Aleksandr Fyodorovich Belov

Aleksandr Fyodorovich Belov was born on 30 November 1923 in the village of Dushilovo in Furmanov district of Ivanovo region, into a peasant family. He was Russian. He finished primary school and worked as a drilling-machine operator at the foundry and engineering works in Furmanov. He was called into the Red Army in 1942 and first went into action near Rzhev that autumn, afterwards fighting near Dukhovshchina and taking part in the liberation of Smolensk, Orsha, Vitebsk and Kaunas, and in the crossing of the Neman. Near Vitebsk, when the machine gun failed while an attack was being beaten off, Sergeant Belov and his comrades rolled out a gun and fired over open sights. In one action he was wounded in the head by a fragment and did not leave the field. For this fighting he received the Order of Glory 3rd Class. His Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred for the action of 17 August 1944 in East Prussia. As assistant platoon commander, Senior Sergeant Belov and a party of men broke into an enemy trench and he killed six enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand fighting. He raised a red flag on the bank of the river Sesupe, on the spot where the Soviet border marker no. 50 had formerly stood. Having consolidated, the platoon beat off five counter-attacks and held its position. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 24 March 1945, Senior Sergeant Aleksandr Fyodorovich Belov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 8271. After demobilisation in 1945 he returned to Furmanov and worked as a driver in the railway service. His decorations were presented to him in the Kremlin only in March 1947, two years after the decree. He died on 5 April 1980 and is buried in the war graves section of the town cemetery at Furmanov.