Ihor Shevchenko

Ilhor Shevchenko (b. 1926) was Ukrainan farmer and veteran of World War II. When World War III broke out in 1951, he and his wife Anya lived on a kolkohz (collective farm) outside Kiev.

He and his family had survived Joseph Stalin's purges and collectivization of the Ukraine throughout the 1930s. When he was fifteen, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Unlike some of his neighbors, Shevchenko didn't quite accept the Germans with open arms. Once the Nazis showed their true colors, Shevchenko joined a partisan band operating outside of Kiev.

In 1943, Shevchenko was conscripted into the Red Army. He attained the rank of sergeant and a leg wound in Germany. He was allowed to return to his kolkhoz, where he married and settled down.

In January 1951, as tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union mounted over the Korean War, Shevchenko learned that the Kiev Military District was mobilized.