Word: first
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Estimates were lacking on the number of men Russia was ready to hurl against the Mannerheim Line and the other three points of resistance, but the first few days' fighting sounded more like regiments than divisions, a 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...
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...
...Navy, operating out of Russian and Estonian bases, first seized the four small, unfortified islands-Hogland, Seiskari, Tytär, Lavas-which had figured in Russia's pre-war demands on Finland. Farther west, to protect the vital Aland
...last of these uppermost questions seemed to be: No one. Sweden and Norway, though next in line if the Russian march was really a march to the North Sea, evinced great sympathy, mobilized men on their eastern borders, but were accounted unlikely to fight. Answer to the first question seemed to reside in the iron-hard souls and bodies of the Finns. Their Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, struck their battle note as follows...
...Confidence in its chief is the first condition of success. You know me and I know you, and I know the whole country is ready to fulfill its duty unto death...