An acquaintance of mine, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, once said: “There is an opinion that Ivanov is the most common surname among Russians. And at the front, to be honest, I most often met the Smirnovs. And although they all fought in different ways, they were equally valiant."
So this material was born about some of the Smirnov front-line soldiers, famous and not.
Alexey Smirnov
The name of this talented actor is known, perhaps, if not to everyone, then to very, very many. He was born in the city of Danilov, Yaroslavl region. Even before the war he became a stage actor.
According to some sources, Smirnov went to the front as a volunteer. And there is information that in 1940 he was drafted into the army. But one thing is certain: he was a brave soldier. He fought on the Western, Bryansk, 1st Ukrainian and 1st Belorussian fronts, went to reconnaissance many times. Here are extracts from his award lists.
“During the breakthrough of the German defense near the village of Onatskovtsy on March 4, 1944, Smirnov and his platoon destroyed a mortar battery, a heavy machine gun and up to 30 enemy soldiers. Having repulsed the Onatskovtsy, the platoon moved forward and captured the city of Starokonstantinov. In that battle, senior sergeant Smirnov with a platoon destroyed 2 heavy machine guns, a 75-mm gun and 35 enemy infantry …"
“On July 20, 1944, in the area of height 283.0, the enemy threw up to 40 fighters into the attack. Smirnov rushed into battle with his personal weapon, inspiring his comrades, thereby repelling the attack. In that battle, the Germans lost 17 soldiers, and Smirnov personally took 7 people prisoner. A week later, in the area of the village of Zhuravka, choosing firing positions, Smirnov and three of his fellow soldiers faced an enemy group of 16 people. The Germans tried to take Soviet soldiers prisoner, but they fought back, destroying 9 and capturing five …"
“During the Vistula-Oder operation on January 17, 1945, Smirnov's battery was ambushed near the village of Postavice. Smirnov with three Red Army men attacked the Germans. Alexey Makarovich personally destroyed three and captured two enemy soldiers, opening the way for further advance.."
And at the same time, the future famous actor at the front directed amateur performances! At the end of the war, Smirnov was severely wounded, and after a long treatment in the hospital he was discharged.
A holder of the Order of Glory, who was also awarded many medals, he almost never told people about his military merits. And we are used to seeing him in comic images: funny, awkward, roguish. And only in the film of Smirnov's closest friend Leonid Bykov "Only old men go to battle" Alexey Makarovich appears completely different. In general, his biography is a separate big story about an exceptionally decent man who sacrificed his personal happiness. Modest, smart, kind. Smirnov adored children, but could not get permission to adopt Vanya, an introverted boy from an orphanage. He had all-Union fame, but was not proud of it. He greatly appreciated his friendship with Leonid Bykov. Was in the hospital when he died in a car accident. Doctors did not say anything to Smirnov about this, fearing for his heart. But when he checked out, he set the table and raised the first glass to his friend. The secret had to be revealed. Alexey Makarovich silently put a glass on the table, returned to the ward, lay down on the bed and died …
Sergey Smirnov
Now, in my opinion, the books of Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov are not studied in literature lessons, and in extracurricular lists I see them quite rarely. But this man was one of the first to begin a huge work to perpetuate the memory of the heroes of the war. His book about the defenders of the Brest Fortress was collected literally bit by bit. And radio and television programs dedicated to the search for war heroes! I recently wrote about the young partisan Nadya Bogdanova. So, her name became widely known thanks to the transfer of Smirnov.
He himself is a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. He served in a fighter battalion, graduated from a sniper school near Moscow, an anti-aircraft artillery school in Ufa. He commanded a platoon of an anti-aircraft artillery division, worked as an employee of the 57th Army newspaper. He was discharged from the army in 195 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
By the way, it was Smirnov who was the first to dare to speak out in defense of the soldiers who were captured during the war years and convicted for this.
Yuri Smirnov
This nineteen-year-old village guy is a Hero of the Soviet Union.
The youngest, the third child in the family, Yurka grew up as a desperate boy. He could, for example, race at full speed on a bareback horse, and even backwards. Or ride on an ice floe during an ice drift.
When the war started, the guy worked as an electric welder. But at the end of 1942, his father died at Stalingrad. And Yuri decided to take revenge on the fascist bastards.
He began to fight as part of the 77th Guards Rifle Regiment and until the last day of his life had no awards (although according to some sources he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree during his lifetime).
On the night of June 24, 1944, our night tank landing broke through the fascist defenses in the Orsha direction. There was a battle for the village of Shalashino (this is in the Vitebsk region), and in this battle the Germans captured a wounded private soldier. They pinned great hopes on the prisoner, they urgently needed to find out where the Soviet tanks were going, how many there were. The Nazis tried their best to save the Orsha-Minsk highway.
But Private Smirnov refused to answer questions. The interrogation continued throughout the night. The Germans brutally tortured the guy, beat him, stripped him naked, stabbed him. But without achieving anything, in impotent rage they brutally killed him: they crucified him on the wall of the dugout, hammering nails into his hands, leg and head to the very caps, and stabbing him with bayonets.
In the morning, our soldiers broke through the defenses. And they found dead Yuri in one of the dugouts …
Teacher Smirnov and his children
Many, many Smirnovs defended our land from the Nazis. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, fighter pilot Alexei Semyonovich Smirnov during the war years flew more than 450 sorties and fought about 80 air battles.
Vladimir Vasilyevich Smirnov (also a pilot, also a Hero of the Soviet Union, but he received this title before the start of the Great Patriotic War, in 1940) withdrew his division from the enemy ring, was seriously wounded and was sent to staff work. But that was not for him. Smirnov mastered a new Il-2 aircraft and took attack aircraft on combat missions. The division under his command smashed enemy tank columns on the Kursk Bulge. The hero himself died in July 1943.
Alexander Yakovlevich Smirnov (and he is a hero of the Soviet Union!), The commander of a sapper company of the 5th Shock Army, in January 1944, during the offensive of our troops from the Mangushevsky bridgehead, located between two rivers, together with his company captured the only bridge in that area and personally cleared it. Then this company held the defense until our tanks crossed the bridge - about two hundred!
And how many more Smirnov-heroes, about whose exploits it is not known …
Of course, it’s not a matter of surnames at all. You can write the same material about the Petrovs, Sidorovs, Konevs, Ignatovs and others, and others, and others. And Smirnov can be a traitor or a scoundrel. But I know a case in the Lipetsk region, when this name played a very important role …
… When Ivan Mikhailovich Smirnov's leg was amputated in the hospital, he, blinded by pain, did not even understand this at first. But then the doctor came, brought a crutch and said that his legs were gone, and Sergeant Smirnov would soon be demobilized.
… Leaving round prints in the dust, Ivan Mikhailovich has once again walked around the ashes. Three walls, a pile of black, soot-stained stones. In the middle there are metal pipes - the legs of the bed. And there is also a stove. Ivan Mikhailovich laid it down himself before marriage. Brick by brick, to last forever. And so it happened - the house burned down, and the stove survived.
The house burned down not empty. The family of Ivan Mikhailovich burned down in it: his wife Anna Alekseevna and four sons. The Nazis wanted to arrange a bathhouse in the Smirnovs' house, but Anna Alekseevna opposed it. And "to freeze to death", the Nazis burned them alive.
The villagers later said that when the flame went up, the children began to call their father. They all dreamed that he would come and save now.
And now Ivan Mikhailovich once again walked around the ashes. And it seemed to him that his family was alive. That she is suffering and tormented. And that his sons still call him, they ask for help.
Before the war, Smirnov worked as a teacher in one of the schools in the Terbunsky district. But now he thought that he would never be able to look at another child again. I wanted to get a job on a collective farm, but the chairman flatly refused - he sent me to school, allocated a class to live at first.
Ivan Mikhailovich agreed, on the same evening he came to a new place of work. I went to empty classrooms, recalled how his two eldest sons studied here. And suddenly I heard someone's hasty steps. It was a little boy about five years old that trotted along the corridor.
- Uncle, I came to the first class! The nurse was scrambling, the new teacher will be shy. And they will feed at school, don’t you reap? For me, just not a turnip! She's nasty every day, this turnip!
And suddenly it thawed in the soul of Ivan Mikhailovich at the sight of a chatty little boy who wanted to study and eat not only turnips. He bent down to the future student, stroked the head:
- How old are you?
- Sheychash five. And there will be a short time! They chew me with Shenkoy. Shmirnov …
… Among the students of Ivan Mikhailovich there were five Smirnovs - two girls and three boys. Lisp Senka has not yet been admitted to the first grade. But he turned out to be a grated kalach and every day he took the school by storm: he came with a demand to give out textbooks or feed them not with turnips. Ivan Mikhailovich fed Senka with flour broth, but did not give out textbooks - the entire library of the school burned down during the occupation.
But he was allowed to sit in a lesson with high school students. Senka behaved quietly for several minutes, and then began to tell how his folder shot a hundred fascists from a rifle at the front. Or maybe two hundred - go and count them during the battle! Senka did not have a father, he died during the spring ice drift even before the war. The whole class knew this, but was silent.
Every day Ivan Mikhailovich became more and more attached to his students, especially to the Smirnovs. Sometimes it seemed to him that it was his own children sitting at their desks and listening to his every word. He kept their scribbled notebooks, as fathers and mothers cherish children's memorabilia. In winter and early spring he cooked a flour broth - except for flour, there was nothing to eat. I cut buttons out of wood and sewed them on to the guys like badges. In the summer he grew beets, carrots, potatoes - all delicious vegetables, except for turnips, because the lisping Senka could not stand it.
After the war, Ivan Mikhailovich worked for many years as a teacher in various schools - in the Lipetsk region and beyond. During this time, he raised and taught thirty-eight Smirnovs - thirteen girls and twenty-five boys. After they all graduated from school, no one forgot their teacher. They wrote letters, came to visit.
Lisping Senka, having matured, stopped lisping. He became a military man and, wherever he served, sent parcels to Ivan Mikhailovich. And once he came to visit, he brought a bag of turnips.
The second time Ivan Mikhailovich did not marry, he lived alone. And he told all his acquaintances that he had thirty-eight children.
