Rank: Lieutenant-colonel. Branch of service: Artillery. Unit: 157th rifle division (1st formation). It is early morning of June 21, 1941: a Sunday. There is only silence around. The country is sleeping peacefully. The first rays of the sun have lit up the treetops. Birds are twittering, awakened by the sun. And suddenly this peace was destroyed by the buzz of innumerable planes that flew from the West. And then the planes began to descend, circling over the city, and dropping bombs. At first, the city residents could not understand what was happening. All around them were explosions, columns of smoke and fire. Panic set in. This is how my great-grandfather describes the first hours of the war. At the time, he was a seventeen-year-old boy in the city of Zhytomyr, where his father Kuzmenko Pavel Ignatievich served. The regiment, which Pavel Ignatievich managed, was immediately engaged into fierce battle. My grandfather remembers how his father ran home and ordered: "Quickly, run to the station! War has begun!". Great-grandfather, mother, and sister managed to leave the city on a freight train. The railway station and the city of Zhytomyr were destroyed in the first few hours of the war. My great-grandfather's family was evacuated to the city of Frunze. Grandfather Volodya and his friend got a job at a Weapons factory that produced shells for the frontlines. They hoped to get to the frontline as soon as possible and fight the enemy, drive it from their homeland. My grandfather was not even 18, when he secretly ran away from home, entered the Ryazan artillery school and graduated from it in May 1943. With the Lieutenant rank, Vladimir Pavlovich was sent to the frontline. Lieutenant Vladimir Pavlovich Kuzmenko fought in Stalingrad, Belarus, and Germany. During a battle near the town of Instenburg (Germany) my great-grandfather was seriously injured when fragments of a projectile hit the left side of his body. Before the battle, Vladimir Pavlovich moved the pistol from the holster to the breast pocket of his tunic - this saved his life. The shell fragment did not hit his heart, but the gun, instead. The gun turned into a shapeless piece of metal. My great-grandfather did not like to remember the war, but he once told my grandmother, Irina Vladimirovna, about that brutal battle. Soviet troops had fought their way to the city of Insterburg. Fascist planes were flying in the sky, dropping bombs on our fortifications. Tanks and artillery joined the battle. The battery, which was commanded by a young Lieutenant Kuzmenko, repelled the attack of German tanks. Suddenly a shell exploded nearby and ... He woke up. He was struck by the silence and the night sky with bright stars. All around him was snow. It was very cold. Grandpa could not cry out or move; blood was slowly flowing from his numerous wounds. And nearby paramedics crawled: they were looking for the wounded in the field. Grandpa started to blink relentlessly and tried to moan, in hopes of drawing attention to himself. The soldiers noticed that the Lieutenant was alive, carried him out of the battlefield and took him to the hospital. After treatment, Lieutenant V. P. Kuzmenko continued to fight and saw the end of he war in Berlin. My great-grandfather was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War and the medal "For the Victory over Germany". From July 1945 to March 1947, Vladimir Pavlovich continued to serve in Germany as the commander of a fire platoon of a howitzer artillery regiment. Then my great-grandfather served in Uzbekistan (Tashkent), Turkmenistan (Ashgabat), GSFG (Dresden), Belarus (Borisov). During his years of service in the Soviet army, he was awarded thirteen medals. During his well-deserved retirement, my grandfather led an active social life. He was an activist for the Council of War and Labor veterans in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), a permanent member of the choir of war and labor veterans. He was invited to schools for conversations with the children. On May 9, 1995, my great-grandfather participated in a TV program (Bishkek) dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great Victory of the Soviet people .