INSCRIPTION ON Y.C.L. CARD

I die a courageous death for my country’s liberation. March 22, 1944.

NOTE ON WRITING PAD

Please write about my death at the front to my parents at the following address: Nikolai Degtyarev, Flat 9, Block 3, 151 Bolshaya Sadovaya, Saratov; and to my bride, Adelaida Pulina, 4 Aptechnaya St., Saratov.

Tank commander Lieutenant Alexander Degtyarev was among the advancing troops that were beating back the Germans to the west. In the streets of Chertkov he engaged enemy tanks. Lieutenant Degtyarev’s tank knocked out a Tiger and an armoured carrier, but at that moment an enemy 105-millimetre gun fired from an ambush and knocked off the tank’s turret. The driver carried his wounded commander to the nearest house and himself ran for aid. Sensing his end was near, Alexander Degtyarev pulled out his Y.C.L. card and pad and wrote his last words to his comrades with a wounded hand.