Guard Private Seryozhenka - the youngest soldier of the Great Patriotic War, who saved his commander

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Seryozha Aleshkov was only 6 years old in 1942, when the Germans executed his mother and older brother for contact with partisans. They lived in the Kaluga region. The boy was saved by a neighbor. She threw the baby out of the hut window and shouted to run with all her might …

Seryozha managed to hide in the forest. Today it is difficult to say how long the exhausted and hungry child wandered through the autumn forest. But he was lucky - he was accidentally found by scouts of the 142nd Guards Rifle Regiment, commanded by Major Vorobyov. The boy was taken to the regiment. For the little soldier, although with difficulty, they picked up a military uniform, but the uniform was found, as expected.

Major Mikhail Vorobyov - young and unmarried - became Seryozha's father. He later adopted the boy. “But you don’t have a mother, Seryozhenka,” the major said somehow sadly, stroking the boy's head. And he said optimistically: “No, it will be so! “I like nurse Aunt Nina, she is kind and beautiful.” It seems incredible, but with the light hand of his adopted son, the major found his happiness and lived with Nina Andreevna Bedova, the foreman of the medical service, all his life.

Seryozha's character turned out to be just golden - he never complained, never whined. He helped his comrades in arms as much as he could: he carried cartridges, mail to the soldiers, and sang songs between battles. For the soldiers, the baby was a reminder of a peaceful life, everyone tried to caress the baby, but his heart belonged only to Major Vorobyov.

Seryozha received the Medal "For Military Merit" for saving his named father's life. Once, during an air raid, an enemy bomb hit the regiment commander's dugout. No one, except Seryozha, saw that Major Vorobyov was under the rubble of logs. “Folder!” Seryozha shouted in a voice that was not his own, pressed his ear to the logs and heard a groan. At first, he tried to move the logs himself, but only tore his hands bloody. And although explosions rumbled all around, the kid was not frightened and ran for help. The boy brought the soldiers to the place where until recently there was a dugout, and they managed to pull out the commander. And Guard Private Seryozha at that time was sobbing next to him in a voice, smearing dirt on his face, like a little boy, which he, in fact, was.

When General Chuikov, the commander of the 8th Guards Army, found out about the young hero, he awarded Seryozha with a combat weapon - a captured Walther pistol. Later, the boy was wounded, he was sent to the hospital and he never returned to the front line.

It is known that the son of the regiment, Aleshkov, after the war, graduated from the Suvorov School and the Kharkov Law Institute. He worked as a lawyer in Chelyabinsk, where his adoptive parents, Mikhail and Nina Vorobyov, lived. He died in 1990.

There was another legendary personality in the history of the war, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya - war heroine, whose name is overgrown with ridiculous myths.