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Family Is All That Matters 42 All the Russian soldiers and maintenance personnel immediately started running for shelter in the bunker which provided the best refuge. Iosif yelled to his colleague, "Wait, let's drop this engine first." Iosif knew that if a bomb hit near the airplane, the engine would explode, hurling dangerous shrapnel all over the landing field, possibly hurting Russians. But his colleague was aaid and ran for the bunker. Iosif desperately labored alone to lower the engine. His plan was to jump into the bunker as soon as the engine was on the ground. But as he watched, a German bomb made a direct hit in the bunker before he could Above: Iosif in Leninokan, Armenia, 1947. Aer Hava's death, Iosif sent money to Inna and Manya, who lived together. do so. Everyone in the bunker was killed, including Iosif 's colleague. When Iosif was in Novisad, Yugoslavia, the Soviet military was forcing the Germans into retreat. Iosif 's squadron kept moving west toward the ont. His instructions were to stage aircra maintenance material in a landing field closer to the ont near Somber, Yugoslavia. Most of his team had already le Novisad. Iosif was to service the last plane out, which would then take him to the next field. There were large metal tubes of pressured gas on the field that were used to flush aircra engines. Unfortunately the pilot of the last plane was careless and allowed the spinning propeller to come into contact with one of the tubes, forcing the propeller to be replaced. A crew of three men—the air squadron engineer, Iosif, and an aircra mechanic—were le behind to replace the propeller. Aer the job was done, the pilot was ready for take-off and signaled Iosif to get into the plane. But the air squadron engineer pulled rank and directed the mechanic, instead of Iosif, to get into the plane. He wanted Iosif on the ground in case something else on the plane should need repair and it had to return to the landing field. The plane took off without incident, but about 15 minutes into the flight two German Messerschmitt fighters attacked, strafing the plane. The pilot radioed for help and desperately tried to evade the attackers. Soon four Russian fighters approached, forcing the Messerschmitts to retreat. The airplane that had been attacked, as well as the Russian fighters, landed safely. The mechanic wasn't so lucky. He was dead, killed by machine gun fire. The pilot survived because the back of the pilot's seat was bulletproof. Had Iosif taken the seat originally assigned to him, he would have died. Iosif tells a harrowing tale about the time during the war when he went to visit Gorodok. In June of 1944 his unit was stationed at a military airport near Gorodok. He had a few days of leave, so he decided to visit his

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