the Old Town telling us about casualties – those wounded and killed by the bombs – one bomb fell into our relatives’ yard killing them and destroying the house… ”.

In Kharkov, Grigori’s mother worked in a military hospital. He volunteered there for 2 years before enlisting in the army himself and volunteering to serve on a military medical train.

“I ended up joining #43 military medical train. I was a medical attendant. Each medical attendant served for one train car, 60 patients per train car. At such a young age I had to carry wounded soldiers, especially those arriving from medical battalions. ”

Grigori’s medical train transported soldiers from The Battle of Kursk to hospital a hospital in Irkutsk. They treated wounded soldiers in Manchuria and Mongolia returning to The Western Front. Around this time Grigori volunteered for active duty. He was sent to a radio training program before being stationed on the front lines in Belarus.

“We were sent to a communications regiment in the central section of the West Front, town Borisov, Belarus. Interestingly, the enemy equipped with radars were able to identify the location of our radio station right when we were on the air. They knew that there was supposed to be an HQ and the command around. They would quickly open artillery fire targeting the spot”.

Grigori would use his radio training after the war, working with the navy to improve submarine communication at extreme depths. After retiring in 1976, Grigori was a frequent guest lecturer at Soviet naval academies. He currently lives in Vancouver.