All my childhood I spent in Balakhna on the banks of the Volga. I finished 7 classes of school No. 7 named after Kirov. I was very fond of fishing, swimming and, especially, hunting. When I turned 15, my father bought me a gun "Berdanka", and I often went to the Volga lakes, where at that time there were a lot of game: ducks, chirks. Not every of my friends had a gun at that time, especially at that age. It was not often when I got ducks and chirks, but apart from the pleasure you experience in hunting, you develop a skill, observation, orientation and knowledge of the area. It became very useful later. After playing soccer, we were free to swim across the Volga River in the area of the GGRES settlement, where it is quite wide. True, not everyone dared to do it, but most of my childhood friends were good swimmers. It is true, however, we got angry at by our parents for such a risky event. After graduating from vocational school, I worked at one of the defense plants in the city of Dzerzhinsk. It was August 1942. On the 23rd of August at about 10 p.m. in Dzerzhinsk GVK me and my peers were given summons to arrive to the military committee on August 24 at 9 a.m. to be sent to the army. Of course, we waited for this every day and were morally prepared, it is a pity that we did not have time to go home. Being in the military committee, my friends and I asked to send us to study for tankers. I did not get there. I was told that we had been recruited plenty. Me and some of my comrades were sent to the 4th separate armored training regiment in Vyksa to study for the commanders of armored vehicles. Armored personnel carriers are small cars with a crew of 2 people which served for reconnaissance and communication. They weigh 2.5 tons, armor thickness - 12mm, gun type - tank machine gun,it also had a radio. After graduating from the study on the mechanic-driver I was attached to Sasha Sokolov, who was 2-3 years older than me and had already visited the front. Before the war, he was a chauffeur, so he immediately got to the front, where he drove ammunition and was repeatedly bombed. During one of them he was wounded and was taken to hospital. After the hospital, he was sent to retrain as a mechanic-driver of an armored personnel carrier. Sasha was born in Siberia. He was healthy, not very turntable in appearance. Before the war, as he told me, he also liked to go hunting. Of course, the beast and birds in Siberia are not what we have. We quickly became friends with him. He also told me about the front, where he was a chauffeur transporting ammunition. More than once he was caught in the bombing, during which he was wounded. I kept asking him: 'Have you seen any living Germans? He frankly confessed to me that he had seen, but only prisoners. "But wait," he told me, "we will also see live ones with weapons in their hands. We will see all of them, because it will take a long time to fight!