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The six-year-old soldier who fought in WWII Seryozha Aleshkov was awarded the medal ‘For Combat Merit’, received a Browning as a trophy pistol from an army general and was even “promoted” to the rank of junior lieutenant.
World War II affected the lives of millions of people of all ages. Old men, as well as callow youths, had to take up arms. But only one Red Army regiment on the Eastern Front had a serviceman in its ranks who was just six years old!
Son of the regiment Archive photo
In the summer of 1942, Seryozha [short for Sergei], from the village of Gryn in the Kaluga Region, found himself completely orphaned: His father had died before the war and the Germans executed his mother and brother for their links to the partisans, right before the boy’s eyes. Left all alone, the six-year-old child was aimlessly wandering in the woods in a state of shock when, emaciated and hungry, he was discovered by a reconnaissance group of the 142nd Guar