Pyotr Kharitonovich Bukhtulov

Pyotr Kharitonovich Bukhtulov was born on 12 July 1924 in the village of Mozharki in Tsivilsk uyezd, now in Yantikovo municipal district of the Chuvash Republic, into a peasant family. He finished four classes and worked as a cooper in Kanash. In August 1942 he went to the army as a volunteer, called up through the Kanash district commissariat. He completed a school for junior commanders and trained as a gun layer, and from February 1943 was in the field army, first near Staraya Russa on the North-Western Front, then with the 16th Artillery Breakthrough Division of the Supreme Command Reserve on the Bryansk, Steppe and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts. On 22 December 1943, near Kirovograd, his gun destroyed three tanks in repelling a counter-attack, for which he received the medal For Courage. In February 1944, in the fighting against the encircled Korsun–Shevchenkovsky grouping, he took over from a wounded gun commander, and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. He fought in Romania and Hungary and was concussed. On 17 February 1945, near Kebelkut (Gbelce, about 15 km north-west of Štúrovo, in Slovakia), the crew in which Sergeant Bukhtulov was gun layer of the 1431st Light Artillery Regiment, 49th Light Artillery Brigade, 16th Artillery Breakthrough Division, 53rd Army, 2nd Ukrainian Front, met an attack by 14 tanks and 12 armoured personnel carriers. The rest of the crew was put out of action and he was concussed. Fighting on alone, he destroyed four tanks and three armoured carriers and killed about forty enemy soldiers. When the ammunition was gone and the gun had been crushed, he knocked out another tank with an anti-tank grenade, was concussed a second time, fought his way out of encirclement and returned to his regiment the next morning. He ended the war in Austria and was demobilised. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 15 May 1946 he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 6328. He also held the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class, the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Glory 3rd class. He lived in Kanash, working at the wagon-repair plant, from 1962 to 1975 as a joiner at the furniture factory, and from 1975 at a tooling plant. In 1978 he was entered in the Honorary Book of Labour Glory of the Chuvash ASSR. He died on 1 March 1998 and is buried in Kanash, where a street bears his name.