My grandfather, Nikolai Krotkov, was born on February 24, 1905 in the village of Novo-Tarasovo, Kineshemsky district, Kostroma region (now Ivanovo region). The family had five children, my grandfather was the oldest. On September 1, 1928 he was drafted into the Red Army and in November 1929 was demobilized as the middle reserve commander. In 1930, he entered the Moscow Peat Institute, after completing a training course at the university, he became a peat bog engineer. By distribution he was sent to the peat enterprise in Gusevsky settlement (Vladimir region) where he lived with his family, wife and son until he was drafted into the Red Army in 1940. Since July 1941 he was at the front in the acting army with the rank of lieutenant. He served in the artillery troops, was a unit commander. The last letter to the family from the front dates back to August 18, 1941. On September 1, 1941 he was killed while performing a combat mission in Kordemovsky district of Smolensk region, near the Dnieper River. His colleague, S. Bushuyev, took off his killed grandfather's field bag, which contained his military ticket, a badge with a note and other documents. He also sent these things to his wife (my grandmother). All my life our family carefully keeps them. Grandmother spent a long time looking for where her husband was buried, but the answers to all requests were negative. And only recently we found with the help of the site "Road of Memory" information that our grandfather was buried in a mass grave in Kordemovsky district of Smolensk region, apparently near the place of death. In the lists of those killed, our grandfather was listed as a Red Army soldier, and his title was not mentioned for a reason unknown to us.