I often hear from my mother about my great-grandfather, I know that he and his brothers and sisters were at war. This year, the Great Victory celebrates its 75th anniversary. I decided to take part in the national historical depository "Faces of Victory", to leave my mark in history and to capture the names of my great-grandfathers. I came to my mother and asked her to tell me what she knows. My mother took out old, yellowish newspaper clippings from the closet, which she had been carefully keeping for many years. She showed me two articles with photos of my great-grandfather Vladimir and his brother Victor, where they recall those terrible years of life in the war. I plunged into reading. The first article was about my great-grandfather Kondrashov Vladimir Ivanovich with the headline: MY VICTORY I SAW ONLY in 1952 "At the front, I got into the division of the people's militia. Our units were formed quickly, trained in some respects, and it is terrible to remember about uniforms and weapons in general. Most of the echelons were bombed even before the front line, - recalls Vladimir Ivanovich Kondrashov. - We fought for two months at Yelia, and then got into the famous Vyazmenskiy melting pot. Encirclings, captivity and a camp for prisoners of war. My number -128736 - I will say it, even if you wake me up at night, this is impossible to forget. No one was called there by their surname, let alone their first name. But everybody's chest and back were marked with big letters SU (Soviet Union) and wooden pads. Of course, captivity is captivity, and I don't even want to talk about what I have gone through. But back in the Homeland, as it turned out later, they were not waiting for us with pies. In April 1945 the Americans freed us, and I was sent to Russia together with other similar prisoners of war, but not home, of course, and again to a concentration camp, only now "native", Soviet. It was a terrible shock, they just couldn't believe that there were similar camps on our soil. That we, the Soviet soldiers, and those who fought, who shed blood for the victory, are not considered at home as people, despised, called traitors and enemies of the people. In 1946, I was sentenced to 6 years of special settlements, without a court hearing. I served mine in Komi, then in the Far East, after a while moved to the Krasnoyarsk region. Finally, in 1952 the day came when I was told: "That’s it, Kondrashov, you are free". Only then I welcomed my Victory. I settled here in Omsk Oblast, got married, had children, worked, and was recently rehabilitated. Now it's really frustrating when you come to some officials, they say: "What benefits are you talking about? You are not a concentration camp prisoner, but a prisoner of war, aren’t you?” I really would like to ask: "Do you know what it is?!” The second article, about my great-grandfather Kondrashov's brother Victor Ivanovich: He was wounded twice, but he remembers the war calmly. Yes, time has dulled the pain, dashing, bitterness of loss. But the memory ... is like a nerve that is naked, piercing and trembling. The heart shrunk and everything went dark when Maria, with trembling hands, opened the agenda. Somewhere in the Smolensk direction her son Vladimir is at war with the enemy and her daughter Lisa is pulling out of the battlefield the wounded. And in the military hospital, older daughter Lyuba is saving the lives of our soldiers. She is a surgeon. And now it is the youngest turn to go to war - Victor. She looked at her sleeping son and wiped away a tear: "What kind of a warrior is he? He is just a boy". ...Maria will not stand, will cry later, when among the crowd of people Victor clumsily weaves in her shoulder. She will cry, silently, clinging to his disobedient head. "Well, with God, son," she whispers goodbye. "Come back with victory, son!" - his father will exhale and give him a strong, manly hug. It was a gloomy autumn of '42. "SIS, HELP..." First, the training camp in three kilometers from the defense line. Then the 3rd Ukrainian Front, then until the end of the war - the 2nd Ukrainian, 65th Army, 413th Division, where he, a soldier Kondrashov, was a divisional scout. The battles near Voronezh exposed and mixed the bitterness of retreat, and the pain of loss of dead soldiers, and an unconscious feeling of joy from the returned spans of the native land. In one of such battles a sanitary-instructor Klava was seriously injured. Somewhere in the same way, pressing into the frozen ground from whistling bullets above her head and exhausted from powerlessness, his sister Lisa is dragging a wounded souldier. Somewhere... And where? Clava was bandaging a soldier. The shell rumbled, and the girl pressed against the wounded, covering him with herself. She remained lying like this. She heard a groaning voice: "Sis, help me...". And Clava, having gathered her last strength, crawled to the neighboring funnel. She bandaged everyone. And... lost consciousness. She was brought to the hospital with a multi-shrapnel wound. So in 1943 the war ended for her, leaving a notch in her memory - a permanent disability. The brave, pretty girl was loved in the regiment. Someone secretly sighed for her, others, including sergeant Kondrashov, remained her good friends. And the frontline friendship, as we know, is not forgotten. WAS BORN IN A SHIRT. In January 44, in the battles for the Ukrainian village of Kamenka, Victor was wounded. At the very moment when the shell boomed somewhere quite close, Viktor, having the rule "not to bump into a pile", bounced away. The hand seemed to have been hit hard with a stick. And seven guys stayed lying on the snow... They buried them, made crosses, gave a volley... That's the whole memorial service. After a short pause in the hospital, Victor caught up with his unit and continued the front road as a branch commander. In breaks between fights he buried his friends and wrote letters home. The long awaited triangles did not always reach the place. And it happened so that there was no news from his native village for several months. And here, at war, as in war. Work. And sometimes a terrible fear in traitorous goosebumps crawls on his back. Especially when death is staring at you at point-blank range. But in the moment of operation, the fear disappears, and you get in the mode for feats. Desperate sorties "for the tongue" caused excitement in the fighter Kondrashov. Small and spirited, he slipped away from the ambush. And he believed that he was born in a shirt. HE GOT THE "TONGUE" AND EXPLODED ON A MINE. But - irony of fate. Again his unfortunate January 1945, is waiting for him. He almost died that year. There were fights for Warsaw. At night, the scouts, having captured the "tongue", were returning back. They passed the fence and went to the field. They knew that the road was demined. Suddenly, the night was lit up by a blast. And when the smoke cleared, the soldiers saw a half-covered figure of a friend on the edge of the fresh funnel. Viktor exploded on a mine. Afraid of the chase, they dragged him into the funnel, promising to take him away. Victor began to wait for dawn. With the first sun rays, he heard the tank roar. He swung his hands. The commander of the car shouted on the move: - Be patient, brother, now they will come for you. - You, comrade captain, will not go straight ahead – it’s all mined, - warned "brother”. - Good! - The tank, having swung a barrel, turned to the right. Viktor did not know that the funeral notice was already on its way to his village to the house of Kondrashovs... Soon an American car arrived and took the wounded sergeant to the hospital. When they found out that their friend had returned "from heaven", they hurried: “- Come on, write a letter to home!”. And the leg was sewn, sculpted, repaired so that our brave soldier reached Berlin. And in 1946 he returned home. Only he didn’t stay long in his native land. He longed for “the fog”. And Victor swung to the North, in Komi ASSR. Four years later he came to Siberia at the invitation of his friend. The guy liked the places - picturesque. And people are friendly. ...Five children were raised by Viktor Ivanovich and Nina Afanasyevna. He worked at a collective farm. In the works and care did not notice how the children grew up. Everyone has his own families and already grown up grandchildren. There is a great-grandson. Young people of big and difficult family are proud of their grandfather. AFTERWORD. One day Victor Ivanovich heard a familiar name in the Moscow program "In your letters". War veteran, health worker Clava was being congratulated on her birthday. He did not hear her last name. But when he heard “the 2nd Belorussian Front, the 65th Army”, his heart skipped a beat. She! And the division was the same, and the battalion number was the same. He did not believe his ears. The letter also said that her front wounds were giving her a hard time. And Viktor Ivanovich came to the editorial office with a request to help him find his fellow militiaman. That's how we got acquainted with him. We made a request to Krasnodar Veterans Council. We are waiting for an answer. These are two interesting articles that I read about my great-grandfathers. In our peacetime, it is terrible to imagine what it was for them then, during the war, in hunger and cold, losing relatives and friends. I am very proud of my ancestors! By May 9, 2017, in Efremovsky district of Tula region, in the village where my great-grandfathers came from, a memorial monument to the participants of the Great Patriotic War was opened, among which are the names of my great-grandfather Kondrashov V.I. and his relatives. And in 2018, the flight by S7, Moscow-Omsk was named after my great-grandfather Kondrashov Vladimir Ivanovich. Thank you, my family for giving us peace and happiness on this earth!