> That is just ... gruesome. Yep. But the alternative were worse. Anyone who hasn't been occupied by Stalin era Soviet should be very happy. As a kid I heard

> That is just ... gruesome. Yep. But the alternative were worse. Anyone who hasn't been occupied by Stalin era Soviet should be very happy. As a kid I heard a bunch of stories from my dad who had friends in Finland and also from my friends who had been there. One was that the Finnish soldiers always carried a backpack on night patrol so they could safely backstab anyone they came up behind in the night and couldn't identify as if it was one of theirs it would end in a blanket or something anyway. Another was that of Finnish troops not being to careful when they packed the hay they slept in so some of it would fall on the ground. Only there would also often be a mine there as well. Oh, and most of the time the Russians stopped to examine the hay there was just hay on the ground but sniper fire from the hillside behind it. As Wikimedia points out: the Finnish were lucky because of Stalins great purge, but still they should not be messed with. Oh, another one, from air combat, this one I learned later from a book probably: according to that source the planes the Russians used for the invasion of Finland had landing gear that had to be lowered using a pulley system. Again, according to that source, some Russian planes were lost after the Finnish pilots figured out this and started ambushing them while they approached landing.