Branch of Troops is Armoured and mechanized troops. Kolitvinov Arsenty Timofeevich was born on September 10, 1913 in the village of Verkhnyaya Khava, Voronezh region. He was called up for military service in 1934 from the village of Orlyanovka in the Ertilsky district. He served in the Far East as a tank driver. After returning from the service he got married, but his wife died in childbirth and left a son, Stepan. Soon he met my grandmother Ekaterina Sorokina and got married. In 1939, he moved with his family to the village of Pavlovka, Chaplinsky district, Kherson region, Ukrainian SSR. On August 25, 1940, his second son Vladimir was born. Almost a year later, the Great Patriotic war began. Arsenty Timofeyevich was drafted into the Army and served on the North Caucasus front. His wife and children found immediately themselves under occupation. Arsenty Timofeyevich did not write for a long time, and only in 1943 he was able to send a letter to the village of Orlyanovka. In the letter he wrote that he had participated in the battles near Mozdok, where he has been seriously injured. The family learned that the entire crew of the tank in which he was in had been killed; only he had miraculously managed to escape. After the tank exploded, he crawled into some basement, didn’t know how long he’d been there, but a medical orderly found him, bandaged his wounds and went to get help. After that, Arsenty Timofeevich did not remember anything, probably passed out, and has regained consciousness in hospital. He was sent home to the Voronezh Oblast. The wounds were in his leg, arm and lower back, so that he limped and walked with a cane all his life. Soon after the family received his letter, Kolitvinov A.T. returned to Ukraine, where he met Victory. In June 1945 they moved to Maykop, where they lived with the sister of Arsenty Timofeyevich. The family had three more children: daughters Tatiana, Julia and son Alexander. In early 1963, they moved to Lipetsk, and on August 9, he died. Son Vladimir recalls how war injuries did not let go Arsenty Timofeyevich until his death and reminded of them. Sometimes he would scratch his leg, run his hand over it, and felt the splinters from that terrible explosion in the tank under his skin. His father went to the surgeon several times and cut them out. These fragments were too small, but they did not allow him to forget the war.