Rank: Colonel. Type of troops: aviation. My father, Pavel Vasilievich Khrapkov, was born on September 17, 1914, died on May 23, 1993. Fighter pilot, participant of the Great Patriotic War from the first to the last day. Before the war, he lived in Leningrad, worked, studied at a flight course. From the first days of the war he was drafted into aviation. He recalled: “... constant raids and bombing by the Germans haunted our small group. We slept on planes, food was brought to our cars. You will forget a little, and again the order - “Air! Air!". We took off immediately. They fought back. Many of our people were shot down, but we did not remain in debt either. He himself was hit, woke up already in the hospital. On another occasion, he was surrounded by German aircraft. I was the squadron commander and they decided to take me prisoner. Above, below and on the sides of the enemy vehicles. I saw the smoke of a burning factory ahead and sent the car there, the Germans lost me. Another time he was shot down in the Luga area, and ended up in a group of soldiers leaving the encirclement. I was the only one who had a map. Brought everyone out. " After the exhausting battles of the first months of the war, some were sent to rest and reorganized in Kadnikov, Vologda Oblast (November 1941). The regiment lost more than half of its pilots in killed and wounded. We lived in apartments in Sokol, where he met my mother. Before the war, he had a wife and a one-year-old son in Leningrad. He received a message that they were killed by bombing on the train while leaving the city. My mother is a teacher, a divorced woman, fell in love, got pregnant. Her father asked her to leave her pregnancy: “I can be killed at any moment, and after me there will be no one left on earth. Do you know what it is like to go into battle when no one is waiting for you at home? " ... Battles near Moscow, then near Stalingrad. Letters, translations. But a year later, the first wife and son were found. Genka, son, was burned in that bombing, he has scars for life. Letters and transfers to Sokol stopped. The family of the head physician of the evacuation hospital lived in our apartment, she helped to find my father, arrange alimony. In the regiment, my father was called Peter for his outward resemblance to Peter the Great, which is why my patronymic is written in my documents "Petrovna". This photo was sent by Gena, with whom we sometimes corresponded. Father died on 05/23/1993 in Belarus, where they moved at the end of their lives. He was buried in Minsk at the Northern (military) cemetery.