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| Near Moscow, 1934 |
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| My grandfather with my mom |
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| Moscow, 1937 |
In September 1939 he was drafted to the Red Army and sent to Poland. His 150th Rifle Division
was there till early November, then it was moved to Leningrad to be in reserve of the 7th Army.
On January 14, 1940, Junior Lieutenant Lipatov was sent to the front. He was killed in action on January 21, 1940.
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| Death notice, January 1940. He was killed and buried near Koukkuniemi village in Finland, now Russia... |
Koukkuniemi village was leveled. Every inch of land captured by Red Army went to the Soviet Union, and many more, including the second largest city and the most fertile lands of Finland. All the Finns were displaced. My research couldn't even help in finding out where Koukkuniemi had been located...
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| There is no trace of Koukkuniemi on 1936 topographic map |
During the Soviet Union times all those places were closed for visiting and basically uninhabited.
Nobody bothered to bury the fallen soldiers and they were left to rot in the ravines. Those who were buried in mass graves didn't have names. There is a mass grave with 835 soldiers only, while it is known that at least eight divisions were storming Finnish defense lines for three weeks and at least 5,000 casualties were registered in each of them.
There are bones everywhere in those forests...
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| No trace is left of Koukkuniemi village and only one (1) mass grave in the Taipale Peninsula |
My Grandma had been looking for my Grandfather's burial place for forty years and everyone was telling here that it was useless because the tomb was in Finland. The place where he died is actually about 90 km (55 miles) north of St. Petersburg.
What remains of my grandfather is only a database entry that was discovered by Memorial Society researchers.
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