Pavel Nikolaevich Shiryaev - Colonel of the Soviet Army. Member of the Soviet-Finnish war, as well as World War II. The hero of the USSR.
Biography
Pavel Nikolaevich was born in 1914, on June 19. It happened in Narovchat, a small settlement near Penza. He studied at the school only until the seventh grade, and in 1929 went to receive further education in the organization of factory apprenticeship in the city of Zlatoust. Pasha finished his studies in the 32nd year and remained working in Zlatoust as an assistant engineer.
In the same year, the Saransk district commissariat called on Shiryaev to join the Red Army. During the service, he entered the artillery school of Leningrad, which in 1936 he successfully graduated. After that, he underwent special training, then called "Advanced Training Courses for the Command".
With the outbreak of the Soviet-Finnish military conflict, he was sent to the front. At the end of the winter of the fortieth year, during the assault on the Mannerheim line, he was seriously injured and spent the rest of the war in the hospital. Despite this, Pavel Shiryaev was awarded the first order of Lenin in his career.
Participation in the Great Patriotic War
Shiryaev began his military career in the Second World War from the first day of the German attack on the USSR. As commander of an artillery regiment, he participated in the defense of Kiev on the southwestern front. In the autumn of the same year, he was seriously wounded and was out of action until the beginning of the spring of 1942. After recovery, he was appointed assistant commander of the intelligence department of the 171 rifle division of the third strike army, in which he went through the entire war.
Since the end of spring 1941, the 171th division fought with the Dead Head surrounded by the first SS division. In February 1943, the division was sent to the southeast of Staraya Russa, where the main task was to stop the Nazi forces from retreating from the Demyansk bag. Until September there were fights for the city of Staraya Russa, for the courage shown Shiryaev was awarded 2 orders.
Since July 1944, Shiryaev’s division took part in the liberation of the Baltic states. The operation was completed in November in Latvia, where the remnants of the Tucum group of Nazi troops were destroyed. The following month, the division was sent to the first Belarusian front.
Later Shiryaev took part in the famous Vistula-Oder operation, his division with heavy battles advanced six hundred kilometers and reached the city of Zilberg. Until the spring of 1945, Pavel Nikolayevich participated in liberation operations throughout Europe.
In April, Colonel Shiryaev commanded the shelling of Berlin. On the 29th, part of it fired on the Reichstag, and this fire support greatly simplified the assault on the Nazi citadel.
