Immortal Regiment KRSU. Memory as a reward (Alexander Yurikov)
My father – Alexander Stepanovich Yurikov – went to the front in the fall of 1941. He fought as part of the 385th Krichev Rifle Division, which was formed in Frunze. The day he was escorted to the front was remembered forever. There is still a feeling of bitterness, emptiness and anxiety in my soul. Then it seemed that life had slowed down and time had stopped. After hugging my father and wiping away my tears, my mother, brother and I went home. What a joy it was when we saw our father on the threshold of the house. It turned out that the departure of the train was postponed to the next day, and all those leaving were released on leave.
My father fought on the Voronezh, Southwestern, and 3rd Ukrainian fronts, liberated Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, took part in the assault on Bucharest, was wounded, and was awarded a medal «For Military Merit».
My father did not like to remember his everyday life at the front. And we didn’t really need to know the details. Although there was no war as such in our city, it was all around, we saw and felt it. I remember one conversation between front-line soldiers, when they gathered in our house at the festive table and talked about respites between battles. My father then told me one incident that occurred in the summer of 1944 – at that time there were offensive battles in Romania. Red Army units took up positions on the Prut River, and German troops retreated to the Siret River. This fact was immediately noticed by wits, becoming part of the soldier’s humor: «If ours are on the Prut, then the German is on S...!». According to his father, this joke in a front-line newspaper took the form of a caricature.
After the war, my father worked at the Ministry of Motor Transport of the Kyrgyz SSR and raised 5 children. All children received higher education. For his many years of peaceful labor, he was awarded the «Veteran of Labor» medal. But an even greater reward for him – is the memory that his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and now great-great-grandchildren keep about him, who every year in Bishkek, Moscow, Maloyaroslavets carry a portrait of Alexander Stepanovich Yurikov in columns «of the Immortal Regiment».
Vladimir Yurikov,
professor of the Department of Non-Traditional and
renewable energy sources
