Hero of the Soviet Union Efrem Georgievich Kurachkin
Efrem Georgievich Kurachkin was born in 1921 in the city of Przhevalsk, Kyrgyz SSR. Russian. Member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Army since October 1940. Guards sergeant. Gun commander.
He participated in the battles of the Great Patriotic War starting from July 1941.
For his heroism and unparalleled courage displayed in battle near the village of Uzlyany on August 28, 1944, E.G. Kurachkin was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. During the war, he was awarded the medals "For Courage" and "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945."
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Hero returned to the city of Przhevalsk. He now lives and works in the village of Jety-Oguz in the Issyk-Kul region of the Kyrgyz SSR.
LIGHT OF MEMORY
It was a blue, transparent, and ringing autumn morning, but already the evening before, Efrem Kurachkin's shot-up arm began to ache again, and without a weather bureau, he warned his neighbor who was building: "If you want to finish the roof on time, hurry up." And, like the clouds that were expected soon, the usual thoughts of a villager came to him: "The potatoes have grown well, but harvesting them in the mud — God forbid. It's good that the bread has ripened, but the apples are still hanging, just like back then, in forty-one, in Ukraine..." This was the habitual train of thought: for the last fifteen years, memories of the war often summed up his morning reflections. It used to catch him at the collective farm mill, where Efrem would come before dawn, and for the last three years, after retiring, — here in his garden.
His hands were doing their work — Efrem was fixing a ladder for the cellar — while in his thoughts he dragged a heavy plate from a mortar across the field near the village of Yartsevo. He was sweating, his lips were dry and cracked, the dust from the explosions suffocated him, making it hard to breathe.
It was a hot July in 1941. Here Efrem saw what fear does to people, understood and remembered for life how destructive and contagious panic is, here he was wounded for the first time...
Ah... The memories are not easy, and now a persistent correspondent has appeared again, asking about the same thing — about the war. "Will he understand? He clearly looks like someone from the post-war period. Is it necessary for them today or not? Who knows... Yes, what am I saying — of course, it is necessary! Unfortunately, many people's memories are short, and forgetting such things is dangerous. I wonder what they will decide at this session of the UN General Assembly?.."
Efrem Georgievich is a slow, even sluggish man. Short, with a heavy gait and a strong handshake. He speaks cautiously, as if waiting for an echo of his words — whether they have fallen into a void. His keen gaze from under gray bushy eyebrows asks: "Are you the one I can tell about the most precious?" And we talk about the years of youth that became a military time in his fate, illuminated by the brotherhood of the front.
Nineteen-year-old Efrem Kurachkin was drafted into the army in October forty. He was leaving his native Przhevalsk for the first time.
A heavy heart ached. A large family remained on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, where after his father's death he was the eldest, friends and his beloved girl, who never heard words of confession. It was comforting that three years of service at nineteen years old was not a long time. No one knew then that this path would double in length, multiplied by a whole war. He did not think about this either.
But six months of service in the NKVD troops passed, and the war became almost a reality. Only fierce optimists did not believe in it. Efrem was not one of them, and therefore he worked hard, not sparing his strength. The words of the great Russian commander suited the young man: "It is hard in training — it is easy in battle."
On June 22, forty-one, political training in the unit where he served was interrupted due to an emergency message, and a month later, the platoon of 50-mm mortars commanded by Efrem Kurachkin entered its first battle near the village of Yartsevo, near Minsk.
Then there was a hospital in the still peaceful Kislovodsk. He recalls those twenty days without war as a brief vacation back to childhood. There were also three more hospital "leaves" from the front and three unimaginably heavy and cruel years of war.
"To win is easier," says one of the bitter truths of war. Bitter because any victory comes at a great cost of blood. And how hard it is to retreat? Now, perhaps, only people like Efrem Georgievich know this. They bore all the helplessness of retreat and the burdens of defensive battles on their shoulders in the first two years of the war.
Efrem was first encircled near Kursk. The enemy managed to break through the defense, and their motorized infantry entered the rear of our troops. An order was received: to disperse and break through to their own in small groups. Kurachkin's calculations were made at night, almost at random, only occasionally orienting himself by the distant explosions. The young commander's heart tightened anxiously as dirty-green columns of enemy equipment rolled eastward past them, hiding in a ravine or a forest. "Ah... the Germans have considerable strength. But you can't overpower us!" He knew this for sure. His confidence inspired the soldiers.
During the exit from the encirclement, the mortarmen had to cross the rivers Oskol, Medveditsa, and Donets.
They engaged in rapid night skirmishes with the fascists several times and, under the cover of darkness, moved further east. Half of the personnel of the mortar division reached the concentration area near the village of Mikhailovka in the Stalingrad region, including Kurachkin's crew.
The enemy did not allow the regrouping of the gathered forces in Mikhailovka. The right bank of the Don was occupied by fascist troops, and Kurachkin's crew was assigned a place in the newly created defensive line. A heavy confrontation began.
To this day, Efrem Georgievich laments fate for not allowing him to participate in the grand operation to encircle and destroy Paulus's army. He went out one morning for water, with five flasks and a kettle in his hands, when a fascist shot at him from across the river. He hit his container and his hand. And again, a hospital. Then — a new unit and even — a new military specialty.
The expression "Artillery is the god of war" was a catchphrase in those days. The famous "Katyushas," rocket artillery systems, became a terror for the fascists. Their smaller brothers — howitzers, anti-tank guns, and mortars — also "worked" excellently for victory. The Soviet troops were to conduct major offensive operations, and artillery was called upon to play a crucial role in ensuring their success.
The change of front-line professions during the war was not uncommon. The situation required it, and a rifleman became an artilleryman, a signalman became a machine gunner. Retraining was done quickly — either in short courses in the frontline zone or right at the front during breaks between battles. Thus, Efrem Kurachkin "requalified" as an artilleryman.
And again, the front roads brought him to the land of Belarus. Soviet troops were clearing the western borders of the Motherland from the enemy in fierce battles. On August 22, 1944, the battery of the 220th Guards Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment, where Kurachkin was a gun commander, received an order to secretly "mount" the highway behind the village of Uzlyany, along which enemy units were expected to retreat.
The artillerymen, leaving their tractors in cover, rolled their guns out early in the morning onto a small height at the edge of the village.
A battalion of fascists, reinforced by a tank, a battery of howitzers, and a mortar division, was moving along the highway at a quick march. The first salvo, almost at point-blank range, was a complete surprise for the Germans. But soon they recovered and, seeing that they were facing only a few small guns, boldly advanced toward the height. The artillerymen repelled six furious attacks. Kurachkin's gun ran out of shells, and the crew engaged in hand-to-hand combat twice.
The fire from the light machine gun operated by the loader Afanasy Chernyak was a great help. The sight setter Vasily Tokarev, already mortally wounded, fired with one hand and kept shouting: "Hold on, brothers!"
The picture of the battle changed dramatically when the battery commander, Captain Leontyuk, brought a truck with shells under enemy fire. The fascists rolled down. And trapped between the forest and the village, they began to surrender.
The dry chronicle tells that the battle lasted more than five hours. Of the forty-eight gunners, less than half survived. More than five hundred fascists were destroyed, and another one hundred thirty surrendered. The enemy's battery and mortar division were put out of action. The sparse figures cannot convey all the joy and bitterness of this victory. The sun shone especially brightly, and the water in the river was remarkably tasty. All this was felt by the living, who buried the fallen.
A month later, the regiment learned that five participants in that memorable battle were awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union, while the others were awarded military orders and medals, many posthumously. The "Golden Star" of the Hero shone on the chest of Efrem Kurachkin.
The offensive of the Soviet troops continued unabated. In Belarus, it took place under very difficult conditions. Forests and impenetrable swamps hindered the movement of military equipment. At night, soldiers laid bridges, and in the morning, they attacked...
Someone rightly noted that a person is given a name at birth, while military units earn it in battles. The 220th Guards Anti-Tank Artillery Regiment particularly distinguished itself in the battle near the village of Rechitsa, not far from Gomel. Here, in the most complex combat situation, several mortar crews, an artillery battery, and one rocket launcher repelled a counterattack by the fascists. They faced an enemy rifle division. There was a moment when the Germans took a desperate step — they launched a "psychological" attack to the tune of a martial march.
Efrem saw a lot during the war, but this was the first time for such a thing. But nothing worked out for the fascists. With the salvos of the guns, their forward lines were disrupted and crushed. How long this battle lasted, Efrem Georgievich no longer remembers; he only remembers that he lost his voice shouting the short command "Fire!" The lines of the attackers mixed and lay down, and when the "Katyusha" opened fire, our troops rushed into the attack. As a result of this operation, more than three thousand soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht were captured. And the 220th Guards Anti-Tank Regiment was named after Rechitsa.
Efrem Kurachkin ended the long war with the "Golden Star" of the Hero on his chest. Even on the morning of May 9, his gun fired at the fortified bridgehead of the fascists in East Prussia. He returned home only in the winter of '45. It was necessary to establish a peaceful life, and the soldier became a miner, then worked in timber rafting.
With the years, Efrem Georgievich decided to settle in the beautiful Kyrgyz village of Jety-Oguz, and for fifteen years, until his retirement, he worked at the old collective farm mill. Now a modern, high-performance roller mill is installed here, but sometimes at night he still seems to hear the creaking of the millstones of that little worker on the talkative river, as if he is dipping his hands into warm flour and quieting the pain in them.
But what about the pain of memory? How many wonderful guys perished, with whom fate brought them together in the harsh war. Recently, he received a letter from Dmitry Chepusov, whose gun stood nearby in that hot battle, and again he thought that the war was accompanied not only by grief and hardships, but also by joys, and most importantly — an unforgettable front-line friendship was born. The comrades-in-arms met many times after the Victory, their smiles are preserved in photographs, a memorial complex has been opened in the Belarusian village of Uzlyany... And the heart of the veteran warms: the light of memory about the feats of war does not fade with the years.
Y. ZHUCHKOV