Pyotr Klementyevich Butko

Pyotr Klementyevich Butko - in his award sheet and in the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, Klimentyevich - was born on 11 September 1923 in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro, into a worker's family; he was Ukrainian. He finished an eight-year railway school and before the war worked as a fitter at a factory in Barnaul in the Altai territory. He entered the Red Army in March 1941 and was at the front from March 1942, serving as a scout. In 1944 he completed an army course for battalion and regiment Komsomol organisers. He fought at Stalingrad, in the liberation of Ukraine, in the crossing of the Oder and in the storming of Berlin. On 25 April 1945, in the fighting for the Warschauer railway station in Berlin, German troops holding a corner building were stopping the infantry with rifle and machine-gun fire and anti-tank grenades. According to the award sheet, Junior Lieutenant Butko, Komsomol organiser of a battalion of the 1010th Rifle Regiment, 266th Rifle Division, 5th Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front, worked round the building through the ruins with Sergeant Ivanchenko and three soldiers, crossed the street in a rush, burst into the house and killed a machine-gunner and four sub-machine-gunners, then went up and killed two men armed with Panzerfausts. This opened the way to the station; the battalion took up to 600 railway wagons, 80 vehicles and trailers and two stores. On 28 April 1945, near Alexanderplatz, he helped beat off a counter-attack, killing several attackers and putting out a fire set in the house his group held; he was badly wounded in this fighting. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 15 May 1946 Junior Lieutenant Pyotr Klementyevich Butko was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star medal no. 6681. He served in the army until 1950 and joined the party in 1949. He then lived in Dnipropetrovsk and until 1967 worked as a quality inspector at the Karl Liebknecht Nizhnedneprovsky pipe-rolling works. He died there on 8 October 1989. He also held the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class. A memorial plaque has been placed on the house in Dnipro where he lived.