"I belong to a Red Army reenactors club in St. Petersburg, and we perform these kind of reenactments regularly" "We do it to keep the memory of the Winter War alive" "Eeva Kilpi Novelist, Poet" "John F. Jack" Hasey Iroquois Ambulance Corps" "Dr. Tomas Reis National Defence College, Finland" "William Trotter Author Frozen Hell" "Gunnar Laatio Veteran, Mannerheim Line" "We left for the Karelian isthmus by train on October 10, 1939, on so called extraordinary maneuvers." "I was the duty officer" "When we arrived at the train station in Viipuri, an old Karelian woman came up to me and gave me a small flower that I put into the breast pocket of my uniform." "She thanked me." "She thanked all of us who had come to the Karelian isthmus to defend them." "In our sector, there was nothing ready so we had to dig trenches, build barbed wire obstacles, and dugouts." "Major Mauno Uoti, Director Tank Museum, Parola, Finland" "We had 32 old Renault tanks, no longer fit for combat and 32 Vickers tanks from England." "Without guns, without periscope, without radios." "We had only one vehicle fully ready for combat." "Erkki Palosuo, veteran" "Our aircraft were old English Ripon aircraft that could only fly 160 km/h," "while Russians had fighters that could fly as fast as 370 km/h." "Aulikki Olsen, Veteran, Lotta Svärd" "Max Jacobson Author Ambassador, United Nations Representative" "From the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev:" "From the diary of Private Tauno Pukka, 3rd independent infantry Battalion, Finland" "The second weapon we had against tanks was satchel charges but with them you had to get even closer to the tank because they were quite heavy and you couldn't throw them further than 10 to 15 meters." "It was a crazy defensive tactic." "The third tank fighting technique men used took more courage and was even crazier jamming a log into a tank's treads." "Dr. Ohto Manninen Professor Military History National Defence College, Finland" "We know that in December of 1939, Stalin, in anger made a statement that since Finland has fewer inhabitants than Leningrad, these could easily be moved to Siberia." "Inkeri Kilpinen Author "Lear Lotta"" "Anni Tukkia Veteran, Lotta Svärd" "When they first arrived, they were first given a bath, taken to sauna" "and dressed in clean clothes." "The beds were not good." "They were low wooden beds and put their backs to a severe test." "We never had a problem with what to do with our spare time, because we never had any spare time." "When we came home from the hospital we had to crop and sew men's shirts" "and we made helmet liners out of wool." "Elsa Vanhala Veteran, Lotta Svärd" "Another important thing that had to be done was sewing the snow camouflage suits for the Finnish soldier." "The pieces were already cut." "We just sewed them together at home." "Kirill Yakimovich" "From the memoirs of Marshall Mannerheim" "The Red Army soldiers were very brave, there's no doubt about it." "We were firing at them as much as we could with our Suomi machine guns and our light machine guns and our rifles." "They ran all the way to our barbed wire and they even ran over the dead bodies of their comrades." "Veikko Sipilä Veteran, 16th infantry Regiment" "There was a lot of soldier's humor among us and it saved us maybe from psychological traumas." "We guessed all kind of things and he said you don't know anything." "He said you don't even know these kind of things exist anymore." "He meant women because we hadn't seen a single Lotta or woman during the whole Winter War" "Col. Pasi Kesseli Finnish Defence Forces" "Tolvajärvi, on the north side of Lake Ladoga, is the first battle in which the Finnish Army won a victory in the Winter War" "Before that the Finnish Army had been in retreat for a little over a week without any success until in Tolvajärvi, Col Talvela and Lt. Colonel Pajari defeated the enemy" "That gave strength to the whole Army to continue fighting and after that we started winning battles." "I still wonder how we survived under those conditions." "We were young then and we were very different from modern young people," "We were active in sports." "We were used to being outdoors." "We lived a healthy country life." "It was easier for us to survive in those conditions." "Lt. Gen. Ermei Kanninen, Finnish Defence Forces" "We were fighting in our country and in familiar surroundings." "Every Finn knew how to ski and operate in deep forests in extreme conditions, including extreme cold." "Our company fought in that Sausage War" "The battle lasted the whole night and we could not see anything." "We just fired at muzzle flashes." "We didn't even know where to aim." "Kalevi Juntunen Veteran, Suomussalmi" "Our mission was not to gain or hold ground, our mission was to harass them, inflict losses and quickly go away so we don't have casualties ourselves." "Niilo Haikola Veteran, Suomussalmi" "The prisoners who came out of the dugouts were apathetic." "Hungry exhausted." "Many had their hands and feet frostbitten." "And the first thing we did, we offered them a cigarette." "And that was an important thing to do because then they were not afraid." "They had been told and they thought that if they were taken prisoner they would be tortured, their eyes plucked out of their heads and then killed." "But once they were offered tobacco, they felt relieved." "They were no longer afraid and they didn't want to escape anymore." "It was really horrible." "The Russians had many horses" "Mauno Laaksonen, veteran, Lemmetti but they were so hungry that they ate them down to the skin and bones, even to the hooves." "There were teeth marks anywhere they could get a little fat" "Stalin, in his effort to cleanse the Red Army had destroyed, if we can use that term, a huge part of his officer corps." "And the Red Army did not have the same capability to fight a war in 1939 as it had in the 1930's." "It felt like hell." "Of course, I have not actually been there, but I can't imagine it could be any worse." "So I skied back and found a small hill next to the road." "I stood there and put my ski poles under my armpits." "I was encouraging the guys keep going, to ski on but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep there standing up." "I'm very happy that the war ended just at that moment when we were driven to the end of our energy when we were absolutely exhausted." "Then I saw a young man in acute pain, a student, who had had his other leg amputated." "In his pain he said to me, "Did I leave my leg to the isthmus so that the Russkies could have it?" "I only wish we could maintain our freedom!"" "Tami Leinonen Karelian Refugee" "When my grandfather heard the conditions of the treaty he started crying out loud." "All of us started crying because it meant that all of us" "Karelians would not be returning home." "Marko Seppänen Director Raatenportti Museum, Suomussalmi" "Raino Kurtti Veteran, Suomussalmi" "I have to say it would have felt really bad if these had been our own boys, but these were enemy soldiers and at that time we didn't honor the enemy, dead or alive." "The Winter war was an exceptionally good lesson for the Russians and it was learned in Moscow" "They got to test their equipment in battle, they made decisions about which tanks they would continue to use and how they would use them, which designs they would completely abandon and which they would continue to develop."