Творческая работа ученицы 10 класса. Эссе (англ язык) The Immortal Regiment. My great grandfather…

Sterlikov Nikolay Ivanovich.
For every citizen of our big country it is hard to recall the events which relate to the Great Patriotic War. There is no man who this terrible page of the Russian history passed by. And my family isn’t an exception. From both mother’s and father’s side we have people who took part in this war. I’d like to tell you about one of them.
It is my great-grandfather – Sterlikov Nikolay Ivanovich. He was born on the 25th of May in 1921 in village Chernigovka of the Saratov region in a farmer’s family. He was the fourth child. There were four more children in their family. The members of the Sterlikov’s confronted with the difficulties before the war. Being alleged as a national enemy Nikolay’s father was exiled to Kazahstan. Nikolay was conscripted to the army by a District Military Commissariat when he was 20 years old on the 22nd of August in 1941. He was a sergeant of the guard and a gunner of anti-tank weapons in the 57th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 20th Guards Rifle Division.
During one of the fights he was wounded by the shot in the lung. He lay wounded under a railway mound and when the fashists were passing by him, he pretended as if he was dead and he had hidden his ID in the ground. This case saved his life and he was awarded a Medal of Honor for his courage shown in the battle.
My grandmother also told me one more story about his life during the war. It was early autumn and there was no enemy near the army. Nikolay was sent by his chief to take some biscuits for his detachment from a nearby settlement. He got it successfully and was about to come back as it suddenly became dark. Therefore he decided to wait till morning and sleep in a haystack. Besides he suffered from a night-blindness and couldn’t see in the dark. Early morning he caught the sound of a foreign language. There were two Germans who wanted to lie on this haystack, too. He hid and caught his breath. Then Nikolay jumped out of the ambuscade and pointed his weapon at them. The Germans got scared and Nikolay made them go with him to the detachment. It was a fantastic event.
He got married in 1941 and had two daughters: Nadya and Luda, - and one son – Valeriy. In 1944 he came back from the war. Nikolay died on the 21st of November in 1996 in Kurgan of the received wounds. I also want to add one more fact about him. After the Great Patriotic War he worked as a director of the 14th school from 1968 to 1981. Before it he had studied at the Pedagogical Institute in Kurgan and got qualification of a teacher of History.
The memories about our ancestors my family cherish very gently transmitting them from one generation to the other. Since my childhood my mother, father, grandfathers and grandmothers have been telling some tragic stories about my relative’s lives and not long time ago I decided to collect and save all the information about them. I’m proud of the fact that I can be related to our great history through the heroic deeds of my ancestors.