Grade title: sergeant. Unit: the 59th Kramatorsk guards rifle division of the Red Banner and the orders of Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky. In March 1942 my grandfather was called up by the Goryache–Klyuchevsky military commissariat of the Krasnodar region and sent to the 59th guards rifle division of the 176th guards rifle regiment to do service in a transport troop as a guard soldier and a driver. He liberated Donbass, Zaporozhye, Nikopol, Odessa, Budapest. The Cossacks' love for horses, instilled from childhood, helped my grandfather during the war. As I later learned from archival award-winning military documents my grandfather went through the entire war without parting with horses. His hard work, respect for his elders and friends helped him overcome the difficult years of the war. My grandfather also carried a prayer sewn into his clothes through the whole war (after all, the Cossacks always believed in God and observed all Orthodox holidays), maybe it helped my grandfather go through the whole war without a single wound. It was a joy to return home after the Victory. According to the memoirs of my mother Lyubov Nikolaevna Maksimova (Brova) "My grandfather came home in 1946 but I don't remember whether it was spring or autumn, but it was cold outside. In the evening I was lying on the Russian stove, a lamp was burning next to it, it lit up the whole small room, my mother was making sourdough to bake bread in the morning, because soon her husband would come from the war (she was waiting for him, like all four years of the war), and there was a soft knock on the window and then called. "Mykola," my mother said and we ran to the door to meet my father and husband from the war. On his chest were medals and the order of the Red Star." On the 26th of October, 1943, by Order of the 176th Guards rifle regiment of the 59th Kramatorsk guards rifle division of the Red Banner of the 3rd guards army, Nikolai Kallistratovich, a driver of the transport troop, was awarded the medal "For Military Merits" for treating his work with love and caring for his horse and transport for others. On the 9th of September, 1944, by the Order no. 26 for the 176th guards rifle regiment of the 59th Kramatorsk rifle division of the Red Banner and of the orders of Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Brova Nicholay Kalistratovich, a driver and a guard soldier of the transport troop, was awarded the medal "For Military Merits" for drying fruit: for nine days of work he dryed up half a ton of fruit. On the 12th of May, 1945, by order no. 028/N for the parts of the 59th Kramatorsk guards rifle division of the Red Banner and of the orders of Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky, on behalf of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, for exemplary performance of fighting tasks of command at the front struggle with German invaders and displaying valor and courage – Brova Nikolai Kalistratovich, a guard sergeant of the transport troop of the 176th Izmail rifle regimen of the Red Banner, was awarded the order of the Red Star. But my mother and grandmother were not happy for long that my grandfather returned from the war. On the 19th of August, 1948, a bullet hit him in the yard of his house. Here is such a bitter irony: to go through the entire war without a single wound and be killed in your native village by a neighbor. My grandfather was buried in the cemetery of the village of Saratovskaya.