Vitaly ZHILIN, Lieutenant General, Honored Military Specialist of the Russian Federation, Candidate of Historical Sciences Until relatively recently, in the 60-70s, the abundance of newspaper and magazine publications, military memoirs, fiction and documentaries about the Great Patriotic War contributed to the fact that there was no doubt that someone might not know when the war began, when it ended, what great battles took place in 1941-1945. Everyone knew the names of Matrosov, Gastello, Zhukov, Koshevoy and many others. Children, streets, ships, and schools were named after them. We were proud that these brave, fearless, indomitable people were our compatriots, and that some of them were our countrymen. However, along with such bright feelings, every sane citizen of the country experienced a certain annoyance. Too often our enemies, the German-Fascist invaders, were portrayed as narrow-minded, frankly stupid, people unequal to us in terms of intelligence and abilities. Sometimes the question arose: if the enemy really was like this, then why did we fight with him for so long? Why, then, did the enemy reach Moscow and the Volga, and before that brought the whole of civilized Europe to its knees? The "varnished" facts didn't really look like the truth. And the description of the exploits of heroes often even reduced the actual scale of these personalities, without any stretch, great, extraordinary. Real heroes didn't need and don't need anyone trying to embellish their exploits. They speak for themselves. In this essay I want to tell you, dear readers, about the glorious son of the Soviet people-the valiant tankman Polikarp Lazarevich Perepelitsa. Polikarp Lazarevich Perepelitsa was born on April 6, 1918 in the village of Mostki, now Svatovsky district of the Luhansk region in the family of a peasant. Ukrainian. In the Armed Forces of the USSR since 1940. Participant of the Great Patriotic War since June 1941. A tank driver of the 36th Tank Brigade distinguished hi ... Читать далее