Junior Lieutenant Vladimir Antonovich Korovin was born in the family of teachers in the village of Novoalekseyevka, Zaporozhye region. He was the youngest, fourth son. He graduated from the ten-years school in Kremenchug. He was a cheerful and optimistic person. He loved music, played the accordion, violin and guitar well. But the main hobby was poetry. Before the war, he entered the University of Dnepropetrovsk, but soon was called up. The family did not know for a long time how Vladimir died. His older brother Yevgeny Antonovich Korovin, a military journalist, learned the circumstances of his death from a colleague of his brother. Colonel Nikolai Yegorovich Boranenkov, an employee of the Red Star party Department, a member of the Union of writers of the USSR, a front-line friend of Vladimir Korovin, with whom he served in the same regiment, told the circumstances of his death near Staraya Russa: "I remember a frosty January night in 1942. Ilmen lake, constrained by the ice, Lovat river Lovat, covered with the snow.. We, Kombat Velichko, a chief of the staff senior Lieutenant Shapovalenko, medical officer Sergeant Krolenkov, platoon commander Junior Lieutenant Korovin and I, political officer of the company of machine gunners, were in the column of the 188th rifle division. Suddenly Volodya touched my shoulder and said: "There is a new poem - "Letter to my son". Listen: “Night, trenches, bushes and trees, Moonlight over the expanse of plains. Somewhere in a remote seaside village, my little son is growing up. Without me, he grew up healthy, My dear writes in the letters That he is just like me, black-browed And just as mischievous as I am. And the other day, on the clean envelope, he Wrote with a child's hand: "Dear dad, smash all the fascists And come home soon." Dear son, we are going to attack, There is no time to tell everything. And we will definitely break the fascist carrion dog, son.” I knew that Volodya had no wife or son, but there had a bride. He wanted to return to his native village, but... We splitted into divisions up. Only later I got to know that the battalion in which Vladimir fought was surrounded in the night battle for Staraya Russa and almost all were killed. The Nazis of the Jaeger regiment burned in houses even the wounded people. Only Shapovalenko and Krolenkov escaped from the encirclement. They told about the fate of Vladimir Korovin. In the last minutes of the battle, battalion commander Velichko, trying to save the poet, ordered him to break through to his own. But a vile bullet mowed down Volodya." "Hello, dear Zhenya and Marusya! Happy new year, 1942! You are the only people I can write to right now. We met the last years differently. German shells are bursting somewhere nearby. Our room is noisy and fun... They write letters, play chess, checkers, and the balalaika rings. What are you doing now? Where is the family? A great anger is boiling in my chest. Vile monsters are rampaging on our land. But the time of reckoning is coming. Oh, it will be a wonderful time and let us die, perhaps in a deadly battle with the enemy, but I believe that others will continue our work and achieve complete victory ... I wish you health and happiness in the new year. Write and don't forget. In early January 1942, second Lieutenant Vladimir Antonovich Korovin wrote this letter and sent it to Vladivistok, for his brother Yevgeny Korovin, a naval journalist. He couldn't write at home. The village of Novoalekseyevka in the Zaporozhye region, where the father and mother lived, was under the heel of the invaders. This letter was his last one.