popov showed a lot of initiative in reconnaissance of the enemy's front line. Personally, being at the forefront of our infantry, not paying attention to strong fire, showed courage and valor, discovered and spotted many enemy firing points. Moving forward into the front lines with a radio, he transmitted coordinates for the destruction of firing points, as a result of which our infantry moved forward with almost no losses. In January 1944, in a combat near the village of Vishar, he learned from the infantrymen that a group of German machine gunners was entering the Battalion on the right. Lieutenant Popov, having attached his reconnaissance to the infantry squad, with this handful of brave men struck the flank of the German group and scattered it with rifle and machine-gun fire. "