The author of these memoirs is Pyotr Gordeevich Cherkasov (1913-1987) - a career officer of the Soviet Army. His life fell on the era of steep changes in the history of our country - the Civil War, the "cultural revolution," collectivization, the elimination of the kulaks as a class, Stalinist repressions. The Cherkasov family also went through all this. The author had a chance to work as a tractor driver and foreman, study at the labor faculty of the road institute, learn the famine of 1932-1933, and serve in the Trans-Baikal Group of Forces of the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army. But Pyotr Gordeevich, like most of his peers, considered participation in the Great Patriotic War to be the main business of his life. He talks about this time and about himself in time in his memoirs.