Hero of the Soviet Union Tykhayraev Tukubai
Tukubai Tykhayraev was born in 1923 in the village of Kedei-Aryk, Suzak district, Osh region of the Kyrgyz SSR. Kyrgyz. Member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Army since September 1942. At the age of nineteen, he volunteered to go to the front. Sergeant. Assistant squad commander. Political officer of the company.
He participated in the Great Patriotic War from June 1943 as part of the 2nd Baltic Front. He distinguished himself in battles on Latvian soil.
For his bravery and courage, skillful actions in breaking through the enemy defenses and participating in battles while pursuing the enemy, on March 24, 1945, Sergeant Tukubai Tykhayraev was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
His memory is sacredly honored by his fellow countrymen. One of the state farms in the Suzak district of Osh region bears his name, as does the school he attended. A museum has been opened in the house where he lived. In the city of Jalal-Abad, one of the streets is named after him.
RETURN OF THE SOLDIER
...It has been two years since Tukubai went to war. In just one year of military service, he experienced what others might not feel in a lifetime. He witnessed the death of his front-line comrades and stared death in the face himself, liberated villages and cities, wept over the ashes, and knew the joy of vengeance and triumph over the enemy. The war led him along its usual path — the path of hard soldier's labor, which in itself is a feat. He was an excellent soldier and an extremely honest comrade, and no one was surprised by this because he was a political officer, leading from the front. “...Tykhayraev was the first to rise against the enemy and called on the fighters to follow him,” it is noted in the documents of the war years.
This was the case on July 10, 1944, during the breakthrough of the enemy's defenses near a small Latvian village. Approaching a heavily fortified height, Tukubai was one of the first to burst into the enemy trenches, having previously overcome the barbed wire barrier with the help of his overcoat.
This was also the case four days later during the breakthrough of the second line of defense near the village of Safonovo. In a battle that the squad engaged in with a group of fascists in the forest, the brave warrior destroyed ten of them and captured five.
In mid-July 1944, the 375th regiment of the 219th Idritskaya Red Banner Rifle Division, in which Tukubai fought, reached the locality of Rundene, near which there was a wide highway that was of great importance for both our troops and the enemy. On the far approaches to this highway, the regiment met fierce resistance from the Germans. In a land of forests and swamps, the success of the offensive largely depended on the roads.
The command decided to send a group of Soviet fighters into the enemy rear, towards the highway. The choice fell on the unit of Senior Sergeant Hakim Akhmetgalin.
In Tukubai's homeland, such weather is rarely seen. It was the height of summer, yet it was rainy and windy. The swamp squelched underfoot, and only in places did last year's fallen branches crunch. Tukubai listened with satisfaction:
— You hear that crunching, friends? Just like the Andijan melon crunches.
— But it tastes a bit too salty,— one of the fighters replied, touching his sweaty lips with the tip of his tongue.
They walked for a long time and with difficulty. And although everyone was tired, no one complained. They moved through the gaps in the minefields at Devil's Swamp. From hummock to hummock, grabbing onto clumps of reeds and the branches of stunted pines. They crawled one by one across small clearings, camouflaged by grass, birch branches, and fragrant pines.
There was a case when Vasily Andronov came face to face with an enemy signalman, and only the timely use of sambo techniques and a knife saved him from trouble.
Not far from the village, the scouts chose a hilltop that offered a wide view. They dug in silently. Within half an hour, the first shells of our long-range artillery struck based on the coordinates reported by Akhmetgalin's group.
The Germans soon realized: the fire of the Soviet guns was being adjusted from close range. An enemy hunt began for the group of brave men. Meanwhile, fascist guns and vehicles continued to take off into the air.
The movement of equipment and troops on the devastated highway almost ceased. But the destructive fire was increasingly directed at our fighters.
To avoid the death of at least the young female radio operator, it was decided to send her to the rear. The commander did not change the order even after her persistent pleas. Tukubai could only joke after her:
— You won’t be without a radio. When we return home, I’ll grab a trophy too...
Until dusk, the Germans tried to block the retreat routes. The commander remarked to Tukubai:
— We must meet the guests with honor. Otherwise, it’s a bag. Tykhayraev estimated the distance to the neighboring hill and peered into the darkening line of enemy soldiers nearby.
— Will we make it?
Through the dried-up riverbed and thickets of willow, Tykhayraev and two other fighters reached a small height.
The surrounded group encountered heavy machine-gun fire. They made it!
From dawn the next day, the Germans began to attack the handful of brave men with increasing ferocity and frequency.
The height was encircled in an iron ring. Eleven men held a circular defense. The earth, stones, and grass — everything around shook from machine-gun and automatic fire, and mine explosions. The ranks of the brave thinned. The commander Akhmetgalin and his replacement, Sergeant Syroyezhkin, fell heroically, mortally wounded by shrapnel, and fellow countrymen Chuvash Fedor Ashmarov and Matvey Chernov died while saving Private Abdullayev from captivity, and the Omsk worker Yakov Shakurov perished.
And what about the death of the fearless fighter Urazov?! Until the moment of his death, it stood before the shocked Tukubai. The three times wounded political officer-machine gunner was sheltered by an old Latvian in an abandoned barn near the height. The fascists burned the barn, and Urazov perished...
Reader, there will come a time, and the roads of life will surely lead you to the museum of our military glory. And perhaps, among the relics, you will encounter the warped, smoke-stained orders — whether of Urazov or another hero — bow your head before them, and forever command your heart to be brave and steadfast, like this scorched metal.
...The ranks of the brave thinned. Ammunition ran out. But the highway lay inactive, and the height was ours. More than two hundred Germans lay under the height. They would never raise their hands to the sun and silence again.
— Russian, surrender,— came a voice from somewhere below, from a small grove. And, encouraging themselves with war cries, the Germans crawled into the attack again.
“You’re lying, bastard, Russians don’t surrender,”— the automatic rifle of Andronov replied. It seemed that he and Tukubai were now alone on the height, completely alone. For the first time, the meaning of this generalized “Russians” reached the wounded warrior's clouded consciousness with such acute clarity. Suddenly, he felt with pride and special strength that he was connected to something bloodily united, immense, which encompassed the word “Russia.” How many times had he, the company political officer, heard and spoken about international duty, about the friendship of Soviet people. And now, on this small piece of Latvian land, his time had come once more to seal the indissoluble brotherhood with blood.
The awakened feeling of responsibility for all that was dear and sacred to him, a Kyrgyz, and his linguistically diverse comrades, gave Tukubai strength. He raised his bandaged head from the parapet and pinned down the advancing chain of fascists with a burst from his automatic rifle.
With the last burst. The magazine of the automatic rifle was empty. There were still grenades left, and the possibility to fight to the death with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat remained...
About the feat of Tykhayraev, the regiment commander Colonel Bocharov, who nominated eleven brave men for the title of Heroes, wrote on July 30, 1944, in the award sheet:
“When the squad reached the height before Rundene, the enemy threw in fresh forces and launched a counterattack with a battalion strength against the squad, which included T. Tykhayraev. Together with the squad commander, T. Tykhayraev addressed the fighters with the call: ‘We will die, but we will not give up the height!’ The enemy, having numerical superiority, cut them off from the company, but they continued to fight while surrounded. T. Tykhayraev was wounded three times, but continued to fire at the enemy with his automatic rifle and grenades, and only when the ammunition ran out did he perish a heroic death in hand-to-hand combat. Dozens of enemy corpses lay under the height where Sergeant Tykhayraev fought, but he did not leave the height.”
Of the entire squad, only the bleeding fighter Andronov was found alive on the nameless height. He was the one who recounted the details of the heroic battle. It is a miracle, but it was so — for two days, eleven Soviet warriors hindered the retreat of large German forces at an important site, and until the arrival of our units, they did not yield the height to the enemy... All eleven were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 24, 1945.
And here we are on the land of the Hero. With understandable excitement, we gaze into the faces of his fellow countrymen and comrades, listening to the vibrant rhythm of their lives. How he loved his quiet land! The cotton fields drowning in a blue haze, the ringing July gold of wheat, the blue mountains of Tien Shan that approached the very village of his childhood from the east. How often, in the hellish chaos of battles and in the brief hours of soldier's rest, in the bittersweet moments of meetings with his fellow countrymen, Tukubai imagined the sounds, smells, and colors of his native land. Do they know his name here, do they remember him?
No, it is not in vain that it is said: no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten. The biography of the Hero continues in the present deeds of the boys from Osh and Jalal-Abad, Suzak and Aravan. The poplars rustle and the fragrant scent of blooming acacia fills the air on the street named after Tukubai Tykhayraev in
Jalal-Abad, as the collective farm children hurry to the school named after him. In his native village of Kedei-Aryk, the House-Museum of the Hero has been solemnly opened. Thousands of visitors — friends, relatives, fellow villagers, and combat comrades — have been here. Touching letters have been sent to the museum from all over the country, especially from Latvia. His fellow countrymen have carefully collected many precious relics that tell about the life of the celebrated warrior.
And with special feeling, people get acquainted with the simple story recorded by schoolchildren from Tukubai's mother, the old Laili-apa. “When I learned that he was going to the front, I cried. He was my only one.” “Don’t cry, Mama,”— he said gently. — “I’ll get to Berlin and come back.”
The fearless son of his people returned — he stepped like a granite monument to the building of the collective farm administration, forever returned to the combat ranks of his regiment, to the labor columns of his peers, now twenty-year-olds who have become gray veterans, and to the united, joyfully youthful ranks of new, growing generations.
A. ZHIRKOV