Zemlyakov Ivan Ivanovich - a native of Stalingrad region, the village of Machekhi of Kikvidzensky area. When the Great Patriotic War began, he barely turned nineteen. By mid-summer 1942, the war reached the Volga coast, and Kikvidza district became the front. July 14, 1942 by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Stalingrad region was declared in martial law. Men aged from eighteen to fifty began to be drafted into the Red Army in the region. By the early autumn of 1942, the Macheshansky District Military Commissariat formed a company of conscripts, where my grandfather got in. At that time, he was twenty years old. The training took very little time, because fierce battles were already taking place in Stalingrad. It was not easy to get from the place of conscription to the front - you had to overcome more than three hundred kilometers. For a month, the conscript battalion walked to the command of the Stalingrad Front. Upon arrival, my grandfather got into one of the rifle divisions of the 64th Army, where he became a machine gunner. The fighting for the city, for every street and house was going on continuously, not stopping for a minute. Despite the extraordinary courage of our soldiers, by November almost the entire city was occupied by the Nazis. But the defenders of Stalingrad were stronger than death, because they were driven by love for their Fatherland, military duty, courage and bravery. In mid-December 1942, in the battle for the city of Stalingrad, my grandfather was caught in the explosion of a grenade, wgich resulted in two serious shrapnel wounds: one to the hand, the other to the head, in the ear area. For his last fight, he was awarded the Medal of Courage (according to his son). After his wound, my grandfather was taken to the military hospital, where doctors removed the shrapnel from his hand. They could not remove the other shrapnel from his head and he lived with it for the rest of his life. After his treatment, he went back to his native village, where he continued to work for the benefit of the front. And despite the fact that my grandfather, Ivan Ivanovich Zemlyakov, took part in the war for just under three months, he contributed to the defeat of the German invaders, to the great victory at Stalingrad. For me my grandfather is a real hero. After all, he showed great courage and bravery, bravely fighting the Nazi-German invaders. He defended his homeland with dignity, though he was very young. After the war came the peaceful time, and my grandfather lived a very interesting and worthy life. He had many hobbies, but especially my grandfather loved horses. Probably, that is why he worked all his life as a foreman at stables. Like many former frontline soldiers, his grandfather was not very fond of talking about the battles. So, when he was asked: "Grandfather, did you kill the Germans?" he answered: "Everyone was shooting, and I was shooting, and they were falling” Usually, grandfather dressed modestly, simply, but on Victory Day, he took his festive suit out of the closet, decorated with his medals for participation in the Great Patriotic War. My grandfather died at the age of seventy-two. At present, thirteen of his great-grandchildren live on earth.