Military topographers made a significant contribution to achieving the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. For their professionalism, bravery and courage, many of them were submitted to government awards, orders and medals. At war a topographer performs an important and responsible, though not as heroic and risky job as, for example, a pilot or a tanker. Therefore, until recently, it was believed that there were no military topographers among the servicemen honoured with the highest distinction, the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. However, by now, when the archive documents of the Russian Federation Defense Ministry have been fully opened, it is possible to observe the way of our colleague, Alexander Vasilyevich Sidorov, who was assigned the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union in 1943. A. V. Sidorov started his career in 1930 as a civilian topographer of the Central Asian Geodetic Administration (Tashkent). Since 1932, in the Military Topographic Service of the Red Army: he made his way up from junior to senior specialist in topographic and geodetic units of the Central Asian Military District, participated in large-scale works in Mongolia and Iran. In 1940 he was assigned to party political work. With his regiment, the military political worker A.V. Sidorov went through the path of heavy and violent battles near the city of Smolensk, participated in the Oryol and Chernigov-Pripyat offensive operations, the Battle of Kursk; forcing the rivers of Desna, Snov, Sozh, Dnieper; in the blockade of the Kurland group of Nazi Germany troops. He also raised soldiers to battle by his own example.