By Vestnik Kavkaza
This year in Russia and the world the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War is being celebrated. The importance of this historical event is increasing every year. The memories of the people of the former Soviet Union about the war are supported by mutual values. The Victory Day was procured by our unity. It is an opportunity to pay tribute to all those who fought and worked on the home front during the war. People who led the country to the Victory were interviewed by Vestnik Kavkaza. Veteran Bekir Khanlar Mammadov, remembers his fighting moments during World War II. Bekir Khanlar Mammadov, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, shared his memories of the war:
I was born in 1920. I graduated from the Pedagogical College in 1939-40. Then I joined the army. The first time I was in Ukraine. There was no war that time. I was in the service almost 2.5 months. The quarantine was not cancelled and we were not full-fledged soldiers. At this time, it was informed that the German fascists bombed some of our cities: Kamenets-Podolsky, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lviv, Brest, and so on. At that time we were at the shooting range. We arrived, we were stopped, the colonel, commander of the 467th Infantry Regiment, came to us. I'm an infantryman. He said: "Comrades, the German fascists started a war against us, it won’t not do without us." We arrived there, where people lived, saw that everything was masked. Then we were sent to city of Gomel in Belarus.
My first fight was in Gomel in 1941. We were told that we were to liberate Minsk. When we got there, Minsk had already been occupied. It was not easy, as not all forces retreated. We came and stood in the Kalmyk steppes. It was very cold in 1942-1943. We were in dugouts and trenches, when the weather was becoming cold. There were no places to hide, just a bleak steppe. We can say it was bare steppe. When we counterattacked in 1943, the Siberian troops supported us. Japan decided not to wage a war against our country, that is why we were reinforced. Then we counterattacked in Stalingrad. At that time the name of the city was Stalingrad, then it was renamed Volgograd. We went forward from there.
Thank God that the 15 republics were united, friendly, respected each other. We had our meal from one cauldron. We were one nation: Ukrainians, Russians, Uzbeks, or Jews. Suddenly, we were told that we were in Smolensk. In the summer of 1944 in June, after May exactly, we went forward from Smolensk, Belarus was liberated. At first, our commander was Vasilevsky, then Rokossovsky. We could say that the Germans were about to give up. In the second part of April, you could already say that the war was coming to an end. On the 9th of May Germany capitulated. In the second part of April, we rarely could hear only shots, but in general the war was over.
