Russia – Soviet: A fine assault on the Seelow Heights Order of Glory 3rd Class awarded to Reserve Junior Sergeant Aleksei Ivanovich Taran, a Breechblock Operator in the 220th Guards Rifle Regiment, 79th Guards Rifle Division, 1st Belarussian Front, for destroying an enemy firing position with his fellow crew members and killing 10 Germans with his rifle in a later counterattack at the village strongpoint near Hathenow on the crest of the Seelow Heights.
Order of Glory 3rd Class, type 2, numbered 512994
Condition: Good very fine
Reserve Junior Sergeant Aleksei Ivanovich Taran was bron in the village of Kovalyovka, Shirokolanovka Raion, Nikolayev Oblast in 1909, a Ukrainian national he gained an elementary education before serving in the Red Army between June and September 1941 and again from April 1944 until October 1945. The dates of service and a lack of confirmation of him being wounded suggest that Taran may have been taken prisoner by the Germans earlier in the war and quickly released when his home was overrun. The Germans capturing the Nikolayev area around September 1941 and it being liberated by the Red Army in the early months of 1944. This as is common however, is unconfirmed by the Russian archives.
Taran was to receive a Medal for Courage by Order of the 220th Guards Rifle Regiment on 18th March 1945, almost certainly as a result of an act of gallantry during the Vistula-Oder offensive, or the fighting in East Pomerania in late February or early March.
Taran was next to receive this Order of Glory whilst serving as a Guards Private First Class in the role of a Breechblock operator in a 45mm gun battery of the 220th Red Banner Guards Rifle Regiment, 79th Zaporozhe Red Banner, Orders of Suvorov and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Guards Rifle Division, , by Order of the 79th Guards Rifle Division on 7th May 1945. This Decoration was awarded on the back of the following citation:
‘During the breakthrough of the enemy line of defence on the western bank of the Oder River near Hathenow-Sachsendorf on April 18, 1945, he and his fellow gun crew members destroyed 1 enemy firing position. Additionally, while repelling a counterattack, he personally killed 10 Germans with his rifle and took prisoners.’
The fighting at Hathenow involved the capturing of a village strongpoint on the Seelow Heights, which resulted in the Red Army having the ability to access the rest of the ridgeline and subsequently advance on Berlin itself.
Taran would receive the Medal for the Liberation of Warsaw, the Medal for the Capture of Berlin and a Medal for the Victory over Germany, and after the war would be employed as a Workman at Shostakovo Grain Elevator, whilst living in the village of Kovalyovka, Shirokolanovka Raion, Nikolayev Oblast, Ukraine.
