On this day, 28.11.1915, Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (born Kirill) was born - war correspondent, poet, prose writer. Author of more than 10 collections of poem, 11 books, a large number of plays, scripts. He is best known for his poems "Wait for Me" (1941), "Kill Him!" (1942) and the novel trilogy "The Living and the Dead" (1959).

Simonov's life was inextricably linked with the war. His father, Mikhail Agafangelovich, went missing in action during World War I and never saw his son. Stepfather Alexander Grigorievich Ivanishev was a colonel in the Tsar's army and wanted Konstantin to follow in his footsteps. But young Simonov chose journalism.

In 1939, he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkhin-Gol. This was the first time he had been to war.

He was drafted into the army as a correspondent on the first day of the Great Patriotic War, June 22, 1941, and went through it to the end. During this time, he managed to visit all the fronts: he witnessed the encirclement of the Western Front, the heroic defense of besieged Mogilev and Odessa, in September he participated in the combat mission of the L-4 «Garibaldiets» submarine, in December he was in the counter-offensive units near Moscow, and participated in the landing of troops in Feodosia in the winter of 1941/42. He was in Murmansk, Stalingrad and the Caucasus in 1942, at the Kursk bulge and in the battle for the Dnieper in 1943, he witnessed the surrender of Berlin and the signing of the capitulation of Germany. I have also been on numerous business trips to Japan, the USA, the UK, France and China.

During the war, he kept detailed memoirs, which after the war he supplemented with archival documents and eyewitness accounts. All this helped to establish the fate of many people he met during the war. Simonov believed that: «The interruption of people’s lives is one of the most tragic features of war. And now I have a growing sense of unpaid debt: wherever I can, I must name the people I have found, follow the threads of their lives, sometimes irretrievably broken, and sometimes simply not fully known to us».

During his rich life, he witnessed many events and visited many places. But among them, there was always one special place. It was Buinichi Field, which he visited during the siege of Mogilev on July 13, 1941. He wrote about it: "I was not a soldier, I was only a correspondent, but I have a piece of land that I will never forget - a field near Mogilev, where I first saw in July 1941 how our people knocked out and burned 39 German tanks in one day." He remembered this place and the people who defended it for the rest of his life, and bequeathed that his ashes be scattered there. Konstantin Simonov died on August 28, 1979.

Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Simonov (far left) with the command of the 75th Guards Rifle Division, Ponyri village, Oryol region, 07-08.1943

Konstantin Simonov (left) with his friend, correspondent Evgeny Petrovich Petrov (1902-1942) on the Karelian Front, 1942

From left to right: correspondents Pyotr Ivanovich Belyavsky, Evgeny Genrikhovich Kriger, Konstantin Simonov and the newspaper's driver Pavel Ivanovich Borovkov after breaking out of encirclement in Chaus, photo - Pavel Troshkin, 15.07.1941

Konstantin Simonov on the barrel of a Ferdinand, destroyed on the northern part of the Kursk Bulge, 07.1943

Konstantin Simonov in his office in Moscow, 1960