The mess tin presented in the exhibition of the Churapchinsky Museum belongs to Gavriil Protodyakonov, the participant of the Great Patriotic War, artilleryman, senior sergeant.
He was born on December 28, 1910 in the Alagarsk settlement of the Churapchinsky district of Yakutia. After graduating from the pedagogical workers’ school, he was a teacher in Yakutsk.
In September 1941, he was mobilized into the Red Army. Gavriil Protodyakonov went to the front in 1942 as an artilleryman. He participated in the battles near the town of Yelets, then in the Battle of Stalingrad. “Sniper, anti-tank rifleman, and artillerist” — that is how Gavril Protodyakonov was called by his battle comrades.
Soviet commanders praised the ingenuity of the Yakut artilleryman, who rolled his 45-caliber anti-tank gun onto midground and fired from there at Nazi tanks, the “tigers”. This quality helped him not only to survive, but also to discover a new kind of combat. Gavriil Protodyakonov was the first to step onto the midground, no one had ever done such a thing before.
With his 45-caliber anti-tank gun, he entrenched himself between the Red Army and enemy trenches. The enemy could not reach him, their shells flew past him.
Gavriil Protodyakonov especially distinguished himself on July 23, 1943 during the capture of the village of Golaya Dolina. German tanks broke into the battery’s dispositions, shot and crushed all the guns. Gavriil Protodyakonov was left alone at the gun. Suffering a wound and contusion, he destroyed three German “tiger” tanks and repulsed two attacks of the enemy infantry.
Lieutenant Ilya Shuklin, the battery commander, was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for that battle. Protodyakonov was awarded the medal “For Valor”.
