Tyzuris
Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Winter War.
My paternal grandmother's father served in the Winter War (also served in Continuation War and our civil war in 1918). He served in the infantry. He had to put his service horse down as a mortar round landed and hit the horse. At one point also the Russians had encircled him on an island but for some reason they broke off contact and moved on leaving my great-grandfather able to move to the shore.
After the wars, he was a wreck for 10 years seeing constant nightmares, wanting to talk about it but no one willing to talk about the war. He looked younger in his 60s than 50s.
The war came at a high cost to us:
Around a tenth of our land was lost and we had to relocate over a tenth of our population to other parts of the country. We had lost 25000 soldiers and a thousand civilians. Over 40000 were injured. Just imagine how much of a dent this does to a nation of 3.5 million at the time. The Russian losses were 126000 dead and 188000 injured.
The sheer difference in military gear was quite shocking. We had 32 tanks in total to the 3000 the Soviets brought to the war. We had over a 100 aircraft to the 3800 aircraft the Soviets brought to the war. What made the aircraft situation worse for us was also the fact that our Air Force had had a false idea of importance of bombers, so our fighter count was too low. And other mistakes had been done as well including building very expensive armoured ships which took a lot of the defense budget in the 30s. And the government had been quite stingy in military budget during the 30s, so what little our defense forces could get, a lot of it went to wrong investments.
For 105 days we managed to hold on enough that it eventually forced Stalin to suck it up and come to peace negotiations.
My paternal grandmother's father served in the Winter War (also served in Continuation War and our civil war in 1918). He served in the infantry. He had to put his service horse down as a mortar round landed and hit the horse. At one point also the Russians had encircled him on an island but for some reason they broke off contact and moved on leaving my great-grandfather able to move to the shore.
After the wars, he was a wreck for 10 years seeing constant nightmares, wanting to talk about it but no one willing to talk about the war. He looked younger in his 60s than 50s.
The war came at a high cost to us:
Around a tenth of our land was lost and we had to relocate over a tenth of our population to other parts of the country. We had lost 25000 soldiers and a thousand civilians. Over 40000 were injured. Just imagine how much of a dent this does to a nation of 3.5 million at the time. The Russian losses were 126000 dead and 188000 injured.
The sheer difference in military gear was quite shocking. We had 32 tanks in total to the 3000 the Soviets brought to the war. We had over a 100 aircraft to the 3800 aircraft the Soviets brought to the war. What made the aircraft situation worse for us was also the fact that our Air Force had had a false idea of importance of bombers, so our fighter count was too low. And other mistakes had been done as well including building very expensive armoured ships which took a lot of the defense budget in the 30s. And the government had been quite stingy in military budget during the 30s, so what little our defense forces could get, a lot of it went to wrong investments.
For 105 days we managed to hold on enough that it eventually forced Stalin to suck it up and come to peace negotiations.