Rank: Junior Sergeant Type of Troops: Aviation My great-grandfather Elin Alexander Lavrentievich went through the whole war. I know my great-grandfather only from my mother's stories. He fought bravely and made it to Berlin. He returned home only two years after the war. Great-grandfather was a junior sergeant in the 146th air depot. As my mother says, my great-grandfather did not like to talk about the war, and always tried to laugh it off or turn the conversation to another topic. She said: “When we pestered him with questions, he gently patted us on the head and smiled, but his eyes became so sad. At these moments, he seemed to be peering into the distance. Until now, my mother remembers his grandfather's hands. He had only three fingers on each hand, the little and ring fingers were tightly pressed to the palm, as if bent into a fist ... Once she asked her grandfather: "Why do you have such hands?" My grandfather said that during the war, they washed aircraft parts with kerosene or gasoline, so they were drawn. "Grandfather, is it scary in war?" "It's scary, guys, oh, how scary," answered the grandfather and held us tightly to him. " Our great-grandfather met the Great Victory in the city of Bernau, a few dozen kilometers from Berlin. After the declaration of surrender, he was in Germany for another two years. Our soldiers had to fight for another two long years. They extinguished the last hotbeds of war. At home he was considered missing. Great-grandfather died in October 1998. He lived a long life, but took the details of the terrible war with him. Kirill Prokopenko, 15 years old MCOUDO "Center for Continuing Education for Children" Novosibirsk Region