The Winter War

this the pace increased and by daylight 3RTR and 4H were amongst some woods where a halt was made for breakfast. It was still raining!

Rain and low cloud continued up to nearly midday when the sun broke through and the Luftwaffe arrived. Lieutenant Crisp, in company with the Regimental 2IC (Major Carey) on his tank, shot down a HE111. Tanks continued to drop out through lack of spares and by 1600 hours, when they reached Kalabaka, there were just five remaining. Here the CO saw the brigade liaison officer with orders to get to Atalante independently and to take on supplies at Trikkala for the 250 miles march.

Dawn on 18 April 1941 found the Regiment still short of Larissa. The road was jammed with traffic and the Luftwaffe were out in strength. Attempts were made to bring a 2-pdr gun to bear on them and by cocking a tank on an embankment on the side of the road; two very near misses were scored. In “The Gods Were Neutral” Bob Crisp claims that it was his tank which was used. The stunt, however, brought retribution as the road was then heavily strafed for the next half hour.

When Altaulte was reached on 19th April the last tanks had broken down and their crews were taken on lorries. Bob Crisp lost his final tank, and Serjeant Jock Watt of A Squadron finally lost the A-10 which he and his crew had nursed over 100 miles back from the Vevi gap. All W/T sets and MGs were taken with the crews onboard lorries as the latter provided some form of defence against air attack. For the next few days the Regiment formed an anti-parachute force behind the NZ Division at Thermopolye. Those not deployed were held at Glyphada. Around 26 April the Third was released to make its way to Nauplia in the Peloponnese, in the hope of evacuation. The majority of the surviving tank crews were evacuated by the Navy. A and B Squadrons went via Crete and eventually reached Egypt onboard a small Greek coaster. Meanwhile C Squadron managed to go straight through to Alexandria. Others, including Serjeant Jock Watt, managed to escape from the beaches in small boats and, over the course of several days, make their way down the coast and across to Crete. SQMS Bill Close hired a Greek fisherman with some of his Squadron’s payroll (which he had been about to deliver in early April and had

Painting: By David Rowlands

been carrying since the retreat began) to take him and John Myers to Crete. They were eventually taken onboard by a destroyer and landed in Crete.

Well over 100 others, particularly the B echelon, were less fortunate and were captured. These included Major Carey, Captains Bartrum and Scrafton and Lieutenant Bartlett. The RSM “Tiny” [W.] White, was captured along with SSM Claude Henry Cooper and Serjeants Stan Cox, A.J.R. Webber and Eric Shaw. Corporal Sammy Crook, and Troopers Ernest Chapman, Bert Jackson, G.A. Walker, A.D. Walton, D.G. Webb, Ern Williams and C.M. Whitehouse are a few of the others. Chapman later recalled:

“We were now told that the Navy was coming to take us back to Egypt, but we should have to make our way to the south of the Peloponnese to a place called Nauplia, or alternatively Kalamata. We acquired some lorries belonging to various units and set off by night. All lights were banned and the journey was a complete shambles. Then at first light along came the Stukas to keep us company. They kept up their raids ceaselessly. After taking shelter in lemon orchards and moving when we had the chance, we at last came to the area around Nauplia. There was intense air activity going on at the time, with bombers, Stukas, 109's and seemingly anything that would fly joining in. Before long a hit was scored on the 'Ulster Prince' and she was set on fire. She was in the main channel into the harbour, so that meant the evacuation from Nauplia was over. A few of us set off back inland with the vague idea of going through the German lines. Alas we ran foul of a party of German paratroopers, and a couple of pistols are not a lot of use against fifteen or twenty Schmeissers. Discretion prevailed.”

For those captured the next few weeks had a grim similarity. On foot, by road, rail or sea, they were taken to a temporary camp in Salonika. From there, they were packed into a railway wagon designed for carrying cattle, with fifty other prisoners of war. There followed days of hunger, thirst and lack of sleep as the train made its slow way up through Yugoslavia to southern Austria and the final destination of Stalag 18A at Wolfsberg. Chapman, however, escaped four times from Salonika Alatini Barracks and PoW trains, eventually joining with the Greek Resistance (both Royalist & Communist) from 1943-4. Originally from Barnsley, his tale is told in “Kiriakos – a British Partisan in Wartime Greece”.

The CWGC lists ten 3RTR fatalities for the Greek campaign. Three have no firm date of death listed, but have a range listed from 14th to 30th April. These are Troopers John Ashcroft, Thomas Bailey and Sidney Jackson. Originally “Unknowns”, they were identified in 1984. They are buried in a collective grave at Phaleron War Cemetery (near Athens), so it is possible, but far from certain, that they were from the same crew, and that they were killed on 14th April. Trooper Sidney Jackson’s CWCG records include a note that he was killed at Grevena.

Trooper George Budd, aged 29, Trooper Thomas Fisher, aged 26, Trooper Frederick Gartland, aged 21, and Corporal Cyril Rive, aged 24 are listed as casualties for 16 April 1941. All are commemorated on the Athens Memorial. Trooper William John Cameron and Serjeant Ernest Oldreive died 17 April 1941. Lance Corporal Harold Nield, son of Harold and Emily Nield, of Manchester and husband of Evelyn Nield, of Ardwick, Manchester was killed on 23 April 1941. Harold died aged 26, or possibly 27, and is buried at Phaleron War Cemetery. He too was originally buried as an unknown.

Serjeant Shaw 3RTR on the Vevi Pass in April 1941 with a mixed group of British and Greek soldiers.

SSM Claude Henry Cooper, possibly with Oberstleutnant von Reckow.

Serjeant Ernest Oldreive

David Willey

One of the ironies of looking at what the British Army studies as part of its battlefield tours is the rather depressing nature of what might be called the bigger picture. In the 1970’s the Army regularly studied the Normandy Campaign with a view that a supposedly smaller, very sophisticated force (the Wehrmacht) could stop a larger, mass army (the Allies 21st Army Group) with the obvious parallels to NATO vs the Warsaw Pact, the pertinent issue facing the British Army in the Cold War. These tours had the unfortunate habit of ‘bigging-up’ the German achievement’s – sometimes to the denigration of the Allies' own efforts and of course ultimate victory in the campaign

When looking at the Winter War – there are some obvious parallels to the Current operations by NATO on Op CABRIT with the deployment of troops in the Baltics as a Forward deterrent to any possible Russian advance. The Finnish Army in 1939-40 used the terrain and the skills of their forces to – temporarily – hold up and embarrass an invading much larger Red Army force. However – as with Normandy – the ultimate success in forcing a decision by the Soviet forces should not be overlooked. A heroic delaying defence is all very well as long as the 7th Cavalry are coming or a negotiated settlement is imminent. With the might of NATO (having twice the number of military personnel as Russia) it will be interesting to see post Afghanistan that the commitment to fight and see the operation through has not been eroded.

But to the Winter War. Our modern concept of a country with established borders and an independent Government is still a relatively recent one for many parts of the world. What we see as modern day Finland historically spent a considerable time as part of the Kingdom of Sweden before being ceded to Russia in 1809. A sense of Finnish identity and subsequently nationalist feeling emerged in the 19th Century followed by the declaration of Independence in 1917 as Imperial Russia fell and the new Bolshevik era began. In 1918 a civil war was fought between Red and White factions in Finland with the ultimate result of a Finland looking more to the West than Bolshevik East – Russia. Tensions remained between the two countries as communists tried to overthrow the Finnish Government with Soviet support and Finns backed Finnish speaking peoples wanting independence on the Soviet side of the border. When Stalin came to power, he developed ambitions in the West to ‘recover’ lands and peoples originally part of greater Russia (sounds familiar?) and this led him to the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 – signed to the world’s astonishment between Nazi led Germany and the Communist Soviet Union. In the pact, spheres of interest were agreed and Stalin looked to reclaim areas of the Baltic, Poland and Finland as well as establishing ‘buffer’ zones to protect his homeland. From a Russian perspective two major invasions had occurred in the last 100 years, a major incursion from Poland in 1920 and another was soon to come – so having the breathing space of other countries or satellite states between the homeland and potential enemies

The BT 7 tank was an improvement on the earlier BT5 having a more powerful engine and an all welded construction with thicker frontal armour.

seemed sensible. At a strategic level, Finland was only 20 miles from Leningrad and as early as 1938 Soviet agents had approached the Finnish foreign minister concerned that Finland might be used as a conduit for German forces attacking Soviet Russia. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland on the 17. In the following two months, the Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were forced to sign treaties with the Soviet Union allowing troops to be stationed on their soil. Finland began the quiet mobilisation of its military forces, with reservists; their military contained around 300,000 troops. In October the Finns were asked to send a delegation to

Red Square 1940. The May Day Parade in Red Square 1940. At this time Hitler and Stalin had created a pact with Russia supplying raw materials to Hitler’s arms industry.

T 26 The Soviet T26 was based on the British 6 ton tank built for export by Vickers. The British tank saw great commercial success world-wide. Many were built under licence, often with changes – as with Soviet vehicles – to meet local requirements and industrial capacity. The Soviet Union made over 11,000 examples – with many variants, single and twin turreted, flame-throwing – even a remote controlled model. Few tanks had radios however and command, control and co-operation with the infantry was very poor. 70 examples were captured by Finnish forces and re-used – the Tank Museum has one of these examples.

BT TANKS Two examples of the American Walter Christies designed tank were imported to the Soviet Union in 1930 along with manufacturing plans. The vehicle had a suspension system that allowed for fast cross country travel and so the vehicle was seen as an exploitation – or cavalry tank. Again the Soviets built tanks on a scale unmatched in the rest of Europe, over 8,000 of the BT series were made. The parade of hundreds of these BT vehicles in 1936 to foreign delegations led to Britain also to order a Christie based vehicle for its own Cruiser tank designs. EXPERIMENTS

The Red Army also took some of their huge T28 and T35 multi-turreted tanks to Finland along with experimental bridging, flame thrower, demolition and remote control variants for testing. None apart from the flamethrowers saw much success.

FINNISH TANKS

Finland had bought 32 FT tanks after the First World War – by 1939 most had been incorporated into fixed defensive positions. In 1938, 33 Vickers 6 ton tanks were bought from Britain. They came without optics and only a few were fitted with the 37 mm Puteaux gun. The aim was to fit a locally produced 37mm Bofors anti-tank gun but this had only been completed on 10 vehicles by the time war broke out.

THE TERRAIN

"Every acre of its surface was created to be the despair of an attacking military force." John Langton-Davies - Journalist The Finns knew they could not defend all of their border with the Soviet Union; it was simply too long with differing regional conditions. Their tactics for defence would have to suit the geography. Much of the border was mountainous or heavily forested. Metaled roads were very few and many areas were simply impassable. In the western and more northerly regions Finnish tactics were to allow Soviet advances and strike at columns when the opportunity arose. Further south on the Karelian Isthmus the Soviet forces were nearer major towns of significance – so more traditional blocking lines were planned. The Finnish military had been building defensive positions in the Karelian Isthmus throughout the 1920’s – strengthening them in the 1930’s. They looked to effectively use the terrain and cover most of the main routes running north. They placed 130.000 men in the Isthmus – 25,000 in forward positions to delay any Soviet advance before they reached the main series of defensive positions – a line that was to become known as the Mannerheim line after Field Marshal Mannerheim – the wartime Finnish Commander in Chief. Impressive concrete bunkers (about one per kilometre) were spaced between traditional trenches and log lined dugouts interspersed with a number of waterways and lakes.

Moscow where a proposal of an exchange of land was made by the Soviet authorities – keen to create a buffer zone on the Karelian Isthmus by moving the border further north away from Leningrad. The offer was debated in the Finnish Parliament but public opinion was against the idea. Most in the Soviet hierarchy believed a swift military victory would be achieved against the Finns – but not all. The Red Army had suffered huge purges in the 1930’s – over half the officers (over 30,000 men) had been shot or exiled. The Army had expanded and posts in authority were often filled by those showing political loyalty – not military aptitude. Political favouritism also meant the lessons learnt by Soviet forces under Zhukov fighting the Japanese at Khalkin Gol in the Far East went unheeded as another party of Generals under Marshal Grigory Kulik held sway in Moscow with Stalin.

The Soviets had a good understanding of the Finnish defensive positions having many sympathisers or a ‘fifth column’ as the expression emerged in the late 1930’s. Spies had also been infiltrated as tourists to map and photograph Finnish defensive bunkers and emplacements. The Soviets amassed 12 Divisions (about 450,000 troops) in four Armies – the largest – the 7th with 9 divisions was on the Karelian Isthmus. Here the Soviets also placed most of their tanks, 1,450 mainly T26 and BT vehicles.

INVASION

The Soviets created a border incident on 26 November – shelling one of their own border posts and blaming Finnish forces. Further demands were then placed by the Soviets on Finland which were refused – and on November 30th Helsinki was bombed and the Soviet invasion began. A mass Soviet advance north was met by the Finnish delaying force. The Finns had few anti-tank weapons but soon discovered that poor Soviet tactics led to the advancing tanks separating from the infantry. Quickly in the more closed country the Finnish troops realised the tanks could be attacked with crow-bars or logs jammed in the tracks – or set on fire with improvised petrol grenades – called Molotov cocktails. The Soviets lost eighty tanks in the first weeks engagements – the Finnish delaying force retreating to the main Mannerheim line position by 6 December.

Further attacks were launched – or the right of the Isthmus by a single Soviet Division after two days of a barrage. The ensuing mass attack saw heavy Soviet casualties. The Soviets bolstered their attacking force with tanks and more infantry but were still repulsed. A further Division was added to the attack and still no major progress was made by the attacking force. During one advance over a frozen lake the Red Army suffered over 1,000 casualties in an hour and lost 27 tanks.

Pushing their forces on Soviet tanks were allowed to pass through or over some Finnish positions – whilst the following infantry was decimated by well placed machine guns. Lone tanks were then hunted down or led into traps – boggy ground or ice covered lakes that were smashed by detonating mines on the frozen surface – sinking the tanks. The Finns' policy was to allow the Russian tanks to penetrate their defences, even inducing them to do so by 'canalising' them through gaps and concentrating their small arms fire on the infantry following them. The tanks that penetrated were taken on by gun fire in the open and by small parties of men armed with explosive charges and petrol bombs in the forests and villages... The essence of the policy was the separation of the AFVs from the infantry, as once on their own the tank has many blind spots and once brought to a stop can be disposed of at leisure.’

BRITISH WAR OFFICE 1940

Attacks further north by Soviet forces met mixed results – some advances found little resistance but others – such as at a Soviet incursion at Tolvajärvi led to a decisive Finnish victory – the Finns suffering around 100 dead and 250 wounded – the Soviets over 5,000 casualties.

THE MOLOTOV COCKTAIL The Finns named their home-made petrol grenades after the Soviet Foreign Minister who made the assertion that bombs dropped on Helsinki were in fact food parcels. ‘Here was a drink to go with the food’ the Finns retorted sarcastically. The success of the home made petrol bombs, made to throw on the engine decks of Soviet tanks, led to their mass manufacture by the Alko Corporation – over 450,000 were made at their distillery. The effect of fire on the tank engine could disable it – but often it would lead to the crew abandoning the tank, making them vulnerable to snipers and the tank captured or subsequently demolished.

SOVIET FAILURE

By late December 1939 the Soviet attacks on the Mannerheim line had petered out. Soviet troops were exhausted, lacking supplies and some refused to take part in more suicidal attacks. The conditions were particularly harsh that winter – a record low of −43 °C (−45 °F) was recorded in January. The Soviet troops had come largely unprepared for such weather, there were many cases of frostbite before troops even engaged with the enemy and a postwar estimate put Soviet casualties from frostbite and sickness at 61,506 for the war. Soviet troops in their dark great coats stood out against the snow and ice as did their olive drab vehicles. The Finns whilst not well equipped were much more used to the weather conditions. Troops were issued with White snow capes and many had warmer winter clothing from their rural lives. It also helped that most Finns were proficient skiers. This made them mobile and elusive on the long western borders – attacking Soviet columns then retreating into the forests.

The mainly rural and agricultural background of many Finnish soldiers meant they were also proficient hunters and good shots. Sniping at Soviet troops became a part of the Finnish hit and run guerrilla tactics on the advancing Soviet forces along the western frontier. Columns of more numerous Soviet troops advancing West along the few tracks or roads were ambushed by Finnish troops. Vehicles at the rear of the column would be attacked blocking any retreat route and isolated groups would be attacked piecemeal or left to freeze, awaiting reinforcements. The Finns called these isolated groups ‘motti’ – a local term used to describe a stack of wood. Campfires and field kitchens were targeted to stop any warmth or nutrition comforting the troops.