NEWS
ILYAS OVEZGELDYEV. ONE OF THE FIRST TURKMENS - FULL HOLDER OF THE ORDERS OF GLORY
By their statute, full holders of the Orders of Glory were equated with heroes. There were four such warriors-order-bearers in the history of Turkmenistan: Akhmed Allaberdiyev, Ilyas Ovezgeldyev, Akhmed Annadurdyev and Mukhamedkuli Durdyev. The oldest among them was Ilyas Ovezgeldyev, born on February 12, 1914.
Each of the three Orders of Glory was awarded to I. Ovezgeldyev for military valor, courage in hostilities and exploits. Moreover, the heroic deeds of the soldiers. This meant that Ilyas personally destroyed the enemy's firing positions and manpower.
In the cult film by Grigory Chukhrai "The Ballad of a Soldier", the director clearly demonstrated how the hero of the film, the soldier Alexei Skvortsov, who overcame his fear and indecision, still managed to destroy two enemy tanks, for which he received six days of vacation. And if such heroic deeds are performed more than once or twice, moreover, each time with a huge risk to life ... This may indicate a constant inner overcoming of one's own fear, selflessness in the name of lofty goals. And it really deserves the highest awards.
How could Ilyas, who in the pre-war years peacefully worked on the collective farm fields of his native village of Geokcha near Ashgabat, assume that in a dozen years, in a terrible time, he would have to perform such feats.
Born into a simple daikhan family, Ilyas was no different from his peers. Quiet, calm, hardworking. After the end of the seven-year period, he is an ordinary worker in his native collective farm, then he serves in the army. He goes to the front in September 1942.
It so happened that he performed his military exploits in the third year of bloody battles. By this time, with his battalion, he went through many difficult battles, in which he showed himself as a brave and brave warrior.
At the end of August, in offensive battles in Romania near the settlements of Mardzin, Poeni, Putna, junior sergeant I. Ovezgeldyev destroyed a tank, four firing points and an infantry squad; in September and October, in the same place in Romania, near the village of Livadi, he destroyed five more machine-gun points, an infantry platoon, and in December in Hungary he destroyed a gun, four firing points and an enemy squad.
According to the then existing rules, full holders of the Order of Glory were awarded the next military rank. So the sergeant, gunner of the 76-mm gun of the 513th separate machine-gun and artillery battalion of the 40th army I. Ovezgeldyev immediately became a foreman.
Where did so much strength and courage come from in a simple rural guy, many did not understand. However, others were already equal to Ilyas. And it is no coincidence that during the selection of soldiers to participate in the Victory Parade, his name sounded one of the first. So Ilyas ended up in Moscow, which he had not seen during the defensive battles. Now he marched in the ranks of the parade participants on Red Square. Like everything before, he fulfilled the new assignment perfectly.
Only six months later, Sergeant Major I. Ovezgeldyev was demobilized and returned to Turkmenistan. The full holder of the Orders of Glory is restored to his vegetable-growing brigade and begins to work as a simple worker.
Although many villagers, including those in the brigade, knew Ilyas well, few of them suspected that, who worked alongside them from dawn to dawn, a new member of the collective was a hero of past battles. They learned about his soldier's exploits and awards only at the moment when Ilyas was recommended to the place of the foreman of vegetable growers.
A simple, modest village worker. A real soldier. A man of action and deeds. This is how Ilyas Ovezgeldyev, a full holder of the Orders of Glory, was remembered and remained in the memory of his relatives and fellow villagers.