A WWII veteran spoke about crossing the Don River among the first soldiers of the Red Army.

During the crossing of the Don, Red Army soldiers ferried troops to the Nazi-occupied coast at night so that the enemy would not notice them. Alexander Galasov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, who was among the first fighters to cross the river, told Izvestia on May 5.

The veteran was born in the Vologda Region in 1923, and Galasov will turn 103 on May 15. When the war started, he was still an 18-year-old student. The summons to the military enlistment office was handed to him by his father in January 1942. Until May of that year, he underwent combat training in Cherepovets, after which he was sent to the front as part of a company of machine gunners of the 73rd Guards Rifle Regiment of the 25th Guards Division.

According to Galasov, the regiment's command noted the exemplary soldiers in the rear, so they were among the first to be sent to the operation to form the Don. The goal was for the Red Army troops to gain a foothold on the shore occupied by the Nazis.

"We forced it like this: 10 people — a squad — were put into a fishing boat without any intelligence, without any preparation, <...> and taken to an unknown destination. <...> Well, we were just thinking how we could get to shore. But we had a company of machine gunners, and we immediately turned on," Galasov recalls.

The task of their unit was to hold the captured bridgehead and pull enemy forces away from Stalingrad. According to the veteran, the Germans gained a foothold 200-300 m from the coast, but due to the fact that the Soviet troops crossed in small groups and at night, the Wehrmacht soldiers did not notice them. Fierce fighting began at dawn, and then the first dead appeared.

"When it started to get light, they opened a hurricane of fire. [With shouts of] "Attack!", "Forward!", "For the Motherland!" The wounded and the dead appeared, and we felt what war was," Galasov shared.

Galasov was wounded twice. The first wound in his arm allowed him to stay on the front line. He received the second, severe one in October 1942 and stayed in the hospital until April 1943, after which he was declared unfit for combat service. Then he served in the military commandant's office. For fighting during the crossing of the Don, Galasov received the Order of the Red Star, and later the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree.

After the war, the veteran returned home, graduated from a technical college, and in 1949 linked his life with Rybinsk, where he worked at a motor-building enterprise (now UEC-Saturn of Rostec State Corporation) until 1990. He started by testing piston engines, participated in the creation of the most powerful engine in the USSR, and after 1953 mastered the creation of jet engines from scratch.

The program of Victory Day celebrations in Moscow has been published

On May 5, the annual patriotic action "Fire of Memory" took place in the Alexander Garden near the walls of the Moscow Kremlin. The event was organized by the Popular Front. At the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, representatives of the movement, Russian celebrities and public figures, as well as war correspondents transferred particles of Eternal Flame into special lamps. They will be handed over to veterans of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) in the regions and special operations soldiers on the front line, as well as to 14 foreign countries. For such an initiative, MOSGAZ specialists have developed unique flame preservation equipment.