Autumn 1941 is one of the hardest pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Hitler's armies are rushing to the capital of our country - Moscow. A significant part of the territory of the USSR, including the regions of Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, has already been occupied by the Nazis. The Red Army is keeping the lines of defense at the limit of its capabilities near Moscow.
Skirmanovskie heights are located near the village of Gorki, in the Ruza district of the Moscow region. In mid-November 1941, the crews of the guns of the 3rd battery of the 694th anti-tank artillery regiment of the 16th Army were strengthened here. Soviet artillerymen are fighting the advancing enemy tanks.
On November 17, 1941, the calculation of a 37-mm anti-aircraft gun as part of the gun commander Sergeant Semyon Plokhikh, the right gunner of the Red Army Efim Dyskin, the left gunner of the Red Army Ivan Gusev, the carrier of shells Polonitsyn entered into an unequal battle with the advancing enemy tanks. Since there were not enough anti-tank guns, the command deployed anti-aircraft guns against the advancing tanks. The battle lasted more than an hour, during which the enemy destroyed all the battery's guns, except for the only anti-aircraft gun, commanded by Sergeant Bad.
About twenty German tanks were advancing on the anti-aircraft gun … From the calculation, only two remained in the ranks - the right gunner Efim Dyskin and the left gunner Ivan Gusev. Efim Dyskin, as a senior gunner, ordered Gusev to deliver shells, and from the first shots two German tanks blazed out. In response, the Nazis opened fire on the only surviving weapon of the Soviet battery. One of the fragments killed the Red Army soldier Gusev. Efim Dyskin remained for both the gunner and the carrier of the shells. With the third round, he immediately hit the enemy's tank - and in the latter, the ammunition soon exploded.
Dyskin continued to fight an unequal battle, not even noticing that in the heat of the battle he was wounded. The regimental commissar, senior political instructor Fyodor Bocharov, came to help the gunner. He wanted to help the wounded young Red Army man to get up from the loader's seat. Dyskin refused. Then Bocharov himself began to feed shells to the gunner, and Yefim managed to knock out four more tanks. By this time, there were already four wounds on Dyskin's body. Political instructor Bocharov was killed soon after. Gunner Dyskin, exhausted from pain, was still able to send the last round to the gun and knock out another enemy tank. Then it darkened in the eyes of the fighter …
Six months have passed. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of April 12, 1942, the Red Army soldier Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin was posthumously awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his heroism. He was only 18 years old - the fearless gunner Dyskin, who heroically held the defenses at that height and set an absolute record for the number of enemy tanks destroyed from an anti-aircraft gun.
From the photo, an elderly man in the uniform of a major general, with a large number of awards and the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, is looking at us. This is Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin. Allow me! But after all, Efim Dyskin, an eighteen-year-old boy, died near the village of Gorki, and received the Hero posthumously? Everything is so, but only as long as the higher command thought that the fearless gunner had been killed in a battle with the Nazis, eighteen-year-old Dyskin, evacuated by orderlies from the battlefield in a grave condition, was nursed in hospitals.
First, Dyskin was taken to the Istra Medical Battalion, then transferred to Vladimir, and from there to Sverdlovsk. The guy was very bad, and only a very young age and a strong body allowed him to survive. In April 1942, a strange delegation - a general, the head of the hospital, doctors, a representative of the military registration and enlistment office - showed up right into the ward to the wounded Red Army soldier. The soldier Dyskin looked at them with uncomprehending eyes, until the nurse said that he had been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union … posthumously.
At first, the Red Army soldier Dyskin tried to "deny". He really did not understand that it was he who was awarded this high title - since posthumously, and he survived, it means a real hero - some of his deceased namesake. Being a decent man, Dyskin tried to refuse the award, said that it was not him, but there was no mistake here.
The same decree as Major General I. V. Panfilov, Efim Dyskin was awarded the highest award of the country. When it turned out that the fearless gunner had survived and was being treated in a hospital, a telegram was sent there signed by the "All-Union Headman" Mikhail Kalinin with congratulations and confirmation of the award.
In June 1942, at the Sverdlovsk Opera and Ballet Theater, 19-year-old Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin was awarded a diploma of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. The fighter was on the mend. Of course, he would gladly join other Red Army soldiers who fought at the front, but he understood that after such severe wounds he would no longer be able to serve in combat units. It was necessary to think about in what new field to benefit society. And it was the long-term treatment in the hospital, the observation of the very important and selfless work of doctors and nurses that influenced the choice of Efim Dyskin - the nineteen-year-old Hero of the Soviet Union decided to become a medical worker.
Actually, Dyskin was not particularly interested in medicine before. Khaim Naftulyevich, and this was the name of the future hero at birth, Dyskin was born on January 10, 1923 in the village of Korotkie in the Pochep district of the Gomel province, in the family of an ordinary Soviet employee. After graduating from high school in Bryansk, Dyskin came to Moscow and entered the first year of the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature named after Chernyshevsky. Of course, he had no plans to become a professional soldier - the young man aspired to study the humanities.
However, as soon as the war began, the young first-year student himself came to the Sokolniki District Military Commissariat of Moscow and asked to go to the front. This was done by hundreds of thousands of Yefim's peers throughout the country. Dyskin also decided to go to war. He was sent to an artillery training course as an anti-aircraft gunner. After their completion, Dyskin began serving in anti-aircraft artillery, repelling enemy air raids on Moscow, but when the offensive of German tanks began to pose the greatest danger, the anti-aircraft guns were quickly retrained into anti-tank guns and sent to the front. The anti-aircraft gunners had to play the role of anti-tank artillery and, I must say, they coped with it quite well.
Before that battle, Efim Dyskin was a completely ordinary soldier - a "green" Red Army soldier with several months of service behind him. Only eighteen years old. Who would have thought that a few years later, after the victory in the Great Patriotic War, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov himself would write about him:
Everyone knows the names of Panfilov's men, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and other fearless warriors who have become legendary, the pride of the people; however, I would put on a par with them and the feat of the ordinary gunner of the gun of the 694th artillery anti-tank regiment Efim Dyskin.
The wounded Red Army soldier, while still in the hospital, began to closely monitor the work of medical workers and soon, as soon as his health had improved relatively, he entered the military medical school, which was evacuated from Kiev and was housed in the very same Sverdlovsk hospital where Dyskin himself was treated. The wounded Red Army soldier showed the same zeal for his studies as for the service. He was able to immediately pass the exams for the entire three-year course of the medical school, after which he finally decided - he needed to enter the Military Medical Academy.
Before the war, the Military Medical Academy - one of the most serious and prestigious educational institutions of the Soviet Union - was located in Leningrad, but in November 1941 it was evacuated to distant Central Asia - to Samarkand. The young Hero of the Soviet Union went there from Sverdlovsk. In 1944, the Military Medical Academy was transferred back to Leningrad, and in 1947 Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin graduated from it.
A former student of a humanitarian university, and then an anti-aircraft gunner, Hero of the Soviet Union Dyskin, after graduating from the Military Medical Academy, remained to work there - to teach and engage in research activities. In 1954 he graduated from the postgraduate course of the Academy, and before that, in 1951, he defended his thesis of the candidate of medical sciences.
Dyskin's scientific interests included issues that were very significant for military medicine - gunshot wounds, the impact on the body of blast waves and other extreme factors. In this direction, Dyskin worked diligently and methodically, studying mountains of scientific literature and coming to his own conclusions.
In 1961, Efim Dyskin defended his thesis of Doctor of Medical Sciences, in 1966 he became a professor, and in 1967 he received the military rank of Colonel of the Medical Service. By this time, Efim Anatolyevich was behind not only the Great Patriotic War, but also twenty years of service in military medicine. From 1968 to 1988, Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin headed the Department of Normal Anatomy of the Military Medical Academy. In 1981, Colonel Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin was promoted to Major General of the Medical Service.
In 1988, after spending twenty years as head of the Department of Normal Anatomy, Major General Dyskin retired from military service and moved to the position of professor-consultant at the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Military Medical Academy. Not only service and scientific merits, but also love and respect from the students were evidence of the highest professionalism of Professor Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin - as a specialist in the field of military medicine and as a teacher and educator.
Dyskin's lectures, according to the recollections of former students of the Military Medical Academy and colleagues - teachers, really had something to love - the professor tried his best, made them very interesting for listeners, using all the power of his intellect and extensive knowledge not only in medicine, but also in Latin, in literature. During his work at the Military Medical Academy, Dyskin wrote more than 100 scientific papers, twice became a laureate of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Prize.
The whole family of Efim Anatolyevich was also connected with medicine. His wife Dora Matveevna worked as a pediatrician, his son Dmitry became a neurologist, a doctor of medical sciences, and his daughter was also a doctor. On October 14, 2012, literally a few months before his ninetieth birthday, Professor, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Major General of the Medical Service, retired Hero of the Soviet Union Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin died. He was buried in one of the city cemeteries in St. Petersburg.
In fact, Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin accomplished two feats. The first feat did not last so long, although to the Red Army soldier Dyskin himself then, probably, these terrible hours seemed like an eternity. The first feat was that battle near the village of Gorki, where a wounded eighteen-year-old boy, yesterday's humanities student, having lost all his colleagues from the gunnery calculation, fought the Nazis for life and death.
The second feat turned out to be much longer than the fight at altitude, and stretched out for many decades. This feat is the very life of Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin, who, after severe injuries, was able not only to survive, but also to pass exams for a medical school course, to unlearn at the most difficult Military Medical Academy and make a brilliant scientific and teaching career there.
It is a pity that now we are witnessing how the last representatives of this amazing generation of people - the real titans who defended our country during the Great Patriotic War, rebuilt and raised it in the post-war decades - are passing away. One of such people, of course, was Efim Anatolyevich Dyskin.
