Pavel Grigoryevich Butov

Pavel Grigoryevich Butov was born on 27 December 1912 in the village of Bolshiye Mochily in Yelatma uyezd of Tambov governorate, now in Pitelinsky district of Ryazan region, into a peasant family. As a child he moved with his parents to Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd, where he finished incomplete secondary school. From 1940 he lived in the workers' settlement of Krasnaya Sloboda, now the town of Krasnoslobodsk, and worked at a factory there. In October 1941 he was called up by the Krasnoslobodsk district military commissariat, and from November of that year he was at the front. He served as an anti-tank rifleman, the gunner of an anti-tank rifle, in the 1339th Rifle Regiment of the 318th Rifle Division, 18th Army, North Caucasian Front. His division took part in the Kerch–Eltigen landing operation in the autumn of 1943. On the night of 1 November 1943 Private Butov was among the first of his unit to land on the shore of the Kerch peninsula south of the settlement of Eltigen, now Geroyevskoye within the city of Kerch. With his anti-tank rifle he remained in the fighting line of the rifle units, took part in beating off counter-attacks by enemy infantry and tanks, and engaged the firing points that were raking the battalion's flanks. He was killed in the fighting for the bridgehead. The award sheet gives the date of his death as 3 November 1943; the reports of losses give 1 November. He was buried at Eltigen. In the award sheet his rank is given as Red Navy man; the decree names him a Red Army private. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 17 November 1943, for crossing the Kerch Strait, seizing a bridgehead on the Kerch peninsula and the courage and heroism shown in doing so, Private Pavel Grigoryevich Butov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously. He was also awarded the Order of Lenin. Streets in Kerch and in Krasnoslobodsk bear his name, and his name is carved on the stele of the Alley of Heroes in Volgograd.