Three exploits of Alexey Maresyev. Alexey Maresyev: the real story of a real person

Legendary pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union. The prototype of Meresyev - the hero of Boris Polevoy's story “The Tale of a Real Man”.

Alexey Maresyev was born on May 20, 1916 in the city of Kamyshin, Saratov province. At the age of three he was left without a father. Mother, Ekaterina Nikitichna, worked as a cleaner at a woodworking plant and raised three sons - Peter, Nikolai, Alexei. From childhood, she taught them to work, honesty, and justice.

After graduating from school in the city of Kamyshin, Alexey Petrovich Maresyev received a specialty as a metal turner at a school at a timber mill and began his career there. In 1934, the Kamyshinsky district committee of the Komsomol sent him to the construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Here, without interrupting his work, Alexey is engaged in a flying club.

In 1937 he was drafted into the army. At first he served in the 12th air border detachment on Sakhalin Island, then was sent to the Bataysk Aviation School. A. Serov, which he graduated in 1940, receiving the rank of junior lieutenant. After graduating from college, he remained there as an instructor. There, in Bataysk, I met the war.

War years

In August 1941 he was sent to the Southwestern Front. Maresyev's first combat flight took place on August 23, 1941 in the Krivoy Rog area.

In March 1942 he was transferred to the North-Western Front. On April 4, 1942, in the area of ​​the so-called “Demyansk Cauldron” (Novgorod Region), in a battle with the Germans, his plane was shot down, and Alexey himself was seriously wounded. Made an emergency landing on territory occupied by the Germans. For eighteen days, the pilot, wounded in the legs, crawled his way to the front line. The first to discover him, barely alive, were boys from the village of Plav-Kislovsky village council of the Valdai region, Seryozha Malin and Sasha Vikhrov. Sasha's father took Alexei in a cart to his house.

For more than a week, collective farmers looked after Maresyev. Medical help was needed, but there was no doctor in the village. In early May, a plane piloted by A.N. Dekhtyarenko landed near the village, and Maresyev was sent to Moscow, to a hospital. Doctors were forced to amputate both of his legs at the lower leg.

In 1944, Maresyev agreed with the proposal to become an inspector-pilot and move from the combat regiment to the management of the Air Force Universities.

In total, during the war he made 86 combat missions and shot down 11 enemy aircraft: four before being wounded and seven after being wounded.

After the war

Retired since 1946. Alexey Petrovich made his last flights on an airplane (trainer U-2) in the early 50s as an instructor at a special Air Force school in Moscow.

In the post-war period, partly thanks to the textbook “The Tale of a Real Man” by Boris Polevoy (in it Maresyev is called Meresyev), he was very famous and was invited to many celebrations. Meetings with schoolchildren were often organized; the example of Maresyev’s feat was widely used to educate the younger generation.

In 1949, he was a participant in the First World Peace Congress, held in Paris.

In 1952 he graduated from the Higher Party School under the CPSU Central Committee.

In 1956, A.P. Maresyev defended his PhD thesis in history.

From September 1956 he was the executive secretary of the Soviet War Veterans Committee.

In 1960, A. P. Maresyev’s book “On the Kursk Bulge” was published.

On October 7, 1960, the opera “The Tale of a Real Man” premiered at the Bolshoi Theater.

On May 8, 1967, Maresyev participated in the ceremony of lighting the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

In 1989 he was elected people's deputy of the USSR.

Death of Alexey Petrovich Maresyev

On May 18, 2001, a gala evening was planned at the Russian Army Theater to mark Maresyev’s 85th birthday, but literally an hour before the concert, Alexei Petrovich had a heart attack, after which he died. However, the evening took place, but it began with a minute of silence. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to the family regarding the death of the hero.

Alexey Petrovich Maresyev is buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Memory of a hero

The central street in the village of Ibresi in the Chuvash Republic is named after Alexey Maresyev. In 2005, a memorial plaque was unveiled there. Also, streets in the cities of Aktobe, Tashkent, Gorno-Altaisk and other cities bear the name of the hero.

On May 20, 2006, in honor of the 90th anniversary of the birth of the famous pilot, a monument was inaugurated in Kamyshin, located at the intersection of two central streets of the city, not far from the house where Alexey Maresyev lived.

Memorial plaque on the house in Moscow where Maresyev lived after the war.

The medal “For Fidelity to Aviation,” established in 2006, depicts A.P. Maresyev.

I couldn't imagine myself on a trolley, begging at the station.

A. Maresyev

Alexey Maresyev was born in the Volga region town of Kamyshin into a working-class family and, after finishing his seven-year school, began working as a turner at one of the local factories. But soon, together with other young people, he went to a Komsomol construction site to build a new city in the Far East - Komsomolsk-on-Amur. There Maresyev began training at the flying club. After which almost his entire life became connected with aviation.

In 1937, following a Komsomol call-up, Alexey joined the Red Army and was sent to the Bataysk Military Aviation School, and in 1940, after completing his training, he began serving in a fighter regiment, where he rose from pilot to navigator.

Of course, from the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Maresyev was at the front. He constantly carried out combat missions and by the end of 1941 he already had four enemy aircraft shot down on his personal account. In March 1942, during heavy fighting in the area of ​​the Demyansk bridgehead, located in the Novgorod region, Maresyev’s plane was shot down, and he himself was wounded. At the cost of incredible efforts, he managed to land behind enemy lines, and then for 18 days, overcoming incredible difficulties, he made his way to the front line. When the pilot reached the front line, local residents helped him take cover, and at the first opportunity they reported him to the command.

Fellow pilots took Maresyev out and got him sent to Moscow to the main military hospital. The brave pilot underwent several operations, but they could not save his legs, as gas gangrene developed. Doctors, naturally, warned him that he would now never be able to fly. However, Maresyev did not accept the verdict and began training according to his own system. He managed not only to master prosthetics, but also to prove that he could use them fluently.

It is difficult to say when and under what circumstances Maresyev made a firm decision to return to duty. The book “The Tale of a Real Man” by Boris Polevoy and the film of the same name tell about a certain commissar who was lying in the ward next to A. Maresyev and awakened in him a thirst for life and a desire to fly, citing as an example the act of another wounded pilot from the First World War - Karpovich. Was there really such a pilot?

None of the aviation historians have heard of the pilot Karpovich, but Alexander Prokofiev-Seversky, an outstanding “ace” of the First World War, is well known. His foot was amputated, but he began to fly again with the personal permission of Nicholas II. The name of Prokofiev-Seversky was banned in Soviet Russia, since after October 1917 he emigrated to America. There he continued to fly and became an aircraft designer. Seversky factories created fighter aircraft that were used by the US Army. During World War II, Seversky advised the White House on aviation strategy, for which he received a prestigious award from President Truman. But in 1946, when the story about Maresyev appeared, the emigrant could not become an example for the Soviet pilot for political reasons. Be that as it may, Alexey decided to return to aviation.

His first prosthetics were made according to a design developed by N.I. Pirogov for disabled soldiers of the tsarist army. Over time, he mastered this simple leather construction very well. What effort it took and what pain he had to go through, only Maresyev himself knew.

To give an objective assessment of the pilot’s achievements, the creators of the documentary about Maresyev turned to a modern expert - the chief physician of the Moscow Prosthetic and Orthopedic Center Yu.V. Kim. He said: “It is still a big secret for us today how a man without two limbs could fly and participate in hostilities. After all, being on a prosthesis, and even more so on Two, he seems to be “hovering in the air”, he needs to “walk with his head”, he needs to see where he is stepping. But to control the plane, adjust the pedals, apply pressure on them with a certain force... For me personally, this is a big mystery.” Maresyev found the strength to overcome pain and other obstacles. But many wounded with much lesser physical injuries refused to fight. Maresyev himself said in one of his interviews: “I couldn’t imagine myself on a cart, begging at the station.”

In June 1943, the pilot obtained permission to return to duty, and he was again sent to a fighter regiment. According to the memoirs of Lieutenant Colonel S.F. Petrov, with whom A. Maresyev flew together and whom he saved in one of the air battles, “his legs had not yet fully healed and were bleeding. We realized that they were bothering him very much, but he didn’t show it to anyone.”

Colonel A.M. To Chislov, who asked to enlist Maresyev in his squadron, the regiment commander said: “If you want to tinker with a disabled person, write that you take responsibility for his life. If anything happens, I’ll send you to a penal battalion.” In the same year, Maresyev and Chislov received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The award sheet says that in one of the battles he saved the lives of two pilots and destroyed two German fighters. Continuing to fly, Maresyev shot down seven more enemy aircraft. In total, he flew 86 combat missions. For these merits, in 1944 he was sent to the Directorate of Higher Educational Institutions of the Air Force, and after the war to the Higher Party School and Graduate School of the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee. Soon the pilot got married; he had a son, Victor.

From the story of Viktor Maresyev

After the war, my father was offered to enter either the Academy of the General Staff or the Higher Party School. He replied: “I believe that legless generals are not needed in peacetime. In wartime, I am ready to be in service again and defend the Motherland.”

The first information about Maresyev’s feat appeared in 1943, when Pravda’s war correspondent, writer B. Polevoy, met with him. Having recorded the pilot's story, he published a short essay in which he named his hero Alexei Meresyev. In numerous responses, readers asked to tell in more detail about the life and feat of this amazing man. This is how “The Tale of a Real Man” appeared. Then the writer created a film script based on this story, based on which a film was made, released in 1948. The main role in it was played by actor P. Kadochnikov. In 1954, Polevoy wrote a play under the same name, which was immediately staged on the stage of the Soviet Army Theater in Moscow, and then not only in theaters of the Soviet Union, but also in many countries around the world. The image of a patriot who overcame incredible obstacles and still returned to duty became one of the symbols of the heroism of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

The peaceful life of Alexei Maresyev is connected with the Soviet Committee of War Veterans, which he headed since 1983. In 2001, the legendary pilot passed away. A. Maresyev was not the only pilot who returned to duty after amputation of his legs and fought along with everyone else. The creators of the documentary name the following names of Heroes of the Soviet Union: Guards Captain G.P. Kuzmin, Major L.G. Belousov, Guard Lieutenant Colonel A.I. Grichenko, Guard Captain Z.A. Sorokin, senior lieutenant I.M. Kiselev, Guard Lieutenant Colonel I.S. Lyubimov, senior lieutenant I.A. Malikov and English pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Bader.

Concluding the story about the heroes of World War II, we should mention the name of another pilot who became a Hero of Russia and returned to aviation after being seriously wounded in 1984 in Afghanistan. This is Colonel Sergei Aleksandrovich Sokolov, who received the highest category of “sniper pilot” in 2005. In recent years, Sokolov has mastered six types of aircraft. According to his friends, for the last 20 years the pilot has been doing everything “I can’t.”

He was awarded the Hero of Russia star for his participation in the 1995 international expedition to the North Pole. In the materials of the documentary film “Return to the Sky” (2005) from L. Krivtsova’s project “Get Up and Go” there is a story about the reaction of relatives to the pilot’s act. His wife says: “When you see Sergei at the North Pole holding two certificates – a disabled person’s and an officer’s – against the background of the Russian flag, you feel proud of the officers and your Motherland.”

Alexey Petrovich Maresyev was born on May 7, 1916 on the Verevkin farm, in the former Saratov province. This is not far from the town of Kamyshin, which is listed as the birthplace of Hero of the Soviet Union Maresyev, according to the official version. Alexey was left without a father in early childhood. Ekaterina Nikitichna Maresyeva raised him and her two other sons herself. She worked as a cleaner. For obvious reasons, the family was quite poor.

After school and college, Alexey went to work at a timber processing plant. Even then, he passionately dreamed of becoming a pilot. But they didn’t want to take him to the flight school because of rheumatism (in childhood, Maresyev suffered from malaria, which caused complications). In 1934, in the direction of the Komsomol, Alexey went to build the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. There he joined the local flying club. In 1937 he was called up to serve in the Red Army.

When the dream started to come true

During his service, Maresyev had the opportunity to graduate from a flight school in Chita. Then he studied at the aviation school in Bataysk. Finally he could become a pilot. At that moment the war began. Maresyev was immediately sent to the front. He served in the southwest, in the region of Krivoy Rog. His first combat flight took place there. Before being transferred to the Northwestern Front in 1942, the young pilot had already managed to shoot down 4 fascist planes.

On the new sector of the Maresieux front, during Operation Demyansk Cauldron to cover bombers in a battle with the Germans, his plane was shot down, and Alexey himself was seriously wounded. Maresyev had to get to his place for almost 18 days until local peasants found him near the village of Plav.

The injury could put an end to the work of a lifetime

After being wounded on April 5, Alexei had to wait for help for almost a month. He was sent to Moscow only at the beginning of May. As a result, the wounded man developed gangrene and severe blood poisoning. The pilot's life literally hung by a thread. Moscow professors had to amputate both legs, which saved Alexei’s life. But after such an operation he could safely give up his dream of aviation.

Alexey Maresyev wanted to fly too passionately to give up so easily. As soon as the severe pain from the amputation passed, he immediately began training. This heroic man set himself the goal of learning to use prosthetics so well that he could once again take to the air in a combat fighter. And he succeeded.

Pilot's feat

Already in the first months of 1943, Maresyev got on his feet and was trained at an elementary flight school in the village of Ibresi (Chuvashia). There he learned to use prosthetics while flying an airplane. The command did not want to give the pilot combat missions. However, the situation at the front was so difficult that there was simply no other way out. Already in July, Alexey returned to duty again.

In total, he accounted for almost 90 sorties and 11 destroyed Wehrmacht fighters. He shot down 7 of them while already wearing prosthetics. In August, Maresyev was awarded the Gold Star and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The fame of this strong-willed and courageous man began to resound far beyond the borders of his native regiment. It was then that, among other correspondents, B. N. Polevoy, the author of the future novel about the hero “The Tale of a Real Man,” met him. [WITH

In the book, the name of the real pilot was only slightly changed (to Meresyev). Thanks to Polevoy, his image became textbook. After the war, Alexei Maresyev was invited to evening meetings with young people. He flew for some time, then went in for sports and even set personal records. Was married. Married to Galina Viktorovna Maresyeva, they had 2 sons. Alexey Petrovich died in 2001 from a heart attack right on the eve of a concert dedicated to him.

From the editor.

The desire to protect an idea sometimes turns out to be stronger than the desire to live. They live and die for an idea, suffer and endure hardships. An idea is something that connects the seemingly incompatible. An idea gives birth to something that would never have been born under other conditions.

Once upon a time, the idea of ​​justice for all people of the globe gave birth to socialism.

There were many heroes of the Civil War who died for what seemed to be a dream, for socialism, which was dreamed of, but was not the current historical reality. Time passed, and the brave souls, whose hut was always not on the edge, but in the very center, in the thick of things, began to build this new world. These guys first went to take part in the “great construction projects of socialism”, first and became communists first explored new lands, went on the attack first and gave their lives for our Soviet Motherland.

Nazi Germany also knows cases of heroism. There were even more cases of stubbornness and self-sacrifice, for example, in the Middle Ages among religious fanatics. Faith in an idea has always worked wonders, regardless of whether it was correct or feasible...

But mass heroism became a reality only in the Soviet Union. There were not hundreds or thousands of heroes. There were millions of heroes. After all, it was in the Soviet Union that the idea practically did not conflict with its implementation.

The following article will tell about some of these heroes.

May 20, 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous Soviet pilot Alexei Pavlovich Maresyev (1916 - 2001).

A.P. Maresyev was born in the city of Kamyshin (now Volgograd region). At the age of three he lost his father. His mother, who worked as a cleaner at a factory, raised three sons alone. In 1934, on a Komsomol ticket, Alexey Maresyev went to build Komsomolsk-on-Amur. At the same time as his work, he attends a flying club.

The young man applied to the flight school three times. He was rejected twice for health reasons, but the third time he was accepted. In 1940, Alexey Maresyev graduated from flight school and received the military rank of junior lieutenant. In August 1941, he made his first combat mission.

On April 4, 1942, over the territory of the Novgorod region, the plane of A.P. Maresyev was shot down by the Germans. For 18 days, Maresyev walked through the forest to his people and, finally, peasant children found him, completely exhausted.

Maresyev had both legs amputated above the knee. But, despite this, he decides to return to duty and actively trains.

In February 1943, Alexey Maresyev made the first test flight. And in June 1943 he returned to the front at the Kursk Bulge. He made 86 combat missions, shot down 11 aircraft (7 after losing his legs).

On August 24, 1943, Alexei Petrovich Maresyev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

After the war A.P. Maresyev graduated from the Higher Party School, defended his PhD thesis in history, and since 1956 he worked as Secretary of the Soviet War Veterans Committee.

Soviet pilot Alexey Maresyev

In 1946, in just 19 days, the writer Boris Nikolaevich Polevoy (1908 - 1981) wrote the book “The Tale of a Real Man.” This book gained great popularity in the Soviet Union and other countries. In 1948, a film was made based on the book, and composer Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) wrote an opera. However, Prokofiev’s opera was not very successful and was not performed on stage often.

During the Great Patriotic War, there were other pilots in the USSR who flew without legs: For example, Leonid Georgievich Belousov (1909 - 1998) and Zakhar Artemovich Sorokin (1917 - 1978). Both of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In 1973, Soviet military pilot Captain Yuri Valentinovich Kozlovsky (born 1943) was in a plane crash. They searched for him for several days and found him unconscious with injuries incompatible with life. Doctors saved the pilot's life, but both legs had to be amputated. Kozlovsky really dreamed of returning to flying work, but did not receive permission: modern technology places higher demands on pilots. Yu.V. Kozlovsky graduated from a technical university and worked fruitfully as an engineer in a design bureau. At the same time, he continued to pilot small training aircraft at the flying club.

English military pilot Douglas Bader (1910 - 1982) flew without two legs using prosthetics. For this, the Queen of England granted him nobility and the right to be called Sir Douglas.

A similar case took place in Nazi Germany, however, the pilot lost only one leg. The name of the German pilot was Hans Ulrich Rudel (1916 - 1982). Unfortunately, Rudel was a convinced fascist and remained so until the end of his life.

And another striking example. From the depths of centuries, the legend about the Defender of the Russian Land, the hero Ilya Muromets, has reached us. There is a very strange detail in this legend: until the age of 30, Ilya Muromets, who lived in the village of Karacharovo, did not leave the stove. For a peasant son, such a lifestyle was possible only in one case: if he was severely disabled. To test this hypothesis, researchers opened the grave with the relics of the hero in Kyiv and examined the bones using modern methods. The assumption was confirmed: Ilya Muromets had a severe connective tissue disease and his legs were apparently paralyzed. The legendary hero was indeed Alexei Maresyev of the 11th century.

“A healthy mind in a healthy body,” they said in Ancient Greece. Physical health is, of course, very good, but in itself it does not create a healthy mind. And it is not a necessary condition for preserving and maintaining a healthy psyche. A healthy spirit may well be combined with physical weakness. In Russia, Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov first spoke about this in his poem “Mtsyri”. And after the Great October Socialist Revolution, Nikolai Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” appeared. Ankylosing spondylitis, the hero of this novel, who was dying of illness, had the psyche and range of interests of a healthy person. As the writer rightly showed, this was due to Pavel Korchagin’s involvement in the activities of building a new society.

To some extent, Alexey Maresyev repeated the fate of Nikolai Ostrovsky. And, probably, the book about Alexei Maresyev helped many seriously ill people, despite a serious illness, stay in service.

People working with seriously ill children understand that their main task is to make the child not think about his illness. The knight from the last great work of Soviet children's literature, “The Trickster's Tale” by V. Ozerov, brought stamps to a boy crippled in the war...

On May 18, 2001, an evening dedicated to the 85th anniversary of A.P. was supposed to take place at the Russian Army Theater in Moscow. Maresyeva. A few hours before it started, Alexey Maresyev died suddenly.

Ph.D. Sergey Bagotsky

Know: the Russian pilot does not give up,

Even if his legs are taken away,

And while he is alive and his heart is beating,

He will destroy the enemy in the skies!

Boris Polevoy told readers the story of Lieutenant Alexei Meresyev, who was shot down by the Nazis and, wounded, crawled to his 18 days. Making his way through the forest paths, he felt hungry and thirsty, but did not lose hope of salvation, and “kept walking, walking, walking, trying not to notice that his legs hurt more and more sharply.” Alexey gradually lost strength, his crushed, wounded feet refused to obey. After a few days he was completely exhausted. By this time, the pilot did not have any food, and he ate “young pine bark, ... the buds of birch and linden trees, and even soft green moss.” When Meresyev was picked up by villagers, he became so weak that he could only move by crawling. They helped the wounded pilot with everything they could, and then he was sent to the hospital.

Alexei's wounds healed, but his legs could not be saved. Doctors decided to amputate both legs. After the operation, the worst thing happened to the pilot. He "withdrew into himself, lost heart and no longer believed that he could fly." His comrades tried to help him, but it was unsuccessful until Meresyev was given a newspaper in which they wrote about a Russian pilot who was flying after amputation of his foot. Alexey believed in himself again and began training daily to get back into action. He endured unbearable pain, and, in the end, learned not only to walk on prosthetics, but even to dance.

Meresyev was well aware that aviation has very strict requirements for the health of pilots, but he hoped that he would fly again and beat the hated enemy. Boris Polevoy managed to amazingly accurately convey all the feelings and emotional experiences of the hero. The most tense episode in the story seemed to me to be the one that describes Alexei’s attempt to pass the medical examination. When the doctor read the personal file, he was amazed; he could not believe that the pilot was going to take the helm of the plane again. The commission deliberated for a long time, but could not immediately make a decision. What a strong shock the doctor experienced after he saw Meresyev dancing the “lady” at a dance! Thus the fate of the pilot was decided. It was at that moment that I realized that such a strong and strong-willed person would definitely achieve a return to aviation. After all, the sky submits to the strong!

The book made a very strong impression on me. The fortitude and determination of the main character seemed simply extraordinary. Could this really happen? I wanted to know if Alexey Meresyev really existed.

I found out that there really was such a pilot, only his last name was not Meresyev, but Maresyev. He was born and raised in the city of Kamyshin, and since childhood he dreamed of aviation. All the events described in the story actually happened to him. The pilot managed to return to duty, and after the amputation of his legs he managed to shoot down 7 German planes. In total, during the Great Patriotic War he flew 86 combat missions. In one of his interviews, Alexey Petrovich said that Boris Polevoy wrote about everything very truthfully, only he came up with an affair with the girl Olya. It turns out that the hero of the story and the real, living pilot are one and the same person. He attracts me with his mental fortitude, because he believed in what seems impossible - the possibility of being a fighter without having legs.

It is difficult to determine the date of this man’s feat. Was it accomplished during 18 days of painful crawling towards the front line after being seriously wounded? Was it a feat to return to flight duty with prosthetics after fourteen months? Or is the highest point of heroism when a disabled aviator rescues his fellow soldiers in an air battle, shooting down two German fighters? Perhaps his whole life is a feat.

Alexey Maresyev was born on the Volga, in Kamyshin. At the age of three he was left without a father - he died of wounds shortly after returning from the First World War. Mother, Ekaterina Nikitichna, worked as a cleaner and raised three sons. Alexey was the youngest. As a child, he was often sick, including malaria. There were serious problems with the joints. Severe pain led to the fact that the boy often simply could not walk. He also suffered from migraines. Another would have given up and given up. Maresyev was not one of those people.

After graduating from college, Alexey worked as a turner at a timber mill and did not forget about his dream. Twice he applied to a flight school, but doctors did not allow the guy to take the entrance exams due to rheumatism. And in 1934, Maresyev was sent to the Far East on a Komsomol ticket. At first, he categorically refused this offer-order - it seemed that leaving would put an end to his dream. I almost lost my Komsomol card, but everything turned out okay. I still had to go to Komsomolsk-on-Amur. And later it turned out that even at the ends of the earth you can strive for the sky. Without interrupting his work, Alexey studied at the flying club. On the first attempt he passed the medical examination - working in the open air, the Far Eastern climate and regular wiping with snow benefited his health.

In 1937, Maresyev was drafted into the army. He served in the 12th aviation border detachment on Sakhalin. Then he was sent to the Bataysk Aviation School. In 1940, Alexey graduated from it, received the rank of junior lieutenant and continued serving in Bataysk as an instructor. This is where the war found him.

Maresyev's combat path began on the Southwestern Front. He made his first combat flight on August 23, 1941 in Ukraine, in the Krivoy Rog region. In March 1942, Maresyev was transferred to the North-Western Front. By this time, the pilot of the 580th Fighter Aviation Regiment had 4 downed German aircraft.

On April 4, 1942, during an operation to cover bombers over the Demyansk bridgehead in the Novgorod region, the Germans shot down Maresyev’s plane, and the car quickly rushed down. The impact on the ground was softened by the trees. The pilot, thrown out of the cockpit, fell into a snowdrift and lost consciousness. Some time passed, and the cold forced me to wake up. Alexey looked around, there was a deserted forest all around. The plane was shot down over enemy-occupied territory. This means that we need to quickly make our way to the front line, to our own people. Through thick and thin. I tried to get to my feet and cried out in pain: the soles of both legs were crippled.

Alexey was starving, suffered from cold and wild pain - gangrene began. Dragging his frostbitten feet, he stubbornly moved east. When there was almost no strength left, Maresyev rolled from his back to his stomach, then back again.

The pilot, who was freezing in the forest, was found and rescued by rural boys. For several days the collective farmers looked after Maresyev. There was no doctor, and medical attention was needed immediately. At the beginning of May, a plane landed near the village, and Maresyev was sent to the hospital. The hero had to have both legs amputated at the lower leg. To save a life.

The wounded sympathized with the pilot, who, everyone was sure, had said goodbye to the sky forever. Sometimes hopelessness pinned the disabled person against a wall worse than the trials in the frozen forest. But there was also a glimmer of hope: what if? Day by day, Alexey’s determination grew stronger: a person should not stop fighting while his heart is beating in his chest.

Then, in the hospital, Maresyev could hardly have known about the story of the Russian pilot Alexander Prokofiev-Seversky, who lost his right leg in 1915, but despite this, returned to full service. Brought up on the romance of the military campaigns of the Red Army, other Soviet pilots who lost one or two legs at the front probably had not heard about this fact. In addition to A.P. Meresyev, eight more people were able to take to the air again. Seven of them were fighter pilots. This is Guard Lieutenant Colonel A.I. Grisenko, Guard Lieutenant Colonel I.S. Lyubimov, Major L.G. Belousov, Major A.F. Beletsky, guard captain Z.A. Sorokin, guard captain G.P. Kuzmin, senior lieutenant I.M. Kiselev. One aviator, senior lieutenant I.A. Malikov, served in bomber aviation. In the Moscow region, Maresyev mastered prosthetics. He convinced himself and the doctors that he could fly and fight. While still in the hospital, Alexey began doing grueling exercises on prosthetics. Then he continued to train in a sanatorium, where he was sent in September 1942. At the beginning of 1943, he passed a medical examination and practiced at the Ibresinsky flight school in Chuvashia. He loved to joke and could dance to the accordion. He walked with his leather boots creaking. Even in severe frosts I didn’t wear felt boots. Back then, not everyone knew that this optimistic guy was using prosthetics and was learning to fly again.

In February 1943, Maresyev made his first test flight after being wounded. In the end, he managed to be sent to the front. In June 1943, the courageous pilot arrived at the 63rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. He was assigned to a squadron commanded by Captain A.M. Numerical The regiment command did not let Alexey go on combat missions: the situation in the sky on the eve of the Battle of Kursk was very tense. But Maresyev was eager to fight and was very worried after each refusal. Fellow soldiers flew to the front line, and he continued to train, honing his skills over the airfield. The largest battle on the Kursk Bulge flared up, and the squadron commander finally gave Maresyev the go-ahead to fly. Alexey Maresyev opened his new combat account on July 6, 1943. In two days, flying a La-5, he shot down five enemy aircraft. The fame of the legless pilot spread throughout the 15th Air Army and throughout the Bryansk Front. War correspondents began to arrive at the air regiment. Among them was the future author of the book “The Tale of a Real Man,” Boris Polevoy. There is a version that the writer did not dare to give the hero of his work a real name, because he was afraid that Maresyev might commit some serious offense and the story would not be published. This is how Meresyev, known to readers, appeared. The events described in the work really took place, with the exception of a romantic relationship with a girl, whose image, despite the writer’s fiction, was liked by the prototype. “The Tale of a Real Man” was published after the war, three years after Maresyev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. They say that Soviet ideological workers were afraid that the Germans would think that things were really bad in the Red Army for putting disabled people at the controls of airplanes. However, this is rather speculation. Immediately after the war, Boris Polevoy, at a meeting with readers in the House of Officers in Kalinin, said that he had recently finished the manuscript of a story about an amazing pilot, which means that it had not yet been written during the war years.

This book has become a reference book for millions of people. After publication in the USSR in 1946, it was translated into almost all languages ​​of the world. A feature film was made based on it, and an opera of the same name was staged at the Bolshoi Theater.

You cannot fit all the touches of a real person’s biography into a work of art. A whole book could be written about Maresyev’s air battles alone. One day, a brave pilot saved two colleagues from death and shot down two enemy fighters. For this feat, on August 24, 1943, Maresyev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Later he fought in the Baltic states and became a regiment navigator. He has 86 combat missions, 11 enemy aircraft shot down, 7 with amputated legs. In June 1944, Guard Major Maresyev was appointed inspector-pilot of the Air Force Higher Education Institutions Directorate.

In 1946, Alexey Petrovich was dismissed from military service and began training young pilots. But in the 50s he still personally flew airplanes. In 1956 A.P. Maresyev defended his PhD thesis in history. From that time on, he was the executive secretary of the Soviet War Veterans Committee. In 1960, his book “On the Kursk Bulge” was published. This man never complained about fate, lived modestly, did not succumb to illness and surprised those around him with his cheerfulness, charm and optimism. In 2001, on May 18, a gala evening dedicated to Maresyev’s 85th birthday was planned at the Russian Army Theater. Shortly before the start of the celebration, Alexey Petrovich died of a heart attack. The gala evening still took place. It began with a minute of silence.

Retired Colonel A.P. Maresyev was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. He was an honorary soldier of the military unit, an honorary citizen of the cities of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Kamyshin, Orel, Stara Zagora. Youth patriotic clubs, a public foundation, and a minor planet of the solar system are named after him. He remained forever in the history of mankind. Maresyev's whole life is a real feat. It would probably be very interesting to read the memories of this person, but there are none left. He wrote only a short work, “On the Kursk Bulge.” Alexey Petrovich Maresyev, like many other heroes, was a very modest person and said that he did not want to become a legend. He didn't even tell his sons much about the war. His name is known to us thanks to Polevoy’s book and the feature film based on it. I found information in the literature that there were also pilots who fought without legs. These are Zakhar Sorokin and Leonid Belousov. But few people know about them.

"The Tale of a Real Man" is known in all countries of the world. In our country it was published more than 100 times. She leaves no one indifferent, teaches courage and love of life. I think that such a book can bring back to life someone who has lost hope and considers himself unnecessary. The story of Boris Polevoy helps to preserve Maresyev’s feat in people’s memory. Now this book is kept on my bookshelf. More than once I will pick it up to re-read it, open it again and touch the feat with my heart.

Maresyev's story is a real person