Rank: Military Doctor of the 3rd Rank. Branch of Sevice: Military Medical Staff. My grandmother, Antonina Botkina, graduated with honors from the 1st Sechenov Moscow Medical Institute in 1941, the best medical Institute of the USSR. She passed her last state exam before receiving her diploma on June 23, 1941, on the second day of the war. As a loyal Komsomol member and excellent student, they sent her to work as a doctor in one of the NKVD correctional camps immediately after graduation. She worked there for 1.5 months, constantly sending applications with requests to send her to the front. Finally, she received a referral to a military evacuation hospital in the Vologda Region, Sokol Station. There she worked as a surgeon throughout the war. It was very hard to work. Often, when there was a large influx of wounded from the Leningrad Front, she had to stay awake for 2-3 days. Doctors then literally did not leave the operating table for days. Evacuated residents of besieged Leningrad were also brought there. It was a terrible sight. Half-dead, dystrophic people who often could not even stand on their feet. The entire hospital staff nursed them as best they could. In the same hospital, my grandmother met her future husband, my grandfather Pyotr Alekseev. He was a musician, before the war, played the guitar. He fought on the Leningrad Front, and was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War for his courage and heroism. He returned from the war without a leg, it had to be amputated after the battle wound. After the war, they moved to the Crimea, to Yevpatoria. My grandmother worked for 21 years in the children's city hospital. She was a head of infectious diseases Department, and 18 years - in a children's sanatorium. She died in 2006 at the age of 91.