Remains of Red Army Soldiers Found in Novgorod Region

Explorers find the remnants of 9 thousand soldiers

The servicemen of the search expedition Dolina reburied 91 soldiers of the Red Army, whose remnants were found on battlefields of the past. As the headquarters of the expedition said, the remains of the Red Army soldiers and officers were buried according to military traditions. The funeral ceremony took place on Saturday in the settlement of Igozhevo, the Novgorod region.

Specialists say that these soldiers of the Red Army died during the first two years of the Great Patriotic War. Two of the so-called “death medallions” were found in the woods and swamps of the Novgorod region. These medallions were little plastic boxes that contained records about the killed soldiers.

The search expedition Dolina will try to find the relatives of these soldiers so they will know where their fathers or grandfathers were buried. In addition to death medallions, the expedition found fragments of the downed Soviet Pe-2 plane with the remains of a radio operator.

The headquarters of the Dolina expedition reported that the remains of 171 Red Army officers and soldiers were found last fall around the settlement of Pervomaysky. On the whole, the expedition managed to find and rebury the remains of almost nine thousand Soviet soldiers. Over 60 thousand soldiers have been reburied by the expedition since 1998.

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

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Read the original in Russian: http://science.pravda.ru/science/2002/6/20/57/2136_sledopyt.html