History: Dismantling barbed wire and clearing mines behind the new border

Peace treaty forced Finns to take on massive operation

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By Ilkka Ahtiainen
     
      After the end of the Continuation War, in the autumn of 1944, more than 400 Finnish soldiers crossed the Russian border again, but this time they did not carry weapons.
      The terms of the cease fire and the interim peace with the Soviet Union required that the Finns should dismantle all mine fields and most barbed wire barriers on the Rukajärvi front.
     
The task was immense: nearly 150 kilometres of barbed wire had been set up in the area, and more than 14,000 land mines had been planted in the ground.
      A battalion-sized unit was assembled from 14 divisions, mainly comprising conscripts born between 1923 and 1925. The commanders that were appointed for them were the toughest and most experienced officers. "They wanted men there who knew the terrain well", says Timo Kärkkäinen, 87.
      As a captain at the time he led half of a divided unit, while undersergeant Paavo Lonkila, 81, was part of the team that did the work.
      At the border they were met by armed Russians. Although the situation caused the Finns some consternation, there was never any feeling of menace in the air.
      "Then we started to think mainly about how the work should be done", Kärkkäinen says. The fear was that the Russians would have ordered them to collect the barbed wire into large coils. That would have been an overwhelming task, as there was no machinery available.
      Already before the dismantling of the barbed wire a company of engineers had arrived in Rukajärvi to clear up the mine fields.
     
The Russians’ main concern seemed to be that the Finns might be engaging in espionage. "Whenever we went to work in the morning, a Russian with a submachine gun came along", Lonkila says.
      Every evening and every morning the Russians also wanted to take a head count of the Finns.
      "There was some trouble when, for some reason, the papers of the Russians had the number 446, when the right figure was 445. I don’t know if they did it on purpose", Kärkkäinen ponders.
      At one point the atmosphere became very tense. "Do you know what we do to spies in the Soviet Union?" one officer had asked, drawing his pistol from his belt and slamming it on the table.
      The head of the Finnish unit, Eino Penttilä, a holder of the Mannerheim Cross, reacted quickly. He took out a knife and stuck it into the table top. "This is all that we have", Penttilä had said.
      The next day the Russian officer came to apologise for his behaviour.
     
As soon as the engineers had cleared the mine fields, other men with wire cutters came to take down the barbed wire.
      Their job took three weeks.
      Lonkila remembers clearly how the barbed wire that was suspended on wooden posts was cut. It fell to the ground forming a carpet. The carpets were then cut into lengths of 30 metres each, and the posts were pulled out of the ground. The cut barbed wire mats were gathered together with the help of Y-shaped poles.
      The engineers did make some mistakes. One of Kärkkäinen’s men stepped in a mine and was killed.
     
The Russians put great pressure on the Finns all the way to the end.
      They demanded that the Finns repair bridges, which was something that was not among the terms of the peace agreement. "Better to stay here than go to Lapland where there is a war on", they said.
      And the head counts were constant.
      When the task was over on October 27, 1944, the Finns were brought together once again. A Russian border guard officer counted and counted, and always got the number 445.
      "There should be 446. Where is one man?" the Finns were asked.
      After counting again, and getting to the end, Penttilä shouted "446", Kärkkäinen recalls.
      And so 445 soldiers slipped back across the border into Finland.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.10.2004

More on this subject:
 BACKGROUND: Finns kept meticulous records on locations of mine fields

Links:
  Wikipedia: A general article on the Continuation War, 1941-1944

ILKKA AHTIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
ilkka.ahtiainen@hs.fi