My Grandpa's Story. The story of a Soviet Army Combat Medic

A nice story; the grandfather came here at age 81 and became a U.S. citizen at age 90.   - - Donna Poisl

by Eric Bogomolny

All this and many other stories of his life experiences my grandfather told me over many years, including fairly recently. He was telling stories and was full of life and humor pretty much until his last day. Grandpa’s feelings and thoughts at the time of the war are also described in his diary. Well, it wasn’t really a diary. When the war ended, he was in Germany with the rest of the troops. All of a sudden he found himself with nothing to do until he was released from service: there was no more wounded soldiers on the battlefield to take care of. And so he decided to put on paper his wartime experiences. He only got from the beginning to his first combat. But it still very interesting and valuable from the historical perspective.

Grandpa was born in 1908, and when the war started for Russia, he was almost 33 years old. When he was 21 (the age of the draft at the time), he was not drafted into the army for active duty because of health reasons. Instead, he was trained as a combat medic. In 1941, however, he was considered a valuable qualified worker and, thus, was not to be drafted. Shortly after the war started his factory was to be evacuated from Odessa. He was supposed to go with the factory and was allowed to take his immediate family with him, my grandmother and my dad who was 3 at the time. However, grandma did not want to leave without the rest of her family. Nobody was taking the German threat seriously.
Click on the HEADLINE above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.