Rank: Senior Lieutenant _x000D_ Branch of troops: Artillery _x000D_ Subdivision: 188th Infantry Nizhnedneprovsk Red Banner Division _x000D_ My father, Alexander Samsonov, was born on 05/17/1919 in the village of Solovyovka, Ugransky District, Smolensk Region. On July 25, 1941 he volunteered for the Red Army being a student of the last year of the Moscow Credit and Economic Institute of the State Bank of the USSR. After a month and a half of study at the Lenin Military-Political School in the Kubinka of the Moscow Region he was awarded the military rank of Junior Political Instructor. After taking an oath on August 15, 1941, he was sent to the North-Western Front. He was a battery Commissar, a topographer-calculator in a topographic platoon (234 Artillery Regiment, 5th battery, 188 Rifle Division), later a Political Instructor of the 3rd Battalion. He fought on the North-Western Front from September 1941 to August 1943, then on the Steppe Front, later renamed 2nd Ukrainian Front, then on the 3rd Ukrainian Front. Ht participated in the liberation of Krivoy Rog, many mines and settlements on the Dnieper. For liberation of the city of Krivoy Rog he had two thanks from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Marshal of the Soviet Union I.V. Stalin (orders of February 6 and February 22, 1944). _x000D_ By order of 37th Army dated March 9, 1944, he was awarded the medal “For Courage”. In April 1944 he took part in the liberation of Tiraspol, Chisinau, in the defeat of the Jassy-Kishinev group of the Nazis. _x000D_ By order of November 23, 1944, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree. At the end of 1944, from Bulgaria he was sent to study in Leningrad, to the Higher Officers' Artillery School, where he celebrated the Act of Surrender of Nazi Germany. He graduated from the war with the rank of Guard Senior Lieutenant. The photo was taken in May 1945 at the Higher Officers' Artillery School. After the war, he graduated from the Moscow Financial Institute and the Academy of Foreign Trade. _x000D_ For the last 25 years before retirement, he was the Head of the Financial Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade. In the postwar years he was awarded the Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, Friendship of Peoples, and the Badge of Honor. He was listed in the Book of Honor of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade. For many years my father was a member of the Veterans Council of the 188th Infantry Division. In 1977 he was awarded the "Honorary Badge of the SEC" (Soviet Committee of War Veterans) and the SEC Commemorative Medal. In honor of the 40th anniversary of the victory over fascism in 1985, he was awarded the second Order of the Patriotic War, II degree. He passed away in Moscow on April 17, 2010. He was a bright, open, honest and amazingly kind person.