"The boys left - overcoats on their shoulders,
The boys left - bravely sang songs,
The boys retreated on the dusty steppes,
The boys were dying, where - they themselves did not know ...
The boys ended up in terrible barracks,
Fierce dogs chased the boys.
Boys were killed for escaping on the spot,
The boys did not sell conscience and honor ...
The boys did not want to succumb to fear,
The boys rose on the whistle to attack.
In the black smoke of battles, on the sloping armor
The boys were leaving, clutching their guns.
The boys have seen - brave soldiers -
Volga - in the forty-first,
Spree - in the forty-fifth,
The boys showed for four years,
Who are the boys of our people."

I. Karpov

“Vitya Pashkevich is a legendary person. In order to be taken to a sabotage school, he attributed to himself an extra 2 years. He wrote that he was born in 1927. He and a detachment were thrown into Transcarpathia, where he partisans.

In Borisovka, near Minsk, there was a whole group of underground pioneers, they studied at the same school, in the same pioneer detachment, and together they played dirty tricks on the Nazis. Boys - there are boys: somewhere there were combat missions, somewhere purely hooligan. For example, they attached the inscription "Traitor" to the back of the chief of police. And he walked down the street for several hours, not noticing anything.

The guys managed to destroy the petrol storage of the Borisov airfield. The Germans used this airfield to refuel their aircraft. Local underground workers tried to destroy it, but they did not succeed. Then the guys, there were four of them: three boys and one girl, organized a football match on the field near the gas depot. Played for several days. The Germans began to come out, watch and cheer for the teams. And then the unsuccessfully launched ball hit the territory of the gas storage. The guys ran up to the soldier - the guard, began to ask him to return the ball to them. He took it out and threw it back. The children continued to play. After some time, the ball again flew there, so it was repeated two or three times, until the guard got tired, and he said to Vitya: “Go on your own!”. This is what was required! Viti had a magnetic mine in his pocket. He ran after the ball. While running, he fell, the ball rolled further, to the gas tanks. The Germans laughed, and the boy disappeared for a moment, took out a mine from his pocket, put the fuse into firing position and stuck the mine to the tank. Grabbing the ball, he returned to the guys, the game continued. And at night there was an explosion and all the tanks flew into the air. The Germans turned on the searchlights, rummaged through the sky, looking for the plane, but found no one.

When the war ended, he became a professor of political science, taught at the University of Uzhgorod.

Lieutenant A. Guivik lights a cigarette at the foreman N. Zadrogina. 1944

(Collapse)


Hospital in the Inkerman adits. 1942

8th Guards Mechanized Brigade of the 3rd Stalingrad Mechanized Corps

Kombrig A.V. Kuzmin presenting cabin boy Sasha Kovalev with the Order of the Red Star. Northern Fleet

Olkhovsky Oleg, cabin boy

Sergeant Major Serezha Bondarenko

Son of Regiment 169 of the Special Purpose Air Base, age 10, served as an assistant to an armaments technician. Poltava airfield, 1944

During the Great Patriotic War, more than 3,500 front-line soldiers under the age of 16 served in the Red Army. They were called "sons of the regiment", although there were daughters among them. About the fate of some of them - in our material.

The data of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia on the number of sons of the regiment during the war years are obviously not entirely correct. Firstly, the number indicated by them does not include children participating in partisan detachments and the underground (only in occupied Belarus, almost 74.5 thousand boys and girls, boys and girls fought in partisan detachments); secondly, commanders often tried to hide the presence of a child in the unit. At the same time, the tradition of "sons of the regiment" dates back to the 18th century, when in every military unit in Russia there was at least one young drummer or midshipman - in the navy.With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, children again began to join the army. There were several ways to get into the regular units of the Red Army: the soldiers picked up orphans and children lost during the fighting; the children themselves ran away to the front, and if they managed to reach the front line, the commanders had no choice but to accept them; it was not uncommon for commanders to take their children with them, believing that it would be safer for them. Of course, the unit commander had to hide the appearance of a child in the unit entrusted to him, but it also happened that young soldiers were officially put on allowance - the "son of the regiment" received uniforms, and sometimes personal weapons. Usually they were protected and entrusted with various chores, but sometimes they became full participants in military operations.

Volodya Tarnovsky

The photograph of a boy signing an autograph on the wall of the Reichstag has long been a historical relic. This is 15-year-old Volodya Tarnovsky, who got into the active army in 1943, when Soviet troops liberated his native Slavyansk. The chairman of the village council told the captain of the rifle brigade about the boy, and he suggested that Volodya join the army. As the young intelligence officer himself admitted, he literally caught fire with this idea - he wanted to avenge his mother, his dead stepfather and younger brother, who was taken away from the Donbass and whom Vladimir could not find after the war.

At first he was an ordinary messenger, but soon began to go on combat missions with his senior comrades. The soldiers treated the boy with paternal love, altered his uniform and even straightened his boots.

Volodya Tarnovsky received his first award for crossing the Dnieper and rescuing an officer. But even earlier, when he led the lost "Studebakers" with fuel and food directly to the front line, he was presented for an award, but then the political officer decided that it was not good to distribute awards to orderlies and advised him to transfer the boy to scouts. So at the age of 14, Volodya Tarnovsky became a scout. Corporal Tarnovsky already received the medal "For Courage" after capturing the "tongue": when Volodya led the captured non-commissioned officer to the location of his unit, the soldiers passing by could not help but smile - is it a thing seen, a two-meter big man is escorted by a child ?! However, the little escort was not at all laughing - he walked all the way with a cocked machine gun.

And then there was Berlin and the famous autograph on the Reichstag. Then he signed for himself and his comrades.

After the war, Vladimir Tarnovsky graduated from high school with a gold medal, and then from the Odessa Institute of Marine Engineers. According to the distribution, he left for Riga, where he worked at the Riga Shipyard, was its director. And having retired, Vladimir Vladimirovich was actively involved in social activities, was the deputy chairman of the Latvian Association of Anti-Hitler Coalition Wrestlers. He passed away in February 2013.

Serezha Aleshkov (Aleshkin)One of the youngest fighters of the Red Army during the war years was Seryozha Aleshkov. At the age of six, he lost his mother and older brother - the Nazis executed them for their connection with the partisans. The family then lived in the village of Gryn in the Kaluga region, which the partisans used as a base. In the summer of 1942, Gryn was attacked by punishers, the partisans hurriedly left for the forests. Little Seryozha stumbled and got tangled in the bushes during one of the runs. It is not known how long the child wandered through the forest, eating berries, when he was discovered by scouts from the 154th Rifle Regiment, later renamed the 142nd Guards Regiment. Major Mikhail Vorobyov took the exhausted boy with him and became the second father for the boy. Later, he officially adopted Seryozha.

The boy in the regiment fell in love, dressed, shod - finding boots of the 30th size in the army is not an easy task! Due to his age, Seryozha could not take part in military operations, but he tried to help his older comrades as best he could: he brought food, brought shells, cartridges, and in between battles he sang songs, read poetry, delivered mail. And it was thanks to Serezha that Major Vorobyov found his happiness - nurse Nina.

Together with the 142nd Guards Regiment, Seryozha went through a glorious military path, participated in the defense of Stalingrad, and reached Poland. And once he saved the life of his commander and, concurrently, named father. During a fascist raid, a bomb hit the dugout of the regiment commander, and the explosion blocked the exit. The boy first tried to dismantle the blockage on his own, and realizing that he could not cope, under the ongoing bombing, he ran for help. For this feat, he was awarded the medal "For Military Merit" and a combat trophy pistol. While the soldiers dismantled the logs and pulled out their commander, Seryozha stood nearby and, as it should be for a child, sobbed ...

And somehow, already on the Dnieper, an observant boy noticed two men in a stack of straw and immediately reported this to the command. So we managed to grab two Germans with a walkie-talkie, who made their way to the rear to correct the artillery fire ...

During the time spent at the front, Serezha was wounded several times, shell-shocked, which did not prevent him from entering the Tula Suvorov Military School. Later he studied as a lawyer in Kharkov, after graduation he left for Chelyabinsk, where his adoptive parents lived. Worked as a prosecutor. In 1990, the youngest soldier of the Red Army died - severe injuries affected.

Arkady Kamanin

The son of a Soviet officer, pilot and future Hero of the Soviet Union, Nikolai Kamanin, ended up in a military unit due to his stubbornness. In February 1943, his father was appointed commander of one of the assault air corps of the Kalinin Front, and his wife and son moved with him to the location of the unit. 14-year-old Arkady immediately began working as an aircraft mechanic - the boy was interested in airplanes from childhood, and he managed to work as a mechanic at a Moscow aircraft factory and at one of the airfields. The father tried to send the child to the rear, but he stubbornly declared: "I won't go!" I had to give in, especially since the front needed qualified mechanics.

Very soon, the younger Kamanin began to learn to fly and took to the skies in a two-seat training U-2 as a navigator-observer and flight mechanic. Already in July 1943, General Kamanin personally presented the 14-year-old Arkady with an official permit for independent flights. "Flyer" - that's what the squadron called Kamanin Jr. - along with adult pilots, they had to risk their lives daily, performing command tasks. But the youngest pilot of the Great Patriotic War was distinguished by fearlessness. On one of the sorties, he saw a wrecked IL-2, the cabin of which was buried in the ground. The plane lay in no man's land, and Arkady immediately rushed to the aid of the wounded pilot. Having loaded a Soviet officer and photographic equipment into his U-2, the "flyer" managed to reach his headquarters unscathed. For this feat, he was first awarded the Order of the Red Star. In early 1945, Arkady Kamanin delivered a secret package to a partisan detachment by flying behind the front line along an unexplored route in mountainous terrain. For two years of service he received six awards, including the Order of the Red Banner, as well as medals for the capture of Budapest, Vienna and the victory over Germany.After the end of the war, like many sons of the regiment, Arkady had to return to school to get a school certificate - it took him only one school year to catch up with his peers in school. In October 1946, Sergeant Major Kamanin entered a preparatory course at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. A year later, the youngest pilot of the Great Patriotic War suddenly died of meningitis.

Valery Lyalin

In the navy, the sons of the regiment were called cabin boys. Most often they were the children of dead sailors. Valery, or as he was called Valka, Lyalin entered the fleet in the spring of 1943. By this time, his father, the commander, died at the front, and his mother, who worked at the plant, died under bombing, he wandered around the port of Batumi and, having accidentally met the captain of the TKA-93 torpedo boat, Lieutenant Andrey Chertsov, asked him to take him on the ship. “I remembered my childhood, how I was a homeless child, I feel: my throat is tickled. It’s a pity for the boy,” Chertsov recalled. After conferring with the mechanic, they decided to take the child with them and, if necessary, arrange a cabin boy at the school. No one could have imagined that in a few months he would become a full member of the crew, master the motor business and control the boat.

Valka accomplished his feat in September 1943, when the Black Sea sailors were instructed to free the port of Novorossiysk from the bonnet barrier. Realizing the danger of the assignment, Lieutenant Chertsov categorically forbade the cabin boy to participate in the operation. On the night of September 11, under heavy fire from the Nazis, the boat approached the intended place, landed the paratroopers, then in Gelendzhik took on board another 25 paratroopers and new ammunition and again set off for the port of Novorossiysk. It was already dawn, the Germans pulled up artillery and mortars to the port, but Chertsov decided to break through a solid wall of fire. Already on the approach to the berths, fragments of a shell fell into the oil pipeline of one of the engines. While the cabin boy Lyalin - and he slipped on board when the boat was picking up the second group of paratroopers - was repairing one engine, the second one also stalled. Shells exploded next to the side, most of the team died, and the captain was wounded. There was practically no hope of salvation, when suddenly Valka reported that he had repaired the right engine. Having landed the paratroopers, the boat, half-flooded from the holes received, set off on the return journey. When Chertsov, having lost consciousness, released the helm, cabin boy Lyalin took his place in the wheelhouse. To see the windshield, he had to stand on the box, and the steering wheel had to be rotated, leaning on it with his whole body. Overcoming fatigue and pain in his hands, the cabin boy brought the boat to the cape, behind which was the entrance to the Gelendzhik Bay.

Later, Chertsov still got Valka Lyalin to the Tbilisi Nakhimov School. According to the recollections of his classmates, he was the only pupil who had four combat medals on his chest. Later, Valka also received the Order of the Red Star, but the title of Hero, which Lieutenant Chertsov petitioned for, was never awarded to him - the division commander was afraid of being demoted because, in violation of all rules and instructions, an underage teenager serves on the ship.Another amazing story is connected with the names of Valka Lyalin and captain Andrey Chertsov. After that terrible campaign, all the surviving crew members were treated in a hospital near Novorossiysk. Once Klavdia Shulzhenko came to the wounded with a concert. And when the performance ended, Klavdia Ivanovna saw that one of the sailors was pulling his bandaged hands towards her. She did not understand what the wounded man wanted to say. But then the cabin boy ran up and explained that the commander asked to perform his favorite song "Hands". Many years later, in the mid-70s, the TKA-93 crew met the great singer again, and it happened on the set of Blue Light. According to Shulzhenko’s memoirs, in a group of men at one of the tables, she recognized both the matured Valery Lyalin, and the gray-haired Andrei Chertsov, on whose chest the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union flaunted, and other crew members who happened to survive that terrible campaign. The singer again performed "Hands".

In November 1943, an order was issued to enroll all the sons of the regiments in the Suvorov and Nakhimov schools. However, the boys at that moment wanted to get to Berlin more than to sit at the school desk. This happened, for example, with Tolya Ryabkov. The soldiers of the artillery regiment literally saved him from starvation in besieged Leningrad - they assigned the little soldier first to the kitchen, then to the signal detachment, and in February 1942, the 13-year-old boy took the oath. A year later, Tolik was sent to the Suvorov School, but he did not want to stay there and returned home. In an ordinary school, the boy also survived only a couple of weeks, and then fled to Kronstadt.

Yulia Grokhlina. TVC.RU

"Son of the regiment" is a term that originated in the second half of the 18th century. But it really became massive during the Great Patriotic War, when thousands of children found shelter in the Red Army. Children between the ages of six and fifteen - by modern standards, still quite children - defended their homeland on an equal basis with adults. How and why did they end up in combat units? And why did you choose this difficult path?

According to official figures, there were about three and a half thousand so-called "children of the regiment" in the ranks of the Red Army. The figures are most likely underestimated: many commanders of the detachments hid the guys in order to protect them and themselves from unnecessary questions and formalities. Became "sons" and "daughters" in different ways. But, in general, there are three main ways, says Associate Professor of the Faculty of History of the Leningrad State University named after A.S. Pushkin Anatoly Nikiforov:

“Firstly, most of the children ended up in the Red Army, having lost relatives and relatives, in other words, those who turned out to be orphans. The second way, less numerous, is the own children of the active regiment commanders, who, in difficult wartime, considered it necessary to keep them under themselves. Fairly believing that in the rear they can be left without proper parental care. And the third way is children who ran away from their families, underage volunteers who somehow managed to get to the front line and end up in the army."

Once among the soldiers of the Red Army, the guys tried to keep up with their older comrades and be on a par with them. However, the commanders, taking responsibility for the child, tried to protect him from the horrors of war as long as possible, says Anatoly Nikiforov:

"If possible, they tried not to involve children in hostilities that threatened their lives. Most served as orderlies, clerks, girls as nurses. And only 10-15% of this number were young soldiers who, for various reasons, wishing that, of course , participated in battles as part of tank crews. If we talk about young fighters in the fleet, then there were more of them. It is clear that it is difficult to become a special part of the crew on a ship, everyone takes part in hostilities there."

Despite the fact that there were more chances to fight along with Soviet fighters on a ship, the young volunteers performed the most heroic deeds on land and in the sky, says the director of the Museum of Air Defense Forces in the village of Zarya, Balashikha District, Moscow Region, military historian Yuri Knutov:

"Among the children were scouts, and those who served in the infantry, and tankers. There was even one pilot - Arkady Kamanin, who made a large number of sorties (the youngest pilot of World War II, made his first flight at the age of 14, nicknamed "Flyer" - ed.). The girls served as nurses. Among them, the most famous is the future actress, People's Artist of the Soviet Union Elina Bystritskaya. In general, many of these "children of the regiment" later became Heroes of the Soviet Union, famous artists, scientists, generals. there is, in fact, it was such a school that helped to form a new generation of patriots of their homeland."

Many of the "sons of the regiment" subsequently chose a military career, became honored military leaders, generals. Fulfilled their childhood dream.

During the Great Patriotic War, more than 3,500 front-line soldiers under the age of 16 served in the Red Army. They were called "sons of the regiment", although there were daughters among them. About the fate of some of them - in our material.

The data of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia on the number of sons of the regiment during the war years are obviously not entirely correct. Firstly, the number indicated by them does not include children participating in partisan detachments and the underground (only in occupied Belarus, almost 74.5 thousand boys and girls, boys and girls fought in partisan detachments); secondly, commanders often tried to hide the presence of a child in the unit. At the same time, the tradition of "sons of the regiment" dates back to the 18th century, when in every military unit in Russia there was at least one young drummer or midshipman - in the navy.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, children again began to join the army. There were several ways to get into the regular units of the Red Army: the soldiers picked up orphans and children lost during the fighting; the children themselves ran away to the front, and if they managed to reach the front line, the commanders had no choice but to accept them; it was not uncommon for commanders to take their children with them, believing that it would be safer for them. Of course, the unit commander had to hide the appearance of a child in the unit entrusted to him, but it also happened that young soldiers were officially put on allowance - the "son of the regiment" received uniforms, and sometimes personal weapons. Usually they were protected and entrusted with various chores, but sometimes they became full participants in military operations.

Volodya Tarnovsky

The photograph of a boy signing an autograph on the wall of the Reichstag has long been a historical relic. This is 15-year-old Volodya Tarnovsky, who got into the active army in 1943, when Soviet troops liberated his native Slavyansk. The chairman of the village council told the captain of the rifle brigade about the boy, and he suggested that Volodya join the army. As the young intelligence officer himself admitted, he literally caught fire with this idea - he wanted to avenge his mother, his dead stepfather and younger brother, who was taken away from the Donbass and whom Vladimir could not find after the war.

At first he was an ordinary messenger, but soon began to go on combat missions with his senior comrades. The soldiers treated the boy with paternal love, altered his uniform and even straightened his boots.

Volodya Tarnovsky received his first award for crossing the Dnieper and rescuing an officer. But even earlier, when he led the lost "Studebakers" with fuel and food directly to the front line, he was presented for an award, but then the political officer decided that it was not good to distribute awards to orderlies and advised him to transfer the boy to scouts. So at the age of 14, Volodya Tarnovsky became a scout. Corporal Tarnovsky already received the medal "For Courage" after capturing the "tongue": when Volodya led the captured non-commissioned officer to the location of his unit, the soldiers passing by could not help but smile - is it a thing seen, a two-meter big man is escorted by a child ?! However, the little escort was not at all laughing - he walked all the way with a cocked machine gun.

And then there was Berlin and the famous autograph on the Reichstag. Then he signed for himself and his comrades.

After the war, Vladimir Tarnovsky graduated from high school with a gold medal, and then from the Odessa Institute of Marine Engineers. According to the distribution, he left for Riga, where he worked at the Riga Shipyard, was its director. And having retired, Vladimir Vladimirovich was actively involved in social activities, was the deputy chairman of the Latvian Association of Anti-Hitler Coalition Wrestlers. He passed away in February 2013.

Serezha Aleshkov (Aleshkin)

One of the youngest fighters of the Red Army during the war years was Seryozha Aleshkov. At the age of six, he lost his mother and older brother - the Nazis executed them for their connection with the partisans. The family then lived in the village of Gryn in the Kaluga region, which the partisans used as a base. In the summer of 1942, Gryn was attacked by punishers, the partisans hurriedly left for the forests. Little Seryozha stumbled and got tangled in the bushes during one of the runs. It is not known how long the child wandered through the forest, eating berries, when he was discovered by scouts from the 154th Rifle Regiment, later renamed the 142nd Guards Regiment. Major Mikhail Vorobyov took the exhausted boy with him and became the second father for the boy. Later, he officially adopted Seryozha.

The boy in the regiment fell in love, dressed, shod - finding boots of the 30th size in the army is not an easy task! Due to his age, Seryozha could not take part in military operations, but he tried to help his older comrades as best he could: he brought food, brought shells, cartridges, and in between battles he sang songs, read poetry, delivered mail. And it was thanks to Serezha that Major Vorobyov found his happiness - nurse Nina.

Together with the 142nd Guards Regiment, Seryozha went through a glorious military path, participated in the defense of Stalingrad, and reached Poland. And once he saved the life of his commander and, concurrently, named father. During a fascist raid, a bomb hit the dugout of the regiment commander, and the explosion blocked the exit. The boy first tried to dismantle the blockage on his own, and realizing that he could not cope, under the ongoing bombing, he ran for help. For this feat, he was awarded the medal "For Military Merit" and a combat trophy pistol. While the soldiers dismantled the logs and pulled out their commander, Seryozha stood nearby and, as it should be for a child, sobbed ...

And somehow, already on the Dnieper, an observant boy noticed two men in a stack of straw and immediately reported this to the command. So we managed to grab two Germans with a walkie-talkie, who made their way to the rear to correct the artillery fire ...

During the time spent at the front, Serezha was wounded several times, shell-shocked, which did not prevent him from entering the Tula Suvorov Military School. Later he studied as a lawyer in Kharkov, after graduation he left for Chelyabinsk, where his adoptive parents lived. Worked as a prosecutor. In 1990, the youngest soldier of the Red Army died - severe injuries affected.

Arkady Kamanin

The son of a Soviet officer, pilot and future Hero of the Soviet Union, Nikolai Kamanin, ended up in a military unit due to his stubbornness. In February 1943, his father was appointed commander of one of the assault air corps of the Kalinin Front, and his wife and son moved with him to the location of the unit. 14-year-old Arkady immediately began working as an aircraft mechanic - the boy was interested in airplanes from childhood, and he managed to work as a mechanic at a Moscow aircraft factory and at one of the airfields. The father tried to send the child to the rear, but he stubbornly declared: "I won't go!" I had to give in, especially since the front needed qualified mechanics.

Very soon, the younger Kamanin began to learn to fly and took to the skies in a two-seat training U-2 as a navigator-observer and flight mechanic. Already in July 1943, General Kamanin personally presented the 14-year-old Arkady with an official permit for independent flights. "Flyer" - that's what the squadron called Kamanin Jr. - along with adult pilots, they had to risk their lives daily, performing command tasks. But the youngest pilot of the Great Patriotic War was distinguished by fearlessness. On one of the sorties, he saw a wrecked IL-2, the cabin of which was buried in the ground. The plane lay in no man's land, and Arkady immediately rushed to the aid of the wounded pilot. Having loaded a Soviet officer and photographic equipment into his U-2, the "flyer" managed to reach his headquarters unscathed. For this feat, he was first awarded the Order of the Red Star. In early 1945, Arkady Kamanin delivered a secret package to a partisan detachment by flying behind the front line along an unexplored route in mountainous terrain. For two years of service he received six awards, including the Order of the Red Banner, as well as medals for the capture of Budapest, Vienna and the victory over Germany.

After the end of the war, like many sons of the regiment, Arkady had to return to school to get a school certificate - it took him only one school year to catch up with his peers in school. In October 1946, Sergeant Major Kamanin entered a preparatory course at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. A year later, the youngest pilot of the Great Patriotic War suddenly died of meningitis.

Valery Lyalin

In the navy, the sons of the regiment were called cabin boys. Most often they were the children of dead sailors. Valery, or as he was called Valka, Lyalin entered the fleet in the spring of 1943. By this time, his father, the commander, died at the front, and his mother, who worked at the plant, died under bombing, he wandered around the port of Batumi and, having accidentally met the captain of the TKA-93 torpedo boat, Lieutenant Andrey Chertsov, asked him to take him on the ship. “I remembered my childhood, how I was a homeless child, I feel: my throat is tickled. It’s a pity for the boy,” Chertsov recalled. After conferring with the mechanic, they decided to take the child with them and, if necessary, arrange a cabin boy at the school. No one could have imagined that in a few months he would become a full member of the crew, master the motor business and control the boat.

Valka accomplished his feat in September 1943, when the Black Sea sailors were instructed to free the port of Novorossiysk from the bonnet barrier. Realizing the danger of the assignment, Lieutenant Chertsov categorically forbade the cabin boy to participate in the operation. On the night of September 11, under heavy fire from the Nazis, the boat approached the intended place, landed the paratroopers, then in Gelendzhik took on board another 25 paratroopers and new ammunition and again set off for the port of Novorossiysk. It was already dawn, the Germans pulled up artillery and mortars to the port, but Chertsov decided to break through a solid wall of fire. Already on the approach to the berths, fragments of a shell fell into the oil pipeline of one of the engines. While the cabin boy Lyalin - and he slipped on board when the boat was picking up the second group of paratroopers - was repairing one engine, the second one also stalled. Shells exploded next to the side, most of the team died, and the captain was wounded. There was practically no hope of salvation, when suddenly Valka reported that he had repaired the right engine. Having landed the paratroopers, the boat, half-flooded from the holes received, set off on the return journey. When Chertsov, having lost consciousness, released the helm, cabin boy Lyalin took his place in the wheelhouse. To see the windshield, he had to stand on the box, and the steering wheel had to be rotated, leaning on it with his whole body. Overcoming fatigue and pain in his hands, the cabin boy brought the boat to the cape, behind which was the entrance to the Gelendzhik Bay.

Later, Chertsov still got Valka Lyalin to the Tbilisi Nakhimov School. According to the recollections of his classmates, he was the only pupil who had four combat medals on his chest. Later, Valka also received the Order of the Red Star, but the title of Hero, which Lieutenant Chertsov petitioned for, was never awarded to him - the division commander was afraid of being demoted because, in violation of all rules and instructions, an underage teenager serves on the ship.

Another amazing story is connected with the names of Valka Lyalin and captain Andrey Chertsov. After that terrible campaign, all the surviving crew members were treated in a hospital near Novorossiysk. Once Klavdia Shulzhenko came to the wounded with a concert. And when the performance ended, Klavdia Ivanovna saw that one of the sailors was pulling his bandaged hands towards her. She did not understand what the wounded man wanted to say. But then the cabin boy ran up and explained that the commander asked to perform his favorite song "Hands". Many years later, in the mid-70s, the TKA-93 crew met the great singer again, and it happened on the set of Blue Light. According to Shulzhenko’s memoirs, in a group of men at one of the tables, she recognized both the matured Valery Lyalin, and the gray-haired Andrei Chertsov, on whose chest the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union flaunted, and other crew members who happened to survive that terrible campaign. The singer again performed "Hands".

In November 1943, an order was issued to enroll all the sons of the regiments in the Suvorov and Nakhimov schools. However, the boys at that moment wanted to reach Berlin more than to sit at the school desk. This happened, for example, with Tolya Ryabkov. The soldiers of the artillery regiment literally saved him from starvation in besieged Leningrad - they assigned the little soldier first to the kitchen, then to the signal detachment, and in February 1942, the 13-year-old boy took the oath. A year later, Tolik was sent to the Suvorov School, but he did not want to stay there and returned home. In an ordinary school, the boy also survived only a couple of weeks, and then fled to Kronstadt.

Sons of regiments, young defenders of the Motherland, pioneers-heroes. In our school years, they were remembered, films were made, books were written, detachments, squads, parks, streets were named after them. At best, today's children know only a few names.
There is almost no patriotic education in schools. Almost all books about war heroes, about pioneer heroes have been removed from the curricula. In my opinion, this is terrible. A country in which people do not know their past has no future!
Of course, a lot of films about the war are being shown now, but most of them are about fictional characters. And how many films came out about real heroes? And those that were filmed in Soviet times are almost never shown. When was the last time they showed on TV films based on the stories "Son of the Regiment", "The Fourth Height", "The Tale of a Real Man", "Zoya"? I personally don't remember. So the names of even those heroes are forgotten, whose names thundered and were known to every child, not like an adult. That is why my last doubt as to whether it is worth writing about them has disappeared - both well-known to our generation, but as it turns out, almost unknown to the current one, and little-known, almost forgotten heroes of the war. About which so much is said in general and so little in specifics ..

Since childhood, everyone has known the story of Valentin Kataev "The Son of the Regiment", and a film of the same name was made based on it. Something in this story, however, something is fiction, but it was written from a real-life hero. Kataev met him during a trip to the front in an artillery regiment ....
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Before the war, in one of the orphanages in Moscow, strangers handed over a three-year-old child. A note was tied to his arm: "Isaac, Jew, July 2, 1930. Don't let me die." In the orphanage, the child, because of the abundance of freckles, was nicknamed "the sun" and the surname was given Solntsev. So it was written in the documents - Isaac Solntsev. The war began, the Germans approached Moscow, the orphanage was waiting for evacuation to the Urals and the teachers, fearing for the life of the child, decided to change the name of Solntsev from Isaac to the usual Russian Ivan. He himself, instead of evacuating with his friend Volodya, fled from the orphanage "to the front." We got to the Belorussky railway station, climbed into a freight train and so reached Belarus. There they went to the Bobruisk forest, where they chopped firewood and exchanged it for food. They tried to remember everything they saw: where the Germans were located, how many of them, where the guns, tanks were concentrated ... And when the scouts of the artillery regiment stumbled upon dirty, ragged and hungry guys, they received important information from them, diligently recorded in the margins of school primers. Kataev managed to read this unusual diary and use it when writing his future story. This is how Solntsev became the son of the 8th Guards Artillery Regiment, helped in the kitchen, went on reconnaissance, and once was captured by the Nazis. The regiment's scouts called him Vanya. Solntsev was sent to the Suvorov Military School, but the "son of the regiment" escaped from there again to the front. I found out where his regiment was fighting, and caught up with him. He participated in the battles on the Kursk Bulge, for which he received his first order - the Red Star. Participated in the liberation of Czechoslovakia, where he was wounded and adopted by the military doctor of the evacuation hospital Malanya Rakova. She gave Isaac the patronymic and surname of her deceased husband, officer Platon Rakov. Since that wartime, the foundling Isaac became Isaac Platonovich Rakov-Solntsev. Unfortunately, the adoptive mother died soon after. And with his artillery regiment, the “son of the regiment” reached Berlin. But even after the victory over Germany, the military service of Private Rakov-Solntsev did not end. As part of the Guards artillery regiment, he participated in the battles against Japan. During the war, he received 12 wounds and a shell shock, which affected his hearing ... ..
This photo is equally given as the image of the young Vanya Solntsev, and Sasha Kolesnikov, which is discussed below.

There are probably many such stories, just the story of Solntsev is perhaps the most famous because the story is written on it. Kataev himself saw the “son of the regiment” at the front only once and then photographed him. These little soldiers who got to the front at the age of 11-12 returned from the war with military awards and, unfortunately, with injuries. The war took away their childhood, health, and crippled their lives.
The fate of the most famous "son of the regiment" ended very sadly, even tragically. Unfortunately, our country has forgotten its heroes before.

Isaac Solntsev in the last years of his life

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The son of the regiment Volodya Tarnovsky, a young intelligence officer, Berlin 1945 (pictured with a fellow soldier)

He also signs on the column of the Reichstag in May 1945.

Son of the regiment Sasha Morozov

Volodya Marilov. In 1943, when his father's funeral came, Volodya was only 11. He really wanted to avenge his father and became a pupil of the Guards Rifle Regiment. Victory Day met in Bulgaria.

Korolev Petr Ivanovich (1930-1998). In 1941 he lived on the territory of the Ugransky district of the Smolensk region. The village of Sergeevo, in which he lived, was in the rear of the Germans. Until 1943, he was a liaison with local partisans, in whose detachment his father was. In the forty-third (at the age of 13!) He went to the front with regular troops and reached Berlin as part of the 1st Belorussian Front.

Son of Regiment 169 of the Special Purpose Air Base. Name unknown, age - 10 years old, served as an assistant to a weapons technician. Poltava airfield, 1944

6-year-old Tolya Voronov, who went through a combat path with one of the guards divisions, meets his new comrades in the orphanage No. 9.

In a child, everyone saw a son
And paternally took care of
So that a man grows out of him,
So that he defended Russia!
There were difficult moments
Fire, pre-stormy silence ...
All front kilometers
There was a baby with the squad.

Tulips are blooming all around
Even the sun's light has become brighter ...
Carried the standard-bearer of the boy,
As a symbol of military victories!
(Ekaterina Kirilova, excerpt from "The Ballad of the Son of the Regiment")

Pupils of the 4th grade of the 47th school in Leningrad, awarded with medals "For the Defense of Leningrad".
1943 Leningrad

Young defenders of Leningrad on Palace Square, 1945