Judging by the award documents, there is no evidence of any discrimination against the Red Army's fines in relation to awards. In large numbers, the penalists received awards such as the Order of Glory, the medal "For Courage", as well as the medal "For Military Merit". Moreover, in the penal battalions, staffed from officers who had messed up, soldiers' awards were often not very happy. However, there were not many Heroes of the Soviet Union among the penalty box, and perhaps even one.
It is possible that there were other Heroes of the Soviet Union from among the penalty box. However, the authentic establishment of this fact requires the work of historians with archival documents and biographies of military personnel. The search is complicated by the fact that after receiving a prestigious award, the penalty box returned to the line units. The most famous fighter of the penal battalion, who received the Golden Star of the Hero, is Vladimir Yermak, who was born on May 15, 1924 in the Byelorussian SSR in the city of Bobruisk in the family of a military man.
Vladimir's mother and father divorced early, after which the mother and her children left for Leningrad, where she remarried. There Vladimir received an incomplete secondary education. Finished school in the year of the beginning of the war. During the blockade, he worked in the Komsomol fire brigade. In 1942, the family was evacuated to Nizhny Tagil, but due to the consequences of the famine, the mother died. By this time, Vladimir's father and stepfather had already died at the front. In Nizhny Tagil, 17-year-old Vladimir took care of his younger sister and worked as a mechanic at a local factory. At the age of 18, he was drafted into the Red Army and sent to a 6-month artillery course.
After receiving military training and the rank of lieutenant, Vladimir Yermak ended up in the 123rd Infantry Division of the Leningrad Front. There, in 1943, Vladimir Yermak caused an accident - the murder of a comrade as a result of criminal negligence. According to the military investigation, the young officer did not check the presence of a cartridge in the chamber of a personal weapon, as a result of which, during the cleaning of the latter, he shot a colleague who happened to be nearby. For criminal negligence and manslaughter, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. The verdict was replaced by a decision of the military court to stay in the penal battalion.
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On July 19, 1943, the 14th separate penal battalion participated in the preparation of the Mginskaya offensive operation. The unit participated in reconnaissance in combat on the Sinyavsky Heights. During the operation, the penal unit ran into a disguised German bunker and was tightly pressed by machine-gun fire. In these events, 19-year-old penalty box Vladimir Ivanovich Yermak sacrificed himself by closing the embrasure of the firing point with his own body, giving his comrades the opportunity to escape from enemy fire. Upon returning to the position, the commander of the 14th separate penal battalion, Major Lesik, first submitted Vladimir Yermak to the Order of the Red banner, but immediately after that, without waiting for the order for the army, he filed a petition for the introduction of Yermak to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
As a result, on August 5, 1943, the Military Council of the 67th Army presented Vladimir Ivanovich Yermak to the Order of the Red Replacement. The gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union found a penal on February 21, 1944, after the corresponding Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The name of the Red Army hero is today immortalized as streets in Nizhny Tagil, St. Petersburg, Minsk and Bobruisk, as well as in the park of the Sinyavskie Heights memorial complex.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about what happened to the fighters of the Soviet penal battalions after the end of the war.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/160422/62735/