PLACE OF BIRTH: Krasnogorsk village, Chelyabinsk region. DATE OF BIRTH: 12.03.1924 DATE OF DEATH: 11.11.1998 HISTORY: Rank: Red army soldier. Corps: Artillery. The newspaper "Zvezda", separate memoirs of the war of Litvinov Pyotr Vasilyevich. From mid-April 1945, fighting began on the outskirts of Berlin. The attack was rapid, but the enemy stubbornly resisted. The fighting was heavy and bloody, and every day we lost our comrades killed and wounded. At the end of April, the division was about 20 kilometers from Berlin. Every day we moved forward. It was often necessary to change firing positions in order to keep up with the rifle companies and support them with aimed fire. The Germans tried to suppress the fire of the battery, which brought them great damage. One of the fire raids on our battery brought heavy losses. Nikolai Saraev, the gunner of the mortar, standing next to us, was killed by the fragments of the exploded bomb. He was only 19-20 years old. Our mortar crew was also injured – the gun commander, Sergeant First Class Ivan Melnichenko, was seriously wounded in the chest, and I was also wounded. The platoon commander Lieutenant Gregory Khodjaev told me to bring the wounded Melnichenko in medical company. Under heavy artillery fire we managed to get to medical company. They bandaged me there and I ran, or even crawled, back to the position of my battery. For several days, I with the loader private Boris Donchenko fired a mortar. There was no replenishment. Ususally the gun crew consisted of 4 people: the commander, the gunner, the loader and the driver. The last one barely had time to bring us mines. Less than a week later, as the commander of the gun Melnichenko returned to the battery. He escaped from the doctors, without being treated. When our troops broke into Berlin, the direction of our division's offensive was the Reichstag. The command suggested the Nazis to capitulate. Soviet parliamentarians came out with a white flag in the area of our combat positions. But the Germans fired at them, and a parliamentary major was killed. The last firing position of our battery was in the courtyard of a printing house in 300 meters from the Reichstag on May 1, 1945. The building of the printing house was completely destroyed, only the basement remained, where there were piles of topographic maps. We rested on them in breaks between fights. On May 1, there were still strong battles, but it was felt that the Nazis had already come "kaput"! On this day, the mortar gunner of our battery, Boris Burlachenko, was killed. Then the fighting in Berlin stopped, and the German-fascist troops capitulated.