A VETERAN ABOUT THE VETERANS

Azerbaijan will always honour its heroes and remember those, who have sacrificed their lives for the bright future of our nation. Especially, when we still have those, to whom we owe our peaceful life, those, who despite their age, continue to work for the benefit of our Motherland. There are a few veterans of the Great Patriotic War, who are still alive. One of them is a 95-year-old Alexander Gritchenko, the retired I rank Navy Captain and military journalist, Deputy Chairman of Association of War Veterans. He is a revered person in Azerbaijan. He often takes part in various events dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, he is the author of many books, and one can envy the number of awards he has. Recently, Alexander Gritchenko presented his new book titled “Victory and Memory”. It is about the Azerbaijani soldiers who fought against fascism, as well as those who worked in the rear.

A tireless veteran

Gritchenko is the author of nearly 50 books; most of them are about the horrors of war.

The Archbishop of Baku and Azerbaijan Alexander also attended the presentation ceremony. He spoke about the need to keep the legacy of the war and to learn the right lessons. He mentioned Alexander Gritchenko his books with great respect.

Gritchenko is a writer, essayist, journalist and bibliographer. As a true guardian of the past, he keeps hundreds of names and human fates in his memory and even more in his books. Many of those who came to listen to his stories are the descendants of those he has described in his books.

Alexander began writing yet at the high school. He was a signalman and worked in the Marine Corps during the war. Then he was a military journalist and worked as a political worker. He is a native of Dnepropetrovsk. After serving in the north of the USSR, Alexander Gritchenko found himself in the far southern republic of Azerbaijan. This country has become his home for many years.

“In Kamchatka, I had served in the military fleet for five years and then had been transferred to Baku, to serve in the Caspian Flotilla. I have been living in Azerbaijan for 63 years”.

Gritchenko speaks about Azerbaijan and its people with great respect and love, his voice trembling with emotion and interrupting. “I've lived here for over half a century, and I’m not going to leave this country”, says the veteran.

His tireless workload is striking. Gritchenko says about himself: “I have no vacations, no holidays. I am ready to work all the time”. However, he doesn’t have the strength as he had before. He dictates his books to his wife, who is 87 years old but continues to be his loyal assistant. “My wife has supported me through all my life, we have been very close. I would not have managed to write these thick books without her help”, says Gritchenko.

One can find a few people, who had devoted their entire lives to ensuring that all people have learned about the enormous contribution to the victory over fascism. Many of his books are dedicated to Azerbaijani warriors of the war. He considers himself obliged to tell about all of them. As a journalist, he had investigated a lot to describe the life stories and heroic deeds of our compatriots.

“Unfortunately, the young generation do not always remember what a great contribution the Azerbaijanis had made to the common victory”, says Gritchenko.

It is not only about the names

One of his heroes is Sergeant Israfil Mammadov. In late November 1941, he fought near Novgorod, and successfully repelled fierce enemy attacks together with his friends. He is the first Azerbaijanis awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Another character of Gritchenko’s stories is our military sailor Gafur Mammadov. He had fought since the first days of the war and is the participant of the Sevastopol Battle. Then Mammadov fought near Odessa. Gafur demonstrated a true heroism in one of the battles in the Caucasus: on October 18, 1942, in a critical moment of the battle in the village of Kachkanovo, he shielded his commander with his body. On March 31, 1943, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. There is a magnificent monument of Gafur Mamedov in Bayil district of Baku. The poet Suleyman Rustam describes the heroic deeds of Gafur in his poem “The Heart of Gafur”.

Among Gritchenko’s books, one can come across truly exceptional heroes. One of them is a military intelligence officer and a retired Colonel Ismayil Gasimov. He was part of the squadron storming Berlin and left his autograph on the walls of Reichstag. This 93-year-old witness of the war is still among us. Other scouts used to get trophies such as military equipment and ordinary prisoners, but Gasimov went further. “Well, there were many scouts that could capture enemy soldiers or military equipment, this was a normal situation. But you will not hear often about a scout who was able to capture the entire crew of the submarine. There are only two recorded cases in the world, and one of them is the work of Ismayil”, tells Gritchenko.

Alexander Gritchenko is not one of those authors, who describe the war post-factum. “I just graduated from the 10th grade of the school and was enrolled in the Navy. The war started six months later. I remember those first days in Sevastopol, the Nazi air raids. I was a boy, and it was terrible, it was difficult, no kidding! War means fear and cruelty. The second half of the war seemed easier since we had got accustomed, but any war is always scary. Those who deny this are simply lying”.

He fought in the Black Sea Fleet, then was part of the Danube and Azov Flotillas. He is one of the heroes who liberated Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Austria from Nazis. Even then, he made the first notes about the war and soon became a war correspondent. He was personally acquainted with many of the heroes of his books and wrote their stories in his newspaper articles.

Alexander Gritchenko also told us interesting episodes from his books. For example, about the history of behind one of the famous war songs, “The Accidental Waltz”: “Many years ago, there was an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda, where the author recalled the following episode: the unit, in which he served, was marching towards the frontline. The convoy of trucks stopped at one of the small towns near the frontline for a few minutes. Then, he heard the sounds of a familiar waltz coming out from the local club. He looked inside and saw some young people dancing in a tiny room. Against the wall was a very sweet girl. He invited her, and they whirled in a waltz. She was charming. And suddenly there was a command: “Lieutenant, your truck is leaving!” They could not even say goodbye to each other. The lieutenant went to the front, but after the war, that girl approached the poet Eugene Dolmatovsky and composer Fradkin requesting them to write a song about that event. That’s how the song was born. It was called “The Accidental Waltz”. She had later tried to find that Lieutenant. Unfortunately, she could not find him, by the time the lieutenant had died heroically”.

Women of war

Telling stories to his listeners, he talks about how unexpectedly large was the contribution of the women to our common victory. This is not just about those women, who had been working in the plants and factories for three shifts at the rear of the frontline. “The women held many positions at the front; they were driving tanks, they even were captains of military vessels – you cannot hear about such women often. For example, Anna Shchetinina was the captain of the ship, which had sailed in many seas and oceans. She used to transport oil to the front during the war”, says Gritchenko.

“I also had known a woman, who was a nurse and a scout. We fought together the entire war, in the Black Sea Fleet, the Azov and Danube Flotillas, and in the final months of the war when we liberated the peoples of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Austria. Her name was Katya Mikhaylova. I remember that during the pauses between the battles the German soldiers in broken Russian were asking us from their trenches: “Rus Ivan, Rus matros, no shoot, sing Katyusha”. And we used to play the famous “Katyusha” in harmonica”, continues Alexander Alexandrovich. He also remembered the first pilot of Azerbaijan, Leyla Mamedbeyova, who was promoted to Major during the war.

Alexander Gritchenko traveled a lot, communicating with other veterans and collecting unique historical stories. In addition to military awards (Orders of the Red Banner, Red Star, World War II, and the Medal “For Military Service”), he was awarded the Order of Glory (Şöhrət ordeni) and the Order of Son of the Motherland (Vətən Övladı). He is the author of the books “Azerbaijan’s contribution to the front”, “The generals and commanders of the Great Victory”, “The heroes of Azerbaijan”, “The admirals of the Caspian Sea”, as well as the biographies of Admiral D. Javadov, the Heroes of the Soviet Union Gafur Mammadov, Ziya Bunyadov, and many others.