Rank: Sergeant Major Branch of Service: Land Forces, Air Force (except for Naval Aviation), Coast Guard, NKVD troops, Border Guards The heroic and sad fate of my grandfather My grandfather, a native of the city of Kasli, Peter Borovkov was presented with the highest award - the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. But he never got it in his lifetime… I had never seen my grandfather, Peter Borovkov, and knew little about him. My grandmother, Nina Torokina (Potopaeva), was reluctant to talk about him. I think it was because she found her marriage to Peter Borovkov a difficult one. To live with a man crippled by the war, who has passed through death – is not an easy test… Peter introduced her to his elder brother Constantine. Peter Borovkov worked with him in the model shop of the Kasli machine factory. He was nine years older than Nina, a front-line soldier. After the war, the choice of suitors was small, and here he was! Partymember, with a sense of humor, unpretentious in everyday life… and he liked Nina. Soon they were married. In February 1949, a daughter, Raisa, was born. Less than a year after the birth of their daughter, they separated. My grandmother said one thing: a difficult character. Other relatives say that Nina's mother, my great – grandmother, a strong-willed woman Anna Potopaeva, played a role in the collapse of the family. One thing is known: they parted without scandals, just one day Nina and her daughter returned to their parents' house. Little was known in our family about the fate of Peter Borovkov. Not a single photograph of him has been preserved. Nor did we know about my grandfather's military fate. Heroic and sad… Recently I got a call from Nikolai Titov, a local historian from the city of Snezhinsk. He is one of those who have been tracking the fate of war participants for many years. Going to the district military enlistment offices, he turns over piles of notices - "death notices" ... to date, he has compiled his electronic archive of our fellow uralians-participants of the Great Patriotic War. Nikolai was looking for the next of kin of Peter Borovkov. He told me that in 2015, on the website of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, to 12.5 million records of war participants, indications of places and dates of the feat were added. On the same site ("Feat of the people" http://podvignaroda.ru [ http://podvignaroda.ru ]) our family found unique and unknown information about our grandfather-Peter Borovkov, who was born in Kasli in 1918… Peter Borovkov joined the Red Army in 1939. He went to the front in 1941. Place of conscription: Verkhne-Ufaleysky City Military Enlistment Office. As it became known from the documents, the war for our grandfather began in the 65th Army of the Don Front. ... In the summer of 1942, the German war against the Soviet Union took on the character of a "crusade". Hitler demanded from the European allies more and more troops, more and more equipment for the Eastern front. In February 1942, the 8th Italian Army was deployed to the occupied territory of the USSR, and in April the 2nd Hungarian Army appeared. They were supplemented by the 6th Romanian Army, Croatian and Slovak units. All of them in the fall of 1942 came out against the Red Army in a Grand battle - the battle of Stalingrad. "In difficult conditions, when the crossing was constantly shelled by the enemy, comrade Borovkov, working as part of a combat pontoon crew, carried out all the combat orders of the command for the crossing of troops perfectly. On November 17, 1942, the pontoon crew, in which comrade Borovkov worked, was assigned a combat task – an urgent transfer of tanks across the Don River. Having applied all the forces and organizational skills, the crew fulfilled the battle order perfectly." That is what was said about the feat of my grandfather in the award list.