Tag #145713 - Interview #78185 (Osip Hotinskiy)

I finished school in 1939. I was fond of exact sciences and I entered the Bauman School, present-day Moscow High Technical School. In 1939 a new law on army service was issued. Before this students hadn't been subject to army service before finishing their education, but according to this new law the students were to join the army when they reached the recruitment age. In October all 1st-year students were recruited to the army. I was recruited as a private to a reserve regiment. We were trained to handle a mortar and sent to the Finnish Front [see Soviet-Finnish War] [20]. I arrived there perhaps one week before the war was over. I was a mortar man and carried an 82-mm mortar and a support slab to it. I think on 12th or 14th March the peace treaty with Finland was signed.