Challenge30: Living with the Bear

I will be of off to Helsinki Finland in a week.
And it is cold up there. I've bought some good shoes and thermal underwear.
The reason I'm going, you may ask?
My son decided to get married to a Finnish girl and have twins.
So now I have a Grandson and a Granddaughter who are Finn's.

So we love Finland, is the order of the day.
On my trips to Helsinki I have noticed the very constant fear of the, Big Bear Russia.

Now we, as in, all of us in living in the UK have no real fear of Russia. We have no borders with them.
In fact we have no borders with anybody.
But hey, that is another story.

So I was not used to the fear/terror of having a country breathing down your neck.
That could swallow you up and not lose a heartbeat.

Finland has been here before. The Winter War of 1939.
It began with the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 and ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the League on 14 December 1939.
So a good reason to fear the Bear.

But the Finns kicked the Big Bears Ass, for a while at least.
And one of the results was Hitler believed the Soviets/Russians where fucked.
Which encouraged Germany to invade Russia. The rest is.... well you know the rest.

There was also another forgotten battle in 1944

The Battle of Tali Ihantala

But the main picture you get with Finland and the Finns,
is they are not anybody you would want to fuck with.

Tough as nails and they will keep coming.

If there is one guy who typify's Finland, that would be Larry Thorne.
His real name was Lauri Törni, but he changed it when he joined the US Army in 1954.
He had the distinction of fighting under three flags: Finnish, German (when he again fought the Soviets in World War II), and American when he served in U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.

After the Winter war he trained in Austria and was given a commission in the Waffen-SS.

This was a guy who hated the commies.

It was during the Continuation war with Russia he developed his Special Forces tactics.
And was awarded the Finnish Mannerheim Cross.

He was captured by the Americans while fighting with the German army against the Soviets.
And after escaping he returned to Finland.

He was tried for treason and and after escaping from prison he was eventually pardoned by the Finnish President.

After many twists and turns he turned up in America
and was helped by "Wild Bill" Donovan, former head of, "The SOS,"
and granted a residence permit through an Act of Congress.

In the US Army he put his Special Forces training to use in Vietnam.
In Vietnam he received two Purple Hearts.
And a Bronze Star Medal for valor during an attack on his camp in Tịnh Biên.
This attack would later be used by author Robin Moore in his book The Green Berets.

The John Wayne all action character in the movie, "The Green Berets," was supposedly partly based on Larry Thorne.

He was buried in Arlington with full honors after his body was retrieved from Vietnam in 1999.

He is down as the 52nd most famous Finn ever.
In 2010 he was named as the first Honorary Member of the United States Army Special Forces Regiment.

All in all he was one tough son of a bitch.
And he got that from Living beside and fighting the Bear.

There are a lot more of them where he came from in Finland.
And one of them is my Grandson:D~

Images from Pixabay/wikipedia/Warner Brothers

Challenge 30 is a 30 day writing challenge issued by @dragosroua to write and post every day in January.

60+ Badge Courtsey of @elyaque
100% Content Badge courtesy of @reneenouveau