Vasily Zaykov was born on 12.02.1922 in the village of Zaykovo, Shchuchansky District, Chelyabinsk Region._x000D_ During the harsh years of collectivization, the family was dispossessed and evicted from the village. They went to different villages, lived at the Sverdlovsk railway station, starved. They went back to their village. His father died on August 2, 1936 and Vasily, in order to somehow feed himself, left for Chelyabinsk._x000D_ He got a job at the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Machine-Tool Factory in 1939, as an apprentice turner. He lived during this period with a strange old man in a small room. After a while for a good job, the factory gave him a room, then his mother came to see him._x000D_ After working for several years, Vasily leaved for Leningrad. From the military enlistment office, he was sent to the courses of the gunners. After completing the courses in 1941, with the rank of Lieutenant, he was sent to the Leningrad Front._x000D_ During the long years of the war, Vasily participated in the partisan movement, was the commander of a torpedo boat… From the stories I remember how they took weapons, undermined the equipment of the fascists, lay in ambush for days up to their waists in water. And Vasily also recalled in the years of peace how a German sniper killed his friend in front of his eyes._x000D_ He was shell-shocked and wounded. For his military achievements, he was awarded orders and medals. Vasily finished the war in Germany as a First Lieutenant. He served until 1947, first restoring Germany, then in Leningrad. He returned to Chelyabinsk in 1947, where he served in the Ministry of internal Affairs. In 1954, he left for the North, worked as a design technician, and then as an engineer. He graduated from the mining and geological technical school in May 1960. He returned to Chelyabinsk in 1963, where he entered the correspondence Department of the automobile and road technical school in in 1965. Vasily finished his second education in 1968. Since then, he had been working in the South Ural Territorial Administration as the Chief of cargo transportation for agriculture._x000D_ In 1982, Vasily Stepanovich retired._x000D_ He died in 2002 in a circle of close and beloved people.