In 1942, the Omskaya Pravda newspaper published Ada Zanegina's Letter, which marked the beginning of the country's only preschool fundraising movement for the front.
It said:
“I am Ada Zanegina. I am six years. I write in print.
Hitler expelled me from the city of Sychevka, Smolensk region.
I want to go home. I'm small, but I know that we need to defeat Hitler and then we'll go home.
Mom gave money for the tank.
I collected 122 rubles and 25 kopecks for the doll. And now I give them to the tank.
Dear Uncle Editor!
Write in your newspaper to all the children so that they also give their money to the tank.
Let's call him "Baby".
When our tank defeats Hitler, we will go home.
Ada.
My mom is a doctor, and my dad is a tanker.”
Then a letter from six-year-old Alik Solodov appeared on the pages of the newspaper: “I want to return to Kyiv,” Alik wrote, “and I am contributing the money I have collected for boots - 135 rubles 56 kopecks - to the construction of the Malyutka tank.
“Mom wanted to buy me a new coat and saved up 150 rubles. I'm wearing an old coat. Tamara Loskutova.
“Dear unknown girl Ada! I am only five years old, and I have been living without my mother for a year. I really want to go home, so I am happy to give money for the construction of our tank. If only our tank had defeated the enemy. Tanya Chistyakova.
Account No. 350035 was opened in the regional branch of the State Bank. Preschool children, schoolchildren in the city and the region began raising funds for the Malyutka tank. Money came in almost daily - rubles, even a trifle that was in children's wallets. Children kindergarten state farm "Novo-Uralsky" prepared a concert and transferred the earned 20 rubles to the State Bank.
Every day the newspaper published letters from children who donated their “doll” savings to the Malyutka tank. The leaders of the Omsk city administration sent a telegram to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief: “Children-preschoolers, wanting to help the heroic Red Army to finally defeat and destroy the enemy, the money they collected for toys, dolls ... give to the construction of the tank and ask to call it “Baby”.” Under the heading "Highest Governmental" came a reply telegram: "I ask you to convey to the preschoolers of Omsk, who collected 160,886 rubles for the construction of the Malyutka tank, my warm greetings and gratitude to the Red Army."
Ada dreamed that her father, a tanker, would fight on the "Baby" tank. But 22-year-old Ekaterina Alekseevna Petlyuk, a senior sergeant of the 56th tank brigade, became his driver-mechanic, who in a month retrained as a driver from the pilot of the Odessa flying club Osoaviakhim, having passed all the exams with excellent marks. In the first battle, she led the "Baby" near Stalingrad in November 1942 in the Kalach-on-Don region, between the state farm "X Years of October" and MTF-2. Messenger "Baby", commanded by senior sergeant Kozyura, briskly slipped through the black fountains of explosions, rolled up to the command vehicles, took orders, rushed to the units, transmitted these orders, drove repairmen to the wrecked tanks, delivered ammunition, took out the wounded.
In December, the brigade was disbanded and "Baby" with a new crew (junior lieutenant Ivan Gubanov became the tank commander, Katya remained the driver, and there was no one else in the T-60) gets into the 90 tank brigade. After the end of the fighting in Stalingrad, the tank, together with the driver, was transferred to the 91st separate tank brigade of Colonel I. I. Yakubovsky.
For courage and heroism in the battles for Stalingrad, Katya Petlyuk received the medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad" and the Order of the Red Star. Not only were her hands frostbitten, but also her face and legs. The communists elected Katya as a party organizer of the company (the Komsomol activist Petlyuk was admitted to the party on January 17, 1943). The brigade was renamed Guards in March 1943 and joined the formed 7th mechanized corps in August.
in the crucible Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, Ekaterina Petlyuk had to part with the "Baby" and change to the T-70, taking as a souvenir from the broken tank the tank clock, which is now on display at the Stalingrad Defense Museum, and the name Malyutka, which Katya has been affectionately called since then (she herself was 151 cm tall). So called Ekaterina Alekseevna and fellow soldiers of the 7th MK from the Odessa group.
The commander of the tank was a platoon commander, Lieutenant Mikhail Kolov. During the Oryol operation, the car was hit by enemy aircraft, and Katya Petlyuk was ordered to transfer to the T-70 to junior lieutenant Pyotr Fedorenko. In one battle, the tank lost its course, but continued to fire from a place. They managed to smash two German dugouts and suppress a machine-gun nest. Fedorenko was wounded in the head and sent to the rear hospital, and Katya was injured in her left leg, but remained in the ranks. For the courage shown in these battles, she was awarded her second military order - Patriotic War II degree.
Before reaching the Dnieper, the party organizer of the company, Katya Petlyuk, together with tank commander Mikhail Kodov, was transferred to the 39th Guards Separate Reconnaissance Army Automobile Armored Battalion of the 3rd Guards Tank Army. After the liberation of Shepetovka on February 11, 1944, the troops of the 3rd Guards were withdrawn from the fighting and received a respite, and the driver Petlyuk, who by that time had three wounds, two military orders and a medal, was sent to the Ulyanovsk Tank School. 
Ekaterina Petlyuk in October 1944 passed everything final exams rated "excellent". She was given the rank of second lieutenant and. left in the school as a commander of a training platoon.
In heavy battles from October 1942 to February 1944, the Katya Guards earned 3 orders and 12 medals. Was commissioned for injuries. In 1945, the garrison military medical commission issued a ruthless verdict: a disabled person of the second group.
Ekaterina Petlyuk becomes a military training instructor in Odessa. Soon she was elected a deputy of the district council. She is graduating in absentia from the Faculty of Law of the University.
In 1975, a schoolboy from the Seeker Club of the Omsk Pioneer Palace, Volodya Yashin, found a letter from Ada Zanegina from the distant forty-second year in an old file of Omskaya Pravda. The guys were excited by this letter. They began to search for the girl who initiated the fundraising for the construction of the Malyutka tank.
On May 19 of the same year, two mistresses of the Malyutka tank met for the first time in Omsk. Adel Aleksandrovna Zanegina, an ophthalmologist from Elektrostal near Moscow, and Ekaterina Alekseevna Petlyuk, head of the registry office of the Leninsky district of Odessa. It turned out that Ada's father, a tanker, also fought on the Oryol-Kursk Bulge. There he died. Then they visited Smolensk, the homeland of Ada.
After meeting with them, second-grade students high school No. 2 of the city of Smolensk decided: "Our front is in the grain field!" The guys began to collect scrap metal, waste paper, medicinal plants in order to build a Malyutka tractor with the proceeds and hand it over to the best tractor driver in the region. The call of the Smolensk Octobrists was picked up by the pioneers of the entire region, and a year later fifteen powerful MTZ-80s lined up in Smolensk near the Mound of Immortality. On each tractor - brass letters: "Baby". These tractors were built by the Komsomol members of the Minsk Tractor Plant during the subbotnik days. 
The following year, Smolensk schoolchildren raised money for fourteen tractors, then another twenty-one. The guys from the Omsk region responded to the patriotic appeal of their peers. Kharkov schoolchildren decided to build one hundred and twenty tractors and replenish the Malyutka column with them.
Seeing off the advanced tractor column "Baby", Ekaterina Alekseevna Petlyuk told the guys:
I will never forget today. Once again, I deeply felt: it was not in vain that we fought for every inch of the earth, it was not in vain that we watered it with our blood. We have sown good seeds, and now the seedlings are pleasing to our eyes. Today we have a peaceful sky above us and children collect scrap metal for tractors.
ღ About the fulfillment of desires ღAda Zanegina before the war.
I am Ada Zanegina. I'm 6. I write in print. Hitler expelled me from the city of Sychevka, Smolensk region. I want to go home. I collected 122 rubles 25 kopecks for the doll. And now I give them to the tank. Dear Uncle Editor! Write to all the children so that they also donate their money to the tank. Let's call him "Baby". When our tank defeats Hitler, we will go home.
And the kids responded.
Adik Solodov, 6 years old:
I want to return to Kyiv. I contribute the money collected for boots - 135 rubles 56 kopecks - to the construction of the Malyutka tank.
Tamara Loskutova:
Mom wanted to buy me a new coat and saved up 150 rubles. I'm wearing an old coat.
Tanya Chistyakova:
Dear unknown girl Ada! I am only five years old, and I have been living without my mother for a year. I really want to go home, and therefore I am happy to give money for the construction of our tank. If only our tank had defeated the enemy.
Shura Khomenko from Ishim:
I was told about Ada Zanegina's letter and I contributed all my savings - 100 rubles and handed over 400 rubles of bonds for the construction of the Malyutka tank. My friend Vitya Tynyanov contributes 20 rubles. Let our dads smash the Nazis with tanks built with our savings.
And the children who did not have savings tried to earn money, as they would say now, through charitable actions. For example, the children of the kindergarten of the Novo-Uralsky state farm prepared a concert and transferred 20 rubles to a special account in the Omsk branch of the State Bank.
So, the whole children's world collected a far from childish amount, which the Omsk authorities transferred to the Defense Fund.
Please convey to the preschoolers of the city of Omsk, who collected 160,886 rubles for the construction of the Malyutka tank, my warm greetings and gratitude to the Red Army.
Supreme Commander Marshal Soviet Union I. Stalin.
The T-60 light tank was produced with children's money (something about the history of its creation and combat use can be read here).
"Baby" looked exactly like this. 
Ekaterina Petlyuk, one of the 19 Soviet women tankers, became his driver. She herself was short, which served in part as a source of constant jokes. However, she fought heroically, which was marked by the orders of the Red Star and the Patriotic War.
Tank "Malyutka" fought near Stalingrad, witnessed the surrender of Field Marshal Paulus. Before the Kursk Bulge, his military service ended, and, like the rest of the retired armored vehicles, he was sent to be melted down. Ekaterina kept a tank clock as a memento (they are now on display at the Stalingrad Defense Museum) and moved to a more advanced, albeit also a small, T-70. 
Driver mechanic Art. s-t Ekaterina Petlyuk.
On the Kursk Bulge, as it turned out later, Catherine fought somewhere near Ada's father. But, alas, for the tanker Alexander Zanegin, the battles near Kursk turned out to be the last.
The history of the "children's" tank was unearthed in 1975 by the Omsk "Red Pathfinders", and on May 9, 1975, in Omsk, an employee of one of the Odessa registry offices, Ekaterina Alekseevna Petlyuk, first met Ada Zanegina - by that time an ophthalmologist from Elektrostal near Moscow Adela Aleksandrovna Voronets.
By the way, the search engines of the Volgograd region celebrated May Day of this year with a rare success: they raised the T-60 tank - after restoration it will become the sixth surviving in the world and the third in Russia (out of six thousand vehicles produced).
By the way, the example of the Omsk children of the war time was infectious; when the story of "Malyutka" became widely known, the pioneers of the Smolensk secondary school No. 2 came up with an initiative to collect scrap metal and waste paper. But, since there was no war and was not expected, they decided to collect recyclable materials for a completely peaceful battle for the harvest. From 1979 to 1986, with the funds raised by the pioneers, the Komsomol members of the Minsk Tractor Plant manufactured 140 MTZ-80 "Belarus" tractors, which bore the name "Baby".
It must be said that not only children and laureates of the Stalin Prize showed concern for tank building in the warring USSR.
In 1938, Red Navy soldier Ivan Boyko enlisted in Magadan. He worked as a driver of a heavy-duty "Yaroslavets", drove all kinds of equipment along the Kolyma tract, and received the badge of "Excellent Dalstroy Worker" for shock work. In 1940, he married Alexandra Morisheva, who also enlisted in Dalstroy absolutely voluntarily.
In 1942, the best driver Ivan Boyko was included in the Dalstroy delegation, which carried gifts to the front-line soldiers. What he saw in the fighting part of the USSR shocked Ivan. The couple transferred their savings to the Defense Fund - 50,000 rubles, and wrote a letter to Moscow, to which the answer came in February 1943:
Thank you, Ivan Fedorovich and Alexandra Leontyevna, for your concern for the Red Army. Your wish will be fulfilled.
Accept my hello
Stalin.
The desire that they voiced to Comrade Stalin was very simple: use the money they transferred to build a tank, and allow them to fight on it themselves. The first step towards the fulfillment of the desires of the Boyko spouses was the order of the head of Dalstroy: “To release from work in Dalstroy the driver of motor depot No. 6 of the motor transport department Boyko Ivan Fedorovich and the worker of the Kolymsnab trust Boyko Alexandra Leontievna, who are going to volunteer for the front.”
In November 1943, they graduated from the shortened course of the Chelyabinsk Tank School and graduated as junior lieutenant technicians - but ended up in the reserve. They received their IS-2 No. 40356 only at the beginning of June 1944 in the 48th separate guards. ttp. Ivan Boyko was appointed as a driver, and Alexandra became the commander of the tank, on which, according to some reports, the harsh inscription "Kolyma" appeared. Just a few days later, they disabled their first Panther, however, with a ramming blow. 
The commander of the part of the p / p-to D. L. Goizman presents the spouses Boyko with the crew of the tank IS-2.
Our press has already reported that the Soviet patriots husband and wife Ivan and Alexandra Boyko bought the tank with their labor savings. Currently they are in the ranks of the Red Army and are fighting against the Nazi invaders. The crew of the tank, where the commander was junior technician-lieutenant Alexander Boyko and the driver was junior technician-lieutenant Ivan Boyko, destroyed 5 tanks and 2 enemy guns in two weeks. 
Photo from the Ogonyok magazine, then still Soviet.
Boiko's tankers finished their combat career in liberated Prague.
In conclusion, about one more desire and a gift.
Maria Filippovna and Ilya Andreevich Shirmanov, collective farmers of the agricultural artel named after Maxim Gorky from Chuvashia, bought a T-34 tank with their peasant savings and presented it to their only son Andrei. In a photograph taken at the presentation of a gift, presumably on June 1, 1943, the son is sitting between his parents. 
A year later, gunner senior sergeant Andrey Shirmanov burned down in this tank along with his crewmates in the battle near Chernivtsi.
We couldn't help but win!
They leave - the old men, whose hands held bayonets, those who reached Berlin and tapped the march on the pavement of Red Square with their heels in May 45th. It seems that another year or two - and no one will remain. But no, look around. There are more children. Children of war. Which also forged the Victory. How Ada Zanegina- a six-year-old Smolyanka with two braids on her shoulders.
I really wanted to go to the front - but there was no soldier's belt. And I begged everyone for it ...
She doesn’t even really remember it herself: she was 5 years old at the beginning of the war! Mother, Polina Terentievna, then she talked about the belt, about her father-tanker, who went to the front on the first day of the war, about the evacuation to the Urals: the mother-doctor was carrying a hundred children from the children's home under her command. “And no one got sick, didn’t die, didn’t get lice” ... What did she remember herself? A potbelly stove in the carriages, the only stool - all the furnishings - in the annex, where they settled in Maryanovka, Omsk Territory, a few black-and-white photographs in a bag - all the belongings. “Then, during the war, I tried chocolate for the first time: I brought a wounded soldier whom my mother treated.” She remembers how she and her mother collected parcels with mittens and socks for the front. As before the war she had a beloved pig - a toy in a suitcase - and how during the bombing in the Smolensk region both the pig and the suitcase remained under fire. "And I didn't have anything else."
Ada saved up for a doll. I folded the pennies that fell from my mother.
I bought a tank.
"I am Ada Zanegina"
Once in Omskaya Pravda a small note was published under the heading "Mail from our readers". She then already read in syllables ... And she wrote, slobbering a pencil: “I am Ada Zanegina. I'm 6. I write in print. Hitler expelled me from the city of Sychevka, Smolensk region. I want to go home. I collected 122 rubles 25 kopecks for the doll. And now I give them to the tank. Dear Uncle Editor! Write to all the children so that they also donate their money to the tank. And let's call him "Baby". When our tank defeats Hitler, we'll go home."
Ada was bombarded with letters - they also fell on the editorial office of Omskaya Pravda. Adik Solodov, 6 years old, wrote: “I want to return to Kyiv. I contribute the money collected for boots - 135 rubles 56 kopecks - to the construction of the Malyutka tank. Tamara Loskutova: “Mom wanted to buy me a new coat and saved up 150 rubles. I'm wearing an old coat." Tanya Chistyakova: “Dear unfamiliar girl Ada! I am only five years old, and I have been living without my mother for a year. I really want to go home, and therefore I am happy to give money for the construction of our tank. If only our tank had defeated the enemy.” Shura Khomenko from Ishim: “They told me about the letter from Ada Zanegina, and I contributed all my savings - 100 rubles - and handed over bonds for 400 rubles for the construction of the Malyutka tank. My comrade Vitya Tynyanov contributes 20 rubles. Let our dads smash the Nazis with tanks built with our savings.”
These letters, written in type, were read aloud to Ada by her mother. One was from a 20-year-old soldier wounded near Rzhev: from the hospital he wrote that the letter from Ada Zanegina breathed into him, immobilized, with a broken spine, longing only for a speedy deliverance from torment, new life- and now he is already on the mend ... But soon - just somewhere at that time - he took his last Stand on the Kursk Bulge Adin's father, a tanker. They were going home, to the Smolensk region. The flow of letters has dried up. An unfulfilled doll, a newspaper, an imaginary tank were covered in a veil in children's memory ... Ada forgot and did not remember about "Baby". And after 30 years, he himself reminded of himself.
Tank "Baby". Photo: From the personal archive
"Baby"
... "Ma-lut-ka" was inscribed across the hatch of the lightweight T-60 tank, which throughout his short life served as the subject of jokes from the male staff of the regiment. Still would! "Taxied" them one of 19 in the entire Red Army, a female tanker, Katyusha, Katya Petlyuk- 151 cm tall! And so nicknamed a baby for her puppet size, she also drove a tank with that name! After all, everything came true: the money for the tank was collected. Ada missed it, but there was also a telegram in Omskaya Pravda, Moscow - Omsk, urgently: “I ask you to convey to the preschoolers of the city of Omsk, who collected 160,886 rubles for the construction of the Malyutka tank, my warm greetings and gratitude to the Red Army. Supreme Commander-in-Chief Marshal of the Soviet Union I. Stalin. And they called him, as she bequeathed, “Baby”, and they beat the Nazis, and returned home ... The T-60 tank fought on the Kursk Bulge, reached Stalingrad, was melted down, and Katya left herself a tank watch as a keepsake ... And they silently lived in her Odessa apartment after the fighting died down.
Katya Petlyuk, who was called a baby for her 151 cm height, drove the Baby tank. Photo: From the personal archiveAda learned about this 30 years later from Omsk pioneers, who unearthed this story and found Ada Zanegina already in the Moscow region, married, mother, doctor. They invited me to Omsk to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Victory, informing us by telegram that the driver of the Malyutka, a certain E. A. Petlyuk, would also be present. And Ada, black-haired, slender, somewhere with her mother in the Smolensk region, who forever left letters from Adik Solodov, and Tamara Loskutova, and others, was stunned when she was introduced to the “driver Petlyuk” in the corridor of the Omsk hotel: small, gray-haired, broad-shouldered, in a strict English suit Ekaterina Alekseevna, a deputy, an employee of the Odessa registry office. “Like exhibits” they were taken around the city: the administration, pioneers, orphanages ... And everywhere Ada was given a rubber baby doll or a luxurious doll, or a plastic baby with diapers - atonement for that toy that was not in military childhood ... “Two housewives tanks" - that's what they were called. Ada went to Odessa a few more times to see the little tanker, went to the opera and drama theater in her modest chintz suit, not daring to put on the formal jacket with shoulders offered by Ekaterina Alekseevna. And a wave once again passed through the country, raised once during the war by the girl Ada. Waste paper was collected in the Smolensk region - and 3 columns of Malyutok tractors came to the city. The trolleybus "Malyutka" built with the people's money began to travel around Omsk. According to Elektrostal - a bus with this name ...
Before perestroika, Katya Petlyuk, the one who went through the entire war, died of cancer. But Adele Alexandrovna Voronets, an almost 80-year-old pensioner, a resident of Elektrostal near Moscow, the one who has letters from the 40s - Adik, Tamara and others, in the bottom drawer of the sideboard - is alive. She has one son, two cats and three jobs: a medical unit, an optician and a part-time job. The balcony in her "odnushka" - in geraniums. “I traveled around Europe, I saw enough of the beauty.” The son pleases his mother with trips.
Adele Aleksandrovna Voronets (Ada Zanegina). Photo: From the personal archive Adel Aleksandrovna, Ada, almost never remembers the war, does not flinch at night from the sound of an air raid tearing her eardrums, and only when asked, she takes out old clippings of Omsk Pravda ... “People have become cloudy, they don’t need this war anymore ... And to me ... I am gratified that in the Victory there is also my small fraction.Why did I tell this story? It seemed to me important now, when the last old people are leaving and there is no one to take over the baton of memory from them, to hear all this firsthand, to touch the gunpowder of those years. Here she is, the girl who bought a tank instead of a doll. Alive, close, pulling from there, from the forties, a thread to us - under the still peaceful sky, which is above her geranium balcony. “I am Ada Zanegina. I write in print...
The birth of a personalized tankOn February 25, 1943, the Omskaya Pravda newspaper published a letter from six-year-old Ada Zanegina, a girl evacuated with her mother, Polina Terentyevna, a doctor, from the city of Sychevka, Smolensk Region, to the village of Usovka, Maryanovsky District, Omsk Region. The letter said:
"I'm Ada Zanegina. I'm six years old. I'm writing in print. Hitler kicked me out of the city of Sychevka, Smolensk region. I want to go home. I'm small, but I know that we need to beat Hitler and then we'll go home. Mom gave money for a tank. I collected for the doll 122 rubles and 25 kopecks. And now I'm giving them to the tank. Dear uncle editor! Write in your newspaper to all the children that they also give their money to the tank. And we'll call it "Baby". When our tank defeats Hitler, we'll go home. Ada. My mom is a doctor and my dad is a tanker."
As Adele Alexandrovna Voronets (Zanegina) later recalled, the idea to donate money for the tank came to her mind herself, and her mother advised her to write a letter about it to the newspaper. (The girl's father, tanker Alexander Zanegin, subsequently died during the Battle of Kursk.)
After the publication of Ada's letter, letters were sent to the editorial office of the newspaper from other children of the region who wanted to donate their small savings to the construction of the Malyutka tank. In the branch of the State Bank of the USSR in the Omsk region, a special account was opened No. 350035, to which the funds raised by the children were credited, and a special heading appeared in the newspaper highlighting the promotion of Ada's initiative:
"I want to return to Kyiv. I am contributing the money I have collected for boots - 135 rubles 56 kopecks - to the construction of the Malyutka tank.
Adik Solodov
"Mom wanted to buy me a new coat and saved up 150 rubles. I wear the old coat."
Tamara Loskutova
"Dear unfamiliar girl Ada! I am only five years old, and I have been living without a mother for a year already. I really want to go home, and therefore I am happy to give money for the construction of our tank. I wish our tank would defeat the enemy."
Tanya Chistyakova
"They told me about Ada Zanegina's letter, and I contributed all my savings - 100 rubles - and handed over bonds for the construction of the Malyutka tank for 400 rubles. My friend Vitya Tynyanov contributes 20 rubles. Let our dads smash the Nazis with tanks built with our savings ."
Shura Khomenko
As a result, 160,886 rubles were collected, after which the money was transferred to the Defense Fund, and the Omsk city government sent a telegram to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, saying that Omsk preschoolers had collected money for the construction of a tank, which they asked to call "Baby". This telegram received an answer from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief:
"I ask you to convey to the preschoolers of the city of Omsk, who collected 160,886 rubles for the construction of the Malyutka tank, my warm greetings and gratitude to the Red Army." Supreme Commander-in-Chief Marshal of the Soviet Union I. Stalin.
With this money was released light tank T-60.
Battle path
Ekaterina Petlyuk, a senior sergeant of the 56th tank brigade, became its driver-mechanic, one of nineteen Soviet women tankers, who retrained as a driver from the pilot of the Odessa flying club Osoaviakhim in a month, having passed all the exams with excellent marks. Tankers joked: "Exact hit - a baby in" Baby! "- Ekaterina's height was 1 m 51 cm.
In the first battle, she led the T-60 near Stalingrad in November 1942 in the Kalach-on-Don region, between the state farm "X Years of October" and MTF-2. The liaison tank, commanded by senior sergeant Kozyura, briskly slipped through the black fountains of explosions, rolled up to the command vehicles, took orders, rushed to the units, transmitted these orders, drove repairmen to the wrecked tanks, delivered ammunition, took out the wounded.
In December, the brigade was disbanded and the T-60 with a new crew (junior lieutenant Ivan Gubanov became the tank commander, Katya remained the driver, and there was no one else in the T-60) gets into the 90 tank brigade. After the end of the fighting in Stalingrad, the tank, together with the driver, was transferred to the 91st separate tank brigade of Colonel I. I. Yakubovsky. For courage and heroism in the battles for Stalingrad, Katya Petlyuk received the medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad" and the Order of the Red Star. Not only were her hands frostbitten, but also her face and legs. The communists elected Katya as a party organizer of the company (the Komsomol activist Petlyuk was admitted to the party on January 17, 1943). The brigade was renamed Guards in March 1943 and joined the formed 7th mechanized corps in August. In the late spring - early summer of 1943, the personalized T-60 "Baby" tank just fell into the hands of Catherine. In the crucible of the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, Ekaterina Petlyuk had to part with the "Baby" and transfer to the T-70, taking as a souvenir from the broken tank a tank clock, which is now on display at the Museum of the Defense of Stalingrad, and the name Malyutka, which since then has been affectionately called Katya .
In heavy fighting from October 1942 to February 1944, "Guards Katya" earned 3 orders and 12 medals. Was commissioned for injuries. In 1945, the garrison military medical commission issued a ruthless verdict: a disabled person of the second group.
It is not known for certain what the further fate of the Malyutka tank was. According to some reports, he reached Berlin.
After the war, this story was forgotten.
Second birth
In 1975, Volodya Yashin, a schoolboy from the Seeker Club in the Omsk Palace of Pioneers, discovered a letter from Ada Zanegina from the distant forty-second year in an old file of Omskaya Pravda. The guys were excited by this letter. They started looking for the girl who initiated the fundraising for the construction of the Malyutka tank.
On May 19 of the same year, two mistresses of the Malyutka tank met for the first time in Omsk. Adel Aleksandrovna Zanegina, an ophthalmologist from Elektrostal near Moscow, and Ekaterina Alekseevna Petlyuk, head of the registry office of the Leninsky district of Odessa. Then they visited Smolensk, the homeland of Ada.
After meeting with them, students of the second grade of secondary school No. 2 of the city of Smolensk decided: " Our front is in the grain field!"The guys began to collect scrap metal, waste paper, medicinal plants in order to build the Malyutka tractor with the proceeds and hand it over to the best tractor driver in the region. The call of the Smolensk Octoberists was picked up by the pioneers of the entire region, and a year later fifteen powerful MTZ- 80". On each tractor there are brass letters: "Baby". These tractors were built by the Komsomol members of the Minsk Tractor Plant on the days of subbotniks.
The following year, Smolensk schoolchildren raised money for fourteen tractors, then another twenty-one. The guys from the Omsk region responded to the patriotic appeal of their peers. Kharkov schoolchildren decided to build one hundred and twenty tractors and replenish the Malyutka column with them.
Seeing off the advanced tractor column "Malyutka", Ekaterina Alekseevna Petlyuk told the guys:
“I will never forget today. Once again I deeply felt: it was not in vain that we fought for every inch of the earth, it was not in vain that we watered it with our blood. We sowed good seeds, and now the seedlings delight our eyes. scrap metal for tractors.
Bonus video:
Test drive of Soviet tanks - T-60
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