Start in science. Direct and indirect evidence in establishing the identity of a serviceman Who was given a death medallion with a green stripe

MEDALLIONS,
IDENTITY DOCUMENTS FOR MILITARY SERVANTS IN THE RKKA

Medallion arr. 1925 "Ladanka"
The soldier's medallion was used to identify soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army who died during the fighting. Introduced by Order of the RVS dated August 14, 25 No. 856 as an identification document. Issued to all military personnel of military units upon arrival at their unit upon enlistment.
The medallion is made of tin in the form of a flat box measuring 50x33x4 mm with a braid for wearing on the chest. A special parchment form made by printing was inserted into it. Very often forms were printed on ordinary newsprint. When using this type of medallion, during combat operations, it turned out that the medallion was not airtight and the parchment sheet quickly became unusable. In 1937, this type of medallions was removed from army service due to the political processes of the 30s.
These medallions, although rare, are found among soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War

Medallion arr. 1941
By order of the NCO of the USSR No. 138 of March 15, 1941, the “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased personnel of the Red Army in war time"and new medallions in the form of an ebonite pencil case with an insert on parchment paper in two copies. On the insert form, in the appropriate columns, the soldier wrote:
- Full Name
- year of birth
- military rank
- native - republic, region, region, city, district, village council, village
- family information: address, full name. wife, next of kin
- how the RVK is called (district military registration and enlistment office)
- blood group according to Jansky (from I to IV)
It was prohibited to indicate the name of the military unit. There are surrogate forms on various papers, where the clerk entered the necessary columns by hand, or filled out the entire medallion from the words of the soldier (among the soldiers there were many illiterate)
According to paragraph 28 of the Regulations, one copy of the insert was removed by the funeral team and handed over to the unit headquarters. The second one remained in the medallion with the deceased. Based on the inserts taken from the medallions, the names of the dead who remained on the battlefield were determined, and lists of losses were compiled. But in reality, in conditions of hostilities, this requirement was not fulfilled; the medallion was confiscated entirely. In addition, soldiers were often given only one copy of the insert due to a shortage.
Many soldiers went into battle without a suicide bomber. The very fact of their issuance was infrequent, especially since the fall of 1941. Moreover, there was a superstition among the soldiers that if you filled out the insert, they would kill you. Often the medallions were simply thrown away. In the capsules themselves they carried needles, matches, and shag.
In November 1942, NPO Order No. 376 “On the removal of medallions from the supply of the Red Army” was issued. This led to an increase in the number of missing military personnel due to the impossibility of identifying the deceased.

Standard hexagonal ebonite medallion Medallion insert on parchment paper "Siege" medallion Sailors' medallions
Wooden medallion
Wooden capsules were machined from different types of wood without impregnation in the form of a composite pencil case from a tube and a lid in conditions when it was impossible to organize the production of ebonite capsules and supply them to units of the active Army in the conditions of the outbreak of war. Unfortunately, they allowed moisture to pass through the case well and did not ensure the integrity of the liner. They were made both in small plants and factories, and in small workshops and artels.

Steel medallion

Another type of “suicide bomb” was cylinders made of copper or brass tubes with or without threads and a lid (plug). There was a type of metal capsule with a groove on the tube and a protrusion on the lid: after putting the lid on the tube by turning the lid, it was fixed on the tube due to the entry of the protrusion into the groove.
Homemade medallions
Quite often, the role of medallions was played by empty cartridge cases. The most “popular” among them were cartridges from Nagan system revolvers, Mosin rifles (“three-line”), as well as from the German 98k carbine and even from the Soviet TT pistol. Revolver and German carbine cartridges, being less common for ordinary Soviet soldiers, were specifically used by them to make it easier for the funeral team to quickly find the desired “suicide bomber” among the belongings and ammunition of the deceased soldier. The following items could be used as cartridge plugs to prevent moisture from entering: a bullet inserted into the cartridge case with a sharp end, followed by compression of the cartridge case with pliers or without it; a pencil inserted with a lead inside the sleeve; wooden cork from scrap materials

Red Army book
Introduced by the Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR dated October 7, 1941 as a document identifying the Red Army soldier and junior commander. The issuance of a Red Army book instead of a military ID or registration certificate was carried out by the unit to which the Red Army soldier arrived from the district military registration and enlistment office. Sending Red Army soldiers and junior commanders to the front without Red Army books was strictly prohibited. Officers were issued identity cards as personal documents.
Red Army books were confiscated from those killed and those who died from wounds and transferred to the unit headquarters or medical institution, where, on their basis, lists of irretrievable losses of personnel were compiled.

The Battle of the Caucasus is one of the largest battles of the Great Patriotic War. Apart from the siege of Leningrad, none of the battles of this war lasted so long. Starting from July 25, 1942 to October 9, 1943, 422 days and nights there were fierce battles on the plains of the North Caucasus and the mountain passes of the Main Caucasus Range, in the Azov and Black Seas, in the skies over the Kuban. The losses of the Red Army in this battle amounted to more than 800 thousand people, while today in single and mass graves in the territory Krasnodar region The remains of only 115 thousand defenders of the Fatherland rest. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers and officers have not yet been buried. The great Russian commander A.V. Suvorov said: “The war is not over until the last soldier is buried.” Great Patriotic War is not finished, it continues, and not only because soldiers’ bones to this day whiten on the mountain slopes and are annually plowed up by tractors in the collective farm fields of the Krasnodar Territory, but also because the explosions of unexploded bombs still ring “echoes of war.” then the ammunition again and again claims human lives.
The war continues, and like in any war there are soldiers on whose shoulders all the hardships and hardships fall. Only now, six decades later, they are holding not rifles and machine guns, but metal detectors and shovels, and their name is search engines. These are people for whom search work has become their life’s work. What makes them, risking their lives, go to where battles raged almost six decades ago, turn over cubic meters of snow in search of the remains of soldiers is beyond understanding to an ordinary person. A search engine is, first of all, a state of mind and, of course, experience and knowledge acquired over the years. It is enough to see the eyes of the people to whom the guys returned a family member who was considered missing to understand that their work was not in vain. But until this moment, a difficult path has to be covered, from studying archival documents to field search work, discovering the remains of soldiers and establishing their names.
The names of soldiers are established both by personal personal belongings and by award numbers, but the most reliable way is to establish the name by a soldier’s medallion. In November 1942, the USSR NGO Order No. 376 “On the removal of medallions from supplies” was issued. This led to an increase in the already huge number of missing military personnel. It is difficult to understand what motivated the authors of the unfounded decision, but if they believed that with the introduction of the Red Army book, containing all the necessary data about the soldier, by order of NKO No. 330, the need for duplicating this information in the medallion disappeared, their “holy naivety” was very costly. On the territory of the region fighting mainly carried out after the infamous order. Practical experience shows that in the Kuban a soldier’s medallion can be found only in one case out of eighty, this explains the low rate of identifying the names of the dead compared to other regions Russian Federation, where the fighting took place in 1941-1942.
Even if you were lucky and managed to find a soldier’s medallion, this does not guarantee that the soldier’s name will be returned, and his family member will be returned to his relatives. If water has penetrated into a capsule with a paper liner or condensation has accumulated in it, it will be damaged. Incorrect handling of the medallion can also lead to damage to the paper insert. Given Toolkit contains the experience accumulated by Russian search associations in identifying the identities of discovered military personnel who died during the Second World War. Military personnel from the Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian and other armies took part in the fighting on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory on the side of Nazi Germany, so it would be correct to present the experience accumulated not only in establishing the names of soldiers and officers of the Red Army, but also of all other armies that took part in the Battle of the Caucasus.

1. HISTORY OF THE CREATION OF PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION MARKS (LOZ)

The problem of accounting for irretrievable losses and identifying the identities of the dead is hundreds of years old. IN different states it was solved in different ways. Genghis Khan's warriors left stones when they went to battle, and when they returned they took them back. The number of stones remaining indicated the number of deaths. However, this method only gave an idea of ​​the number of dead soldiers and did not make it possible to establish their names. In Rus', during the same period, each warrior wore on his body two icons, one with the image of the patron saint of the principality of which he was a warrior, the other with the face of the saint patronizing the name of the owner. Thus, during the funeral service for the fallen, the names of the soldiers and the names of their principalities were pronounced. In conditions of a small population and a wide variety of names, this method was partially justified, but at the same time it was imperfect.
The first attempts to create personal identification marks go back to Germany in the mid-60s of the 19th century. It was then that a certain Berlin shoemaker, whose sons served in the Prussian army and went to war, made tin tags for them. With their help, someone had to identify their sons in the event of their death and notify their father in Berlin.
The shoemaker was so proud of his invention that he dared to contact the Prussian War Ministry with a proposal to introduce similar signs throughout the Prussian army. The proposal was sensible, but the shoemaker came up with an unsuccessful argument. He referred to the successful experience of using special dog tags in Prussia to record them and collect taxes from owners. When the discussion of a new idea in the War Ministry reached the king, King William I of Prussia, who adored his soldiers, was simply furious at the proposal to put “dog tags” on them. Only after some time did he allow himself to be convinced of the usefulness of this idea and, for the sake of experiment, agreed to the introduction of personal identification marks in some parts of the Prussian army.
Such is the legend. But in fact, the introduction of the first personal identification marks during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 met with massive rejection of the innovation by even the most disciplined Prussian soldiers. They simply threw away the VOCs given to them en masse, best case scenario they were “forgotten” in the convoy. The fact is that any soldier in war sooner or later becomes superstitious, especially about death. Therefore, the requirement of commanders to necessarily carry the “messenger of death” on themselves caused a superstitious fear among the Prussian soldiers that it was precisely this “messenger” that would bring swift death upon them. Only the active propaganda by Wehrmacht officers among their soldiers of the need to constantly wear VOCs, as a guarantee that the soldier’s relatives would receive a pension in the event of his death, turned the situation around and wearing personal identification marks became the norm. An order of the War Ministry of the Prussian Army dated April 29, 1869 obligated each soldier to wear a tin tag on a cord on his naked body under his uniform indicating the unit and the number of the owner of the badge in the lists of this unit.
The appearance of the new military medical regulations on January 10, 1878 stipulated a change in the shape of the medical unit from rectangular to oval, as it remained later. In 1914, Germany abandoned the system of putting only the name of the unit and the personal number of the owner on the personal identification sign, which entailed an increase in the size of the sign, and in 1915 a single size of the LOZ was established. On September 16, 1917, an order was issued to duplicate the inscriptions on the upper and lower parts of the LOZ, and to make them easier to break, divide the sign into three narrow slits along the long axis of the oval. It remained in this form until 1945.
In Russia, the first attempts to introduce personal identification marks were made during the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878. It was then, before being sent to the theater of military operations in Bulgaria, that all soldiers and officers received metal badges with a cord to wear around their necks. The letters were stamped on them - abbreviations of the name of the regiment (for example: L.G.E.P. - Life Guards Jaeger Regiment), the number of the battalion, company and the personal number of the serviceman. Lists of soldiers and officers indicating their personal numbers were kept in the regimental office. This was done to identify the dead and wounded. However, at that time this innovation did not become widespread, and over time it was completely forgotten.
IN last days existence of the Tsarist Empire, the Minister of War, General of Infantry Belyaev, signed a special order: “The Sovereign Emperor on the 16th day of January 1917 gave the highest orders to install a special neck sign to identify the wounded and killed, as well as to mark the St. George’s awards of lower ranks according to the drawing proposed with this ". With this highest will, I announce to the military department with instructions that the sign must be worn on a snuria or braid worn around the neck, and the entry enclosed in it must be printed on parchment paper." The neck badge was a small amulet with a form inside, the size of a tram ticket. The serviceman had to manage to write down a lot of information about himself in beaded and preferably calligraphic handwriting. Indicate your regiment, company, squadron or hundred, rank, first name, last name, awards, religion, class, province, district, volost and village. At that time, only a small part of the manufactured signs managed to go to the troops.
Eight years later, the royal neck badge began to be used in the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army and Navy as an identification document and for establishing identity by order of the Revolutionary Military Council No. 856 of August 14, 25. From that moment on, it began to be called the “soldier’s medallion.” A new piece of equipment and a permanent item was issued to all military personnel and civilians. The medallion was considered a service item and, if lost, was replaced with a new one. During the Finnish campaign, it turned out that the medallion is not sealed and in combat conditions the paper liner blurs beyond recognition. It was canceled in March 1941. At the same time, by another order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 138 dated March 15, 1941, a medallion of a different type was introduced into the troops. The Red Army met the war with him.
In the cavity of a soldier's medallion of the 1941 model, a soldier and an officer kept two forms with personal biographical data. If he died, then one copy had to be taken by the funeral team at the unit headquarters, thus the losses were recorded and their lists compiled. Well, the second one was supposed to be left in the medallion with the deceased. In combat conditions, this requirement was practically not met. The entire medallion was taken from the soldier. And there were one more nameless soldiers.
There is no point in blaming anyone for carelessness or incompetence here. The instructions were primarily violated due to the complex use of the service item, which was not perfect in other senses. To remove the medallion from the deceased required too many steps. First, find it in one of the pockets, remove the screw cap of the case, pull out one of the forms, leaving the other, close it again and finally return it back to the pocket. Not everyone could withstand the long procedure under machine-gun fire. In November 1942, by Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 376 “On the removal of medallions from supplies,” soldier medallions were abolished. The soldiers' medallions, rejected in the very midst of the hard times of war, never returned to the rank and file of either the Soviet or Russian army.

The soldier's medallion, introduced by Order of the RVS No. 856 of August 14, 2025, was a tin box measuring 50x33x4 mm with an eyelet for braid (Fig. 1). There was a paper insert inside.
By order of the NGO of the USSR No. 138 dated March 15, 1941, new medallions were introduced in the form of a plastic pencil case with a paper insert (Fig. 2). Also, soldier medallions of the 1941 model were made in metal and wooden versions. Despite such a variety of designs, plastic soldier medallions are most often found in the region. In the cavity of the medallion there was a paper insert of the established type (Fig. 3), containing information about the surname, first name, patronymic, military rank, date of birth, address of the owner and his immediate relatives. The size of the paper insert is 40x180 mm. The capsule is made of black or brown plastic and consists of a body and a lid with a threaded connection. Capsule length 50 mm. It should be noted that the paper insert intended for military personnel of the border units of the NKVD troops had a slightly larger size: 53x280 mm and a vertical green stripe 5 mm wide along the entire length. The contents of both paper inserts were almost identical. In November 1942, by Order of the NGO of the USSR No. 376, medallions were removed from supply.
At the same time, in various regions of the Krasnodar Territory, there were cases of discovery of soldier medallions of an unspecified type, manufactured in factories (Fig. 4). Personal data identification marks made of aluminum alloy, and despite the difference in shape, they are similar in content. There is a hole with a diameter of 5 mm in the upper part. The LZ contains information about the real or conditional name of the military unit and the personal number of the owner.
One of the forms of homemade soldier's medallions were notes containing information about the owner inserted into cartridge cases, while their muzzle, as a rule, was closed with a bullet turned upside down.

During excavations near the village of Pavlishchevo, Mozhaisk district, where fierce battles took place during the Great Patriotic War, searchers discovered the remains of soldiers of the 32nd Infantry Division. Only 4 skeletons turned out to be intact, the remains of the rest were mixed. One of the soldiers was found with a death medallion, and inside it was a small note with words that touched the soul.

Managed to read information from the mortal medallion

Clear pencil note. On the reverse side, in confident handwriting, at less than 19 years old, the warrior wrote his last words, his message: “I will die, consider me an honest Soviet citizen. N. Kononenko.”

Half-decayed leaf from a mortal medallion

Relatives were found three months later. The hero's descendants flew from distant Blagoveshchensk to lay flowers on the grave of Kolya Kononenko, an honest Soviet citizen...

A pre-war photo of a young soldier who fell in the Mozhaisk region near Borodino in 1941.

The administration inscribed the names of the fallen heroes found and buried in the village of Pavlishchevo, Mozhaisk district, in 2013. The name of soldier Nikolai Kononenko is at the bottom in the third row.
Eternal memory to Kononenko and all those who fell for their Motherland.

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Introduction

In April 2015, I completed the project “How the Missing People Disappeared.” I was fascinated by the work on the project, and I decided to continue it.

When I conducted a questionnaire among school students, it turned out that 30% of them had missing persons (Appendix 8), so the search movement in Russia is still very relevant , since during excavations it is possible to recover not only the remains of dead heroes, but also to establish their names. In order to determine the name of the soldier, you need to find a soldier's medallion.

Target work: during search work, find a soldier, his soldier’s medallion, establish the soldier’s name and find his relatives.

Tasks:

1. Find out what a “soldier’s medallion” is, find information about soldiers’ medallions during the Great Patriotic War.

2. Take part in the search expedition - “Memory Watch”.

3. Collect data on the work with the medallion note and the search for relatives of the deceased soldier.

4. Present the results of the work in the form of a presentation.

Hypothesis: If you find a soldier’s medallion during a search operation, it will help identify the deceased soldier.

An object research: soldier's medallion.

Item research: identifying a dead soldier using a medallion.

Methods research: study of literature, collection of information on this issue, conversation with the commander of the search detachment “Dolg” in the city of Kirov, participation in the expedition, study of documents.

1.What is a soldier's medallion?

First, I turned to V.I.’s explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. Dahl and learned that the word “medallion” is “a medal worn around the neck, in the form of an amulet.” The soldier's medallion was also called a mortal medallion. And the word “mortal” means “temporary, capable of losing life.”

In the dictionary of S.I. Ozhegova, the meaning of the word “medallion” is “a small, usually oval case with something put inside, worn around the neck on a chain.” The word “mortal” is “one who does not live forever, one whom death seeks.”

During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army used screw-on plastic pencil cases (medallions), into which a piece of paper was inserted with the soldier’s data (Appendix 1). On the insert form, the soldier entered information about himself: - last name, first name, patronymic; - year of birth; - military rank; - native - republic, region, region, city, district, village council, village; - family information: address, FULL NAME. wife, closest relative; - which district military commissariat he was drafted into; - blood type.

The form was filled out in duplicate. In the event of the death of a soldier, one copy was sent to the office, the second remained with the body and was given to relatives after burial.

During the Great Patriotic War, other forms of capsules were also produced. At some factories, capsule lids were made with an eyelet for a ribbon, which made it possible to wear the capsule around the neck. In besieged Leningrad, they were produced round from porous plastic, which, unfortunately, absorbs moisture, and therefore the form in such a capsule is very poorly preserved. During the search, you can also find a wooden and metal capsule. Metal capsules were made round and rectangular.

If for some reason the soldiers did not have enough pencil cases, they used cartridge cases from the Mosin rifle cartridge. After removing the bullet, the soldier poured out the gunpowder, placed a note in the shell, and then plugged the hole with the upside-down bullet.

But why didn’t all the soldiers have a medallion with them? It turns out that one of the reasons was that the soldiers threw him out, thereby scaring away death and did not believe in their death. They also used medallion capsules for other purposes. It was convenient to store sewing needles, threads and other small household items in the whole capsule. There are known cases of fish hook medallions being found in capsules. But these are not the main reasons for the lack of medallions among the dead. The fact is that on November 17, 1942, the medallion was canceled by order of the People's Commissariat of Defense No. 376 “On the removal of medallions from the supply of the Red Army.” Therefore, the soldiers who died at the end of 1942 and subsequent years were without death medallions. But some military personnel continued to keep medallions during 1943 on their own initiative.

This method of storing personal information is not the most practical. Water, which penetrates inside the pencil case over time, often destroys the paper or leads it to such a state that the text cannot be read. The safety of the records depends on the conditions in which the pencil case was located and how well it was screwed. Using special techniques developed by members of the search teams, the pencil case should be opened in a special way in order not to damage or lose the information stored in it.

Having studied the information, I concluded that the soldier’s medallion is a very important link in the process of establishing the identity of Red Army soldiers during the Great Patriotic War. The cancellation of the medallion led to an increase in the number of missing military personnel due to the impossibility of identifying the deceased.

I wanted to take part in the search for the soldier’s medallion myself, to be present at all stages of collecting information about it.

2.Where and how can I find a soldier’s medallion? Participation in a military archaeological expedition.

1. Setting up camp.

In the spring, my mother and I went on the all-Russian search expedition “Memory Watch-2015” as part of the “Duty” detachment of the Kirov boarding school. The detachment commander is Yulia Valerievna Ozhegova. The expedition took place from April 22 to May 8 near the village of Staroe Ramushevo, Starorussky district, Novgorod region. In order to exist in natural conditions for half a month, the detachment needs to equip a camp. This is not the first year our squad has been building a dugout. It has a place to rest and sleep, a stove and a place to dry shoes, electricity and light. There is a fire in the camp, a dining table, food and repair tents, and a place for washing (Appendix 2).

2.2.Techniques and tactics of search work.

We get up in the camp at 7-30, an hour is allocated to get ourselves in order, have breakfast and go to work in the forest at 8-30. Each person has a probe and a sapper shovel in his hands, and some have a metal detector. We walked 5 km from the camp to the Aleksandrovka tract. There were once very fierce battles in that place. Arriving at the place of work, the members of the detachment scatter through the forest. They work with a probe, sticking it into the ground, and by the knock they determine what they have stumbled upon: a tree root, a stone, a shell fragment or a bone. Every time you come across something suspicious, you need to try to clear the area of ​​turf with a spatula or knife and remove the item. So, over and over again, experience is gained in identifying objects by sound. Other members of the squad work as metal detectors. The device determines the metal in the ground, its composition and shape (Appendix 3).

I really wanted to find a fighter myself. Every time I went to work, I thought that luck would smile on me today. In search work, patience and endurance are important qualities. Once I was called to assist in the exhumation of a soldier. My older friend found him. Together with him and a small group of guys, we began to raise the remains of the fighter.

2.3. Personal belongings of the deceased soldier.

Carefully remove the turf and place it separately to the side. A larger area needs to be cleared of turf to make it easier to lift the remains. And then we begin to clear the soil from the soil, bone by stone, working here with a broom, somewhere with a brush. And now the outlines of the fighter emerge: what position he is lying in, what clothes he was wearing, what personal belongings are next to him. A soldier often has a duffel bag with him: the fabric rots, but some of the contents remain. It can contain a spoon, a mug, Toothbrush, knife, razor, shaving brush. A bowler hat was usually attached to the duffel bag. The sword belt, belts, buckles, and pouch for spare cartridges are often preserved (Appendix 4).

And, of course, the dream of every search engine is to find the treasured black pencil case - a soldier's medallion. It was kept by the soldier in a pouch, or the breast pocket of his tunic. It could be stored in a cap or the lapel of a winter hat, and also in shoes. The search engines very carefully scan these places for the presence of a medallion, loosening every lump of earth with their fingers.

Our fighter was not lying very deep, under a thick layer of turf. From the position of his remains, it can be said that he was lying on his stomach, with his hands wrapped around his duffel bag. They found personal items with him: buttons, a pectoral cross, boots, belts, a buckle, a mug, a spoon and, of course, a medallion! Search engines experience inexplicable joy when they find him. Because the soldier's medallion is a connection between the past and the present. This is a real chance to establish the name of the soldier and find his relatives (Appendix 5).

2.4. The death medallion is the soldier's last news.

The medallion is a pencil case in which a note about the fighter’s personal information was inserted. The note was a special form, or the soldier himself wrote the note on a piece of paper. Sometimes this message was directly addressed to the people who would find it. For example: « Dear comrade, please send this to the following addresses. Smolensk, st. Pochinok...Starovoitova M.V. Marusya, goodbye, I loved you to the last drop of my life. Your Lenya".

Our soldier’s medallion was opened on the spot and they found that there was a note inside in good condition. Further investigation of the contents took place in the camp. To read the medallion, you need to prepare the following equipment: a plate with clean water, sheets of blank paper, needles, coins for fixing the note. Experienced searchers opened the medallion. The note easily fell into a plate of water, then it was picked up on a piece of paper and unwound. Having secured the edges of the note with coins, it was laid out and allowed to dry, covered with another clean sheet. The next day it was discovered that nothing was visible on the note form. The pencil mark probably disappeared over time. But we did not get upset, since there is still laboratory analysis. The notes are scanned and, if the recording is already practically indistinguishable, processed using computer programs. We did the same with our insert note. Towards the end of the watch we received the joyful news that our medallion had been read! And our soldier got a name: Sysoev Yakov Ivanovich, born in 1918, a native of the Udmurt Republic, junior sergeant of the 127th separate rifle brigade. And a little later, news appeared that the fighter’s relatives had also been found (Appendix 6).

During the “Memory Watch 2015”, our detachment raised and buried 20 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. 1 medallion found. Remains of Sysoev Ya.I. folded separately to be sent to the soldier's homeland.

3. Search for relatives of the deceased soldier.

When I arrived home, I couldn’t help but think about how the soldier’s relatives were found. I decided to find out about this from the commander of our detachment: Yulia Valerievna Ozhegova. During a conversation with her, I learned about the main stages of searching for relatives:

1. Write out the fighter’s personal information from the medallion note form.

2. Contact local search engines of the region or republic where the soldier is from.

3.Look through the Book of Memory for an entry about this fighter.

4. Try to make a request to the military registration and enlistment office from where you were drafted.

5.Go to the website of the generalized data bank “Memorial” and try

find military documents about the missing (reports on the losses of army personnel, certificates of the dead and missing, as well as descriptions and lists of burial places of Soviet soldiers and officers, and others).

The personal data of our fighter was sent to search engines in Udmurtia. A week later they found Yakov Ivanovich’s relatives. Another piece of information was revealed that he went missing on June 5, 1942, near the Aleksandrovka tract, Starorussky district, Novgorod region. He left behind a small son, Gena, and his wife, Varvara.

The remains of the fighter were handed over to his relatives. On May 15, 2014, Yakov Ivanovich was buried with military honors in the village of Syam-Mozhga, Republic of Udmurtia (Appendix 7).

Conclusion

I found out what a “soldier’s medallion” was, took part in the expedition - “Memory Watch”: raising a soldier with a medallion, with the help of adults, collected data on working with a soldier’s medallion note and searching for relatives of a dead soldier, established the name of the soldier.

Thus, my hypothesis was confirmed. The soldier's medallion is an important link in the process of establishing the identity of a soldier.

Since medallions were canceled at the end of 1942, and many of the dead soldiers did not have them, it is now necessary to search for soldiers who died in the war, establish their names and search for relatives. The soldier's medallion is a connection between the past war and present life.

Literature

The Great Patriotic War: 1941-1945: Encyclopedia for schoolchildren / Comp. I.A.Damaskin, P.A.Koshel.-M.: OLMA-PRESS, 2001.-447 p.: ill. .

We walk on a land drenched in blood...: Collection of articles, stories and diaries./Compiled. Yashkova T.V., Smenenko Yu.T. - Kirov: KOOMPO “Dolg”, 2005.-296 p.

Dictionary Russian language: illustrated edition/V.I.Dal.-M.: Eksmo, 2012.- 896 pp.: ill.

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language / S.I. Ozhegov http://www.ozhegov.org/

OBD Memorial http://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/index.html

Antiques Forum and military history http://forum.ww2.ru/index.php?showtopic=29917

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Appendix 1: Soldier's medallion. A note.

Appendix 2: Field camp. Old Ramushevo.

Appendix 3: Search tactics.

Appendix 4: Personal belongings of the fighter.

Appendix 5: Remains of a fighter.

Appendix 6: Determining the identity of the fighter. Sysoev Yakov Ivanovich.

Appendix 7: Burial with military honors in the village of Syam-Mozhga.

Appendix 8: Student Questionnaire primary classes School No. 74:

1) How many years ago did the Second World War end?

2) Are there any WWII participants in your family?

3) Are there any missing people?

80 people took part. All 80 people had one of their relatives who fought at the front. 28 children (30%) answered that their family had missing persons during the Great Patriotic War.

Soldiers' medallions are a valuable find for search engines, historians and local historians. The difference is the purpose for which this “last greeting” from a Soviet soldier was found... There are those who just add medallions to their collection. And there are those who perform actions dictated by the heart: trying to find the relatives of a dead soldier - the one whose name can be made out on yellowed and half-decayed paper.

What is a soldier's "mortal" medallion? It's just a piece of black or brown plastic with a long piece of paper folded inside. Yes, it is true that it may mean nothing to some. However, it is important to remember that behind this small pencil case is a person’s life, its letters carved on the tablets of history. And we must understand that this medallion means much more than anything that has ever been in our Kopar hands.

If you want to know my opinion, then after such a discovery, restoring the memory of the deceased and conveying information to relatives should be the moral duty of every search engine.

This object does not belong to us, even if we put it in our pocket or cupboard. It has never been ours and never will be. After you have found the medallion, you must begin searching for the family of the soldier who fell on the battlefield. This is such a small, uncomplicated gesture, an act of gratitude. We are indebted to this hero, and this is the least we can do to honor his memory.

When I talk about heroes, I'm not exaggerating at all. I am firmly confident in my words. We are talking here about people who gave all their strength, their lives, to protect the values ​​that are of absolute importance: their family, country and freedom. Ordinary people, like us, but, unlike us, she fought with all her strength. People who truly gave everything for the good of the country. Who were truly starving. We experienced the cold that penetrates to the bones, and the same heat that torments us, but what brought us the most suffering was the fear of never returning home alive...

Everyone knew that he could die in the next battle. There, however, they found the strength to look forward to live and establish strong friendships and fraternal ties - true ones, those that have little in common with today's interpretation of these terms. We are citizens of one great country, but very different.

I just want to say that all people who have and show off soldiers' medallions in their collections should think about what this item can tell. What I could and should tell. Because everything that this medallion has experienced is not comparable to what we are experiencing. And looking at the medallion is like looking straight into the eyes of the soldier to whom it belonged.

Medallion (“suicide bomber”) in the Red Army it was introduced by order of the RVS No. 856 of 08/14/1925. The medallion was considered a service item and, in case of loss, was replaced with a new one. The medallion was a rectangular box made of galvanized sheet metal (50 x 33 x 4 mm) with an eyelet for braid. Inside was placed (parchment and newsprint paper), made in a typographical way, with the personal data of the fighter. Such a medallion was not airtight and therefore the data insert quickly became unusable. In 1937 he was removed from the pay of the Red Army. But they are still found among soldiers who died during the Great Patriotic War.

By Order of the NCO of the USSR No. 138 dated March 15, 1941, the “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased personnel of the Red Army in wartime” and new medallions in the form of an ebonite (textolite) pencil case of black color, with an insert on parchment paper in two copies. Insert size 40 x 180 mm. consisted of two identical forms - one of which was to be removed by the funeral team, and the other remained in the medallion with the body of the deceased soldier. The insert, intended for military personnel of the border units of the NKVD troops, had a slightly larger size: 53 x 280 mm and a vertical green stripe 5 mm wide along the entire length. Based on the inserts removed from the medallions, the names of the dead who remained on the battlefield were established, and lists of losses were compiled . But in reality, in conditions of hostilities, this requirement was not fulfilled; the medallion was confiscated entirely. In addition, soldiers were often given only one copy of the insert due to a shortage. The form contained everything about the fighter. The medallion turned out to be quite airtight when twisted tightly. Pants and trousers had a special pocket on the belt, into which the medallion capsule was required to be sewn. In November 1942, by order of the NPO of the USSR No. 376 “On the removal of medallions from the supply of the Red Army,” medallions were removed from the supply of the Red Army. It was probably decided not to duplicate information from the Red Army book introduced in November 1941 and to rely only on it.

Homemade medallions were most often made from a rifle casing plugged with an inverted bullet. It is rare, but there are wooden and metal homemade pencil cases. A wooden case from an anti-fog pencil could be used from the gas mask bag. The notes in such medallions are usually also homemade, but there are also standard forms.

Types of medallions used in the Red Army:

• Folding metal rectangular with an eye “incense” mod. 1925 (galvanized sheet).
• Steel round pencil case of the first releases (steel capsule opening into two halves).
• Ebonite pencil case with six sides without an eyelet on the lid “for sailors.”
• Ebonite pencil case with six edges and a “standard” eyelet. The most widespread.
• Round ebonite pencil case "blockade".
• Homemade medallions.

In the list of references (at the bottom of the article) you can find a template for a form for a death medallion. It is enlarged exactly 5 times, which should be taken into account when printing. It should also be remembered that the template was made from the original form and in it the author tried to convey all the nuances of the typography, the flaws of the matrix of one specific original form taken as a sample.

Red Army book (soldier's book) in the Red Army was introduced by order of the NKO of the USSR No. 330 dated 10/07/1941 as an identification document of a Red Army soldier and junior commander. The issuance of a Red Army book instead of a military ID or registration certificate was carried out by the unit to which the Red Army soldier arrived from the district military registration and enlistment office. Sending Red Army soldiers and junior commanders to the front without Red Army books was strictly prohibited. Officers were issued identity cards as personal documents. Size 106 x 76 mm. The thin cardboard cover had a red star with a hammer and sickle printed on it. A total of 12 pages with the serviceman’s data: I. General information; II. Completion of service; III. Participation in campaigns, awards and distinctions; IV. Clothing property; V. Armament and technical equipment; VI. Height No. ____. The photograph in the book could often be missing.

Red Army books were confiscated from those killed and those who died from wounds and transferred to the headquarters of the unit or medical institution, where, on their basis, lists of irretrievable losses of personnel were compiled.

Identity card of the commander of the Red Army.

Identification of the remains of military personnel. Medallions, unfortunately, are not a common find and there are many reasons for this. Sometimes even the fighters themselves got rid of mortal medallions. Being on the verge of life and death, people become superstitious and filling out the death medallion form was considered by some fighters to be a harbinger of imminent death. Instead of storing a “death” note in a medallion, fighters adapted capsules for everyday needs: they stored small items, as well as. And here the personal belongings of fallen servicemen come to the aid of search engines in identifying the remains. A large number of names were returned thanks to various inscriptions on personal belongings - pots, spoons, mugs, belts and on other elements of ammunition and equipment. Sometimes soldiers' books and other paper IDs are kept readable. It is rare to come across orders and medals whose number can also be used to identify the recipient. In general, every little detail matters.

I want to tell you about one of the many search campaigns, which for me personally completely removed all the questions “why”, “who needs it”. In the evening, by the light of a light bulb, the found medallions were read in a large army canvas tent. Many people gathered over a bath of glycerin solution, in which another medallion was being opened for reading. And so, in the air-piercing silence of the evening forest, it sounded like a direct text - “Dear comrade, in the event of my death, please notify my wife at the address ....”. This same fighter asked me, asked any of the people bending over his medallion to let him know about his death. Don't let it go missing! A request from the past burned with its breath and made me feel the will and self-sacrifice that were required for victory. And even after 69 years, we came back for him...

• Form of the Red Army medallion in PNG format ()
• Methodological manuals for search work at WWII battlefields.
• A reminder for working with medallions, their inserts and other documents and exhibits during search operations. ( link )

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