Word: petsamo
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Northern Front. There the Russians, evidently using better troops, made their only important gains, but these were serious enough for the Finns. Sweeping down from Petsamo, the Russians took the nickel-mining town of Salmijärvi, but not before the Finns had blown up the mines and set every shack afire. The Finns retreated towards Pitkajärvi, where they prepared themselves for a stand. At week's end fires burned in the Arctic night along...
Norway, like Sweden, rushed reinforcements of arms, men and supplies to her northernmost positions, which would be threatened by the Russian capture of Petsamo. But with neither roads nor railways to the Arctic, Norway could do little to protect her iron mines at Kirkenes or her garrisons at Vadso and Vardo. From this territory civilians were evacuated and refugee Finns sent southward to be cared for by the Government...
...farthest north the fate of Petsamo was still in doubt while, to the west, one Russian column pushed southward for an enveloping attack...
These thrusts were as dangerous as they were daring. Although Finland might be cut in half laterally and Petsamo crippled as a supply base, the Finns in the south could still get supplies from Sweden by way of the Gulf of Bothnia. Meanwhile the Russian columns were in peril of being cut off from their own bases. The Blitzkrieg was becoming a war of supply lines...
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...