Arkadi Baicher

This is a photo of my father Arkadi Baicher during World War II, in 1942. He served at the construction of a railroad from Chita to Mongolia.

After World War II began, in 1941, my father was finishing a military school in Orenburg. Once he got leave, he came to visit us in evacuation in the village Starye Kieshki.

After he left, my mother became awfully concerned since at that time military actions were approaching Stalingrad and my father might have to go there.

Some time later we began to receive children's books from my father. We didn't have the slightest idea what it could be until one day I opened a book and saw 'I am in MPR' written in the book.

We understood that he was in the Mongolian People's Republic. There was training in his school. They were to cover 40 kilometers of the Orenburg steppe in full marching order and my father got sunstroke.

He was taken to hospital. It so happened that other cadets of his school were taken to Stalingrad, and my father was sent to the construction of a railroad in Mongolia since he had railroad education. He served there until 1944.

By the end of the war construction of the Moscow metro began. My father, when he was young, worked at the construction of one of the first metro stations, and he was demobilized and employed by a metro company.

In April 1944, we received a telegram saying: 'Meet me.' My mother thought he was going to another front and when we met him in Moscow she asked, 'Where?' and he replied, 'To Moscow.' We were so happy!