Word: finnish
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...tank attack preceded the infantry advance. Unlike the Poles,*the Finns were ready with anti-tank guns and heavier field artillery. They claimed to have smashed up 54 juggernauts in five days as they fell back on their fortified Mannerheim Line. At Terijoki, seat of the new Red puppet Finnish "Government" (see p. 26), they left land mines which they claimed blew up thousands of Russians...
...series of holding attacks to fix the defenders in positions, set them up for more crushing blows. The Finns said 40,000 of their men were standing off 80,000 Russians. Except at the Mannerheim Line, which the Salmi and Suojärvi attacks were evidently calculated to outflank, Finnish tactics were guerrilla retreat, using forests and lakes (not yet frozen solid) for cover and obstacles...
Dispatches did not mention any special snow equipment, such as motored sledges, on the Russian side. But the Reds did employ their famed parachute troops. At Petsamo, this technique apparently worked well at first. Later the parachutists were surrounded where they landed and shot up. On the isthmus, Finnish sharpshooters picked off all the first few men who floated down and the Reds quickly abandoned this tactic...
...verily their George Washington. After serving in the Russian Army for nearly 30 years (he was a lieutenant colonel in the Russo-Japanese War, later commanded the 6th Russian Cavalry as Lieutenant General in World War I), he went home in 1917 to command the armies which won Finnish independence (with German help) from the Bolsheviki. After his White Guards had run the Red Guards out of Finland, the Baron shot up 2,000 Bolsheviks left behind, in one of the century's bloodiest terrors...
...crack one, being mostly submarines, gunboats, motor torpedo boats, but Russia's clumsy battleships draw too much water to go close to shore. Chief disadvantage of the Finns is in the air, whence plenty of hell will rain on them before they win or lose. One young Finnish fighter pilot was credited in the first two days with shooting down single handed six Red bombers. Finland was said to have lost only two planes in the first four days. But even blunderers must prevail when the air odds are 36 to one (the odds of roulette, without any zeros...