Rank: Red army soldier. Type of troops: Artillery. Division: 30th Guards Rifle Riga Red banner Division. V.Gurin, served from 1932 to 1935 in the 16 separate Rifle attalion of Motorized Rifle troops, in Irkutsk region. He was mobilized into the red Army on July 24, 1941 and enlisted as a gun loder of the Separate Anti-aircraft Artillery battery of 217th Rifle Division (later it was renamed into the 238th Red Banner Rifle Division, then the 30th Guards Rifle Riga Red Banner division). From October 8, 1941 to May 6, 1942, he was fighting in the 395th Separate Artillery Division and 238th Rifle Division. From May 6, 1942 to March 8, 1943, he was fighting in the 217th Rifle Division. From March 8, 1943 to September 15, 1943, he served in the 2nd Battery of the 715th Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment of the 14th Anti-aircraft Artillery Division of the main command reserve. From September 15, 1943 to January 15, 1944, he served in the 2nd Baltic front. Participated in the battles in the defense of Moscow, on the Kursk bulge, liberated part of Western Belarus. On January 15, 1944, in the battle for the city of Novo-Sokolniki, he was seriously wounded by a shell fragment , and left the Armed Forces on October 24, 1944. Vasily Harlamovich was awarded by : the Order of the ""Red Star"" twice, the Order of Glory of all 3 classes, the Order of the ""Patriotic war of 1st and 2nd class"", the Medal ""For the defense of Moscow"", the Medal ""20 years of the Red Army"", the Medal ""For Bravery "", the Badge"" Excellent gunner"". After being dismissed to the reserve, despite his disability of group 2, Vasily Kharlamovich graduated from the courses of sewing and became a master of the upper men's coat, worked in the Krupskaya factory in Semipalatinsk as a master of the fifth category. During his lifetime, Vasily Kharlamovich did not like to talk about the war, especially with his grandchildren, but his elder son Nikolay remembers some of his father's stories. Here are some of them: ""During the battle of Kursk, Vasily Kharlamovich and his comrades burned German tanks with direct fire from anti-aircraft guns, since the anti-tank artillery was simply powerless against them. There were a lot of broken German and Soviet tanks on the battlefield, the bodies of the dead were lying around, the air was saturated not only with gunpowder and burning, but also with human blood."" Nikolay especially remembered his father's stories about the liberation of Western Belarus, and his impressions of how Nazis, as well as Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, burned out villages, destroyed cities, and the mutilated bodies of ordinary civilians, old men, women, and especially children. Gurin Nikolay Vasilyevich, the son of Vasily Kharlamovich, worked in the collective farm fields in the village of Krestyanka when he was only 10 and he was awarded the Medal ""For valiant labor in the great Patriotic War"". During the difficult years of the war, Vasily Kharlamovich's wife, Elizabeth Yakovlevna, raised two sons Nikolay and Gennady, as well as two nephews Alexey and Zinaida, who were left without a mother (she died before the war), and their father Stepan Zhbratov who was mobilized in July 1941 and served in the far East. Her niece Zinaida at the age of 14 worked on the railway in the city of Semipalatinsk, delivered food to the sidings and stations on a wagon-shop."