Old War Photos of Grannies: Tales of War

Date of Birth: 13.01.1922

Date of death: 18.06.1989/XNUMX/XNUMX

Elena Mamontova, the wife of Vlad’s grandson, says:

– In my family archive there are no photographs of my grandmothers from the war years. But there are wonderful photos and memories in my husband’s family. He often talks about his grandmother.

Vera Mikhailovna Medvedeva (Matsui) was 19 when her family was in the occupation. The town of Shostka, where they lived, was captured at the end of August 1941. Residents were preparing for war, but soon they did not expect it. The enemy was far to the north, fighting in the east of Belarus in the Moscow direction, in the west beyond the Dnieper, unsuccessfully trying to capture Kiev. Therefore, when the troops of the 2nd Panzer Group of the Wehrmacht, led by Colonel-General Guderian from the Moscow direction, turned sharply 90 degrees south directly towards Shostka, for the inhabitants it was like a bolt from the blue! Shostka was captured on 25 August. Father Vera was left in the city to work underground. She and her sister, as best they could, helped my father, for example, by distributing leaflets.

The underground workers obtained valuable intelligence information, rescued the families of Soviet patriots, and sent them to partisan detachments. The most valuable was the information about the date and plan of the offensive of the 2nd Panzer Group of the Wehrmacht on Moscow. Unfortunately, the Gestapo agent reported to the invaders information about the Soviet underground. The partisan headquarters was forced to undermine the fortifications and relocate to the Bryansk forests, and most of the Shostka underground fighters failed to escape. They were tortured and executed by the Gestapo.

Among them was my grandmother’s father. Local boys, who secretly watched the execution, said that people were tied in a chain, put on a board above a pit in the courtyard of a chemical-technological college. They fell into the grave – dead and alive … The earth moved after people were buried.

Local policemen forcibly drove the population to work to extract peat knee-deep in water. There was a danger that they might be driven to Germany. Vera and her family had to go into hiding.

After the release of Shostka, Vera worked as the head of the post office. She was very quick at work, she was loved for her sincerity and cheerful character. This lovely girl was looked after by our grandfather, whom the military roads brought to this small city. Thus began a peaceful life.

My husband Vlad remembers my grandmother as a person with a wise, loving heart, capable of feeling trouble affecting loved ones even at a distance. She loved her children and grandchildren selflessly, forgetting about herself.

Date of birth – 25.10.1925/XNUMX/XNUMX

Date of death – 09.03.2014/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Irina Smolyanaya tells:

– My grandmother died only 2 years ago, she lived for 87 years. Although her life was filled not so much with joy as with deprivation, hunger and hard work. But she always had love for life!

Nina Umnova (she became Smolyana after her second marriage) was born in the Ural village of Novoalekseevka in a poor large family. She grew up the first beauty in the village. They fell in love with her, but they were not in a hurry to send matchmakers – even in those pre-war years, the homeless women were reluctant to get married. And Nina had love with the son of the most prosperous villagers. He was going to go against his relatives, who already had a rich bride in store for their son. The grandmother told the sad ending of this story as follows: somehow they quarreled with her beloved, he drank. And the next morning he woke up from the same bed with the very rich bride whom his relatives wooed him. I had to marry – they made me. Nina said in her hearts to the first fan she came across: “Send in the matchmakers!” This admirer turned out to be – alas! – the first drinker in the village. Their family life passed under the slogan “Vaska is back as a lord,” and ended when the unlucky husband went to prison. The personal life of the failed groom also did not work out: many years later they met on the train, and he admitted that he could not love his wife …

When the war began, Nina was 16 years old. She moved to Sverdlovsk and got a job as a turner at a factory. Then I learned to be an electric winding machine. And all my life – even after retirement – my grandmother worked hard at the factories – steam locomotive repair, ball bearing. Undertook two or even three jobs at the same time. I met my grandfather Fyodor at the steam locomotive. I fell in love right away and so that it was already breathtaking when I passed by. But even with this man, everything was not easy for her. Firstly, he was repressed and deported to the Urals from his native Ukraine due to the fact that during the war he ended up in a concentration camp. Secondly, due to starvation in a concentration camp, he believed that he could not have children. Thirdly, Fedor was married.

But Nina was not only interested in life, but also assertive. And even – what can I say – some arrogance. In general, the grandmother recaptured the future grandfather from his wife in a simple way – she proved that he was not sterile. This is how my uncle was born. However, it took years and the birth of another child – my dad – for Fedor to go with Nina to the registry office. By the way, dad then just went to the second grade …

With my husband – my grandfather Fedor

No one ever felt sorry for Nina: when she was little, and parents had no time to shake over another of many children; when the first husband went to prison, and she was left alone with her little daughter (my aunt): when a pregnant woman, at the eighth month, dragged water from a well to a barrack where she lived with her second husband; when a little later, at night, in frost, I went to the station to collect coal that fell out of the freight cars …

My grandmother had a difficult character. She did not become a traditional “caring grandmother”. She usually said what she thought to her face, and it was often too harsh. But when, after the accident, crying parents brought me home, all covered in scars and brilliant green, Nina resolutely gathered me up and, together with my grandfather, took me south to rehabilitate. Yes, the function of “hug and regret” was performed by my grandfather, and my grandmother dragged me to the doctors, sewed beautiful dresses (to distract from the scars) and knock out the best seats on the train.

I have never eaten at anyone’s place more than such a delicious shortbread cake that my grandmother baked, I always had the most stylish suit at matinees (the Squirrel sewn by her was generally out of competition!). She also went to the bathhouse until she was very old, and after that she painted her eyebrows, thinly plucked in the pre-war fashion, with permanent paint …

Date of birth – 29.08.1930/XNUMX/XNUMX

Date of death – 30.03.1996/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Alena Kosterina tells:

– I remember how my grandmother talked about wartime – what a terrible famine was … How she had to collect leaves and dry them, then grind and bake cakes. And once she had to, hiding, look for potatoes at night, because everyone was sent to the front! But she was able to survive! After the war, my grandmother worked as a kindergarten teacher until her retirement.

Date of birth – 31.03.1921/XNUMX/XNUMX

Date of death – 19.04.2010/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Maria Ponimatkina says:

– My grandmother didn’t like to talk about the war, but to sing military and victory songs – it’s please, with great pleasure!

She was born in the city of Polevskoy, and here, in the Urals, she would also come in handy. But at the beginning of the war, 20-year-old Masha volunteered for the front. Later she said that if she had been smarter, she would never have gone. But then…

She served in the medical battalion, carried out the wounded from the battlefield. And there, at the front, I met my beloved Andryusha, my grandfather, he left to fight from the Vinnitsa region. They got married without waiting for the end of the war in liberated Leningrad. Lived together for 53 years. And my mother was born exactly two months before the Victory!

The family has preserved very touching postcards that Andryusha sent to pregnant Marusa through the military field mail from the front to the rear – in them he certainly conveyed greetings to the “future son”.

Date of birth – 04.10.1909/XNUMX/XNUMX

Date of death – 01.03.2005/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Anna Tverdova tells:

– My grandmother – my father’s mother, Vera Evgrafovna Anchugova, belonged to the galaxy of the first geophysicists of the Urals and was a native Uralochka. She was a distant relative of Mamin-Sibiryak (her maiden name is Mamina).

Vera’s husband Matvey Ivanovich Anchugov was in the first group of graduates of the geophysical specialty, led by Professor Petrovsky. Together with Peter Nikolaevich Menshikov, Dmitry Feodosyevich Umantsev and Dmitry Petrovich Kasatkin, he began to work on the geophysics of the Urals. Matvey Ivanovich was in charge of electrical exploration work. Vera Evgrafovna worked under his leadership and managed to travel all over the Urals.

During the Great Patriotic War, Vera Anchugova, as part of a highly qualified group of cartographers and geophysicists, participated in the exploration and description of new deposits of iron and aluminum ore in the mountainous Urals. Then, in difficult weather conditions, iron ore deposits were discovered. In the creation of the legendary T-34 tanks, the appearance of which on the battlefields basically decided the course of the war, there was a tangible merit of the pioneering geologists of the mountainous Urals.

For shock work during the Second World War and the subsequent peacetime, my grandmother Anchugova Vera Evgrafovna was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and two medals “For Valiant Labor during the Second World War 1941-1945.” and “For Labor Valor”.

Date of birth – 14.04.1935/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Ksenia Frolenkova tells:

– My grandmother was 6 years old when the war began. Together with little Sasha, my great-grandmother still had five children in her arms, because my father and older brother were taken to the front. Despite the fact that the time was very difficult, my grandmother often recalls her childhood with love and warmth. For example, she remembers the taste of the tortillas that her mother baked from clover, frozen potatoes and linden leaves, or the taste of juicy burdock root!

I often heard memories of how little Sasha climbed onto the bird cherry with a bucket, picked the berries, dragged them home so that my mother would bake a pie out of them. Or how he and his brothers and sisters went to the swamp for wild onions. It happened that on the way to school, she and the children walked past the fields and picked up ears of wheat, sent them to school, so that they could make porridge out of it in winter. When the first young potatoes appeared, they dug a bush, walked to the river, dug a hole, lit a fire and cooked potatoes, but did not eat them, but carried them to their mother. My grandmother often said that, despite the difficult time, it was joyful for them to live.

Date of birth – 14.12.1932/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Tatyana Rudina tells:

– In 1939, my great-grandfather, as a good specialist, was summoned to the Urals from Ukraine to build a metal plant in Nizhny Tagil. My grandmother Raisa then went to the 1st grade.

In 1941, my great-grandfather received a severe burn of his leg: they thought he would not survive, but three years later he recovered. During the war years, they had a very hard time, especially since my great-grandmother had five children! Together with her brothers and sisters, Raisa looked for food as best she could. Later, my grandmother began to work at a metallurgical plant, she was recognized as an honorary worker, her brother – uncle Misha – became a pilot, another brother – Kolya – an agronomist, worked in the virgin lands … Everyone felt the responsibility that they needed to work and raise the country.

Little Raisa with her family (between mom and dad)

Date of birth – 04.11.1906/XNUMX/XNUMX

Date of death – 04.04.1989/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Elena Gavrilko says:

– My grandmother Elizaveta Grigorievna was a simple woman. She was born in 1906 in the small village of Vorobyi, Petukhovsky district, Kurgan region. She married Fyodor Yakovlevich Shtangeev. They gave birth, raised and educated their six children.

Fedor was drafted into the army in 1939 – he was sent to the front. He served in an autorot, and at that time Elizabeth was cope with three young children alone, worked, they somehow managed to feed themselves. When the war ended, there were no fewer problems. Once a grenade exploded in the hands of the eldest son, and the boy lost his sight …

Years later, Fedor was found to have an open form of tuberculosis. Despite the hard life, Lisa and Fedor lived in love and care – for children, for each other, and then for us, grandchildren. Love bound together all children, and their children, and its threads stretched between us today, cousins ​​and sisters.

Lisa with her family – on the right, the youngest

Date of birth – 08.11.1914/XNUMX/XNUMX

Date of death – 02.09.1991/XNUMX/XNUMX

Granddaughter Tatiana Galentsova tells:

– At the beginning of the war, Grandma Mote was 27 years old. Husband Victor went to the front, and she had two little sons in her arms – Kolya and Sasha. Grandmother got up at four in the morning and worked on the farm until late at night, worn out. In the “household” of one milkmaid there were seventeen cows, which had to be fed and watered. And everything was done by hand – women mowed hay, carried water, removed manure on a horse.

It also happened that late in the evening, women also went to the current – grain processing. There were not enough people. And it was necessary to help the front. In the neighboring village of Vladimirovka, which is ten kilometers from Novoklyuchi, my grandmother’s native village, women mined salt on the lake. They had to go barefoot into the icy water. I had to get used to the constant pain. The salt mined with such difficulty was sent to the region, and then to the front.

Once Matryona went to the extraction of salt with her husband’s mother, Polina Sviridovna. And when they were in the water, a woman from Novoklyuchi appeared on the shore, who shouted loudly that a funeral had come for Yegor, the son of Polina Sviridovna. The grandmother was so stunned by the terrible news that she simply collapsed into the icy water …

Matryona’s salt trips were not in vain – her legs hurt her whole life. After all, every salt mining was frostbite – the legs were covered with purple-black spots.

For her labor feat she was awarded the medal “For Valiant Labor during the Great Patriotic War of 1941−1945.” May 9 has always been a special day for great-grandmother Mochi. When her frostbitten legs still allowed, she went to a rally in the center of the village.