Tag #143579 - Interview #78271 (Yuri Bogdanov)

In 1939 I finished the tenth grade of compulsory school at the age of 18. Many lads of my class of graduates entered military schools. A military career didn't seem attractive to me and I decided to have military service for a regular term and then enter the institute. I was allocated to Narofominsk [about 70 km south of Moscow], a town outside Moscow, to the communications squad of the infantry regiment of tank division #14. It was the time when the war in Poland was over and there was an annexation of Polish territory [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] [28].

Then the Finnish campaign commenced [see Soviet-Finnish War] [29], and my mother was really perturbed that I would be dispatched there. Our division didn't participate in the Finnish events.