Valentin Pavlovich Yakunichev is 88. On the eve of the holiday employees of the Tyumen Region Investigations Directorate visited the veteran of the Great Patriotic War. After receiving a bunch of red carnations and valuable presents from the head of HR department of the Investigations Directorate, the veteran started telling the story sorrowfully.
His peers born in 1926 had no youth. When the Great Patriotic War started they were 15. They still went to school, learned paragraphs and rules, read letters from soldiers to their mothers and knew: they were going to fight too… On 3 September 1943 Mr. Uakunichev volunteered for the Soviet Army; he was a student at 25th training tank regiment in Kurgan and fought on the Second Ukrainian Frontline as a commander of tank gun. On 18 November 1944, during the fight near Budapest a thermite shell tore away his feet. He was treated at a hospital in Tbilisi, which he left in April 1945. He remembers his first day with a new prosthesis, when he played football the whole day.
When the country celebrated the Victory he was almost 19. He was too shy to wear his orders and medals in such a young age. He started post-war time at a school desk, finished school and went to Law Institute. Then Mr. Yakunichev worked in the Tyumen Region prosecutor’s office, was an investigator in Yarkovo District and a senior investigator in the city of Tyumen, prosecutor’s assistant. In 1966, a military commissar came to the prosecutor’s office and told that Sergeant Yakunichev had been awarded the order of the Red Star and then everybody learnt that it was his third order of the Red Star… In 1946 he was awarded the medal For the Victory over Germany in 1941-1945, in 1965 – the medal 20 years since the Victory over the Fascist Germany and in 1968 – the medal 50 years to the USSR Armed Forces.
The employees of the Tyumen Region Investigations Directorate wished Mr. Yakunichev many years of life, good spirit and humor.
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