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A Battle Won by... Sausage Soup???

12/10/2018

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This day is history, in 1939, rear-echelon elements of the Finnish army defeated an overwhelming surprise Soviet attack with the assistance of... sausage soup and American made rifles???
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As the Soviet forces swept through Finnish rear areas they captured Finnish field kitchens which had been cooking hearty sausage soup for the Finnish fighters. Instead of pressing the attack, the (quite literally) starving Soviet soldiers stopped to stuff their faces. This gave the Finnish officers time to form their support Soldiers into an ad-hoc fighting unit and repel the Soviet attack through brutal close range fighting.
While Finnish forces had their own variants of the Mosin Nagant rifle, modified to their own specifications, many troops still fought with WW1 era m91s. And a good number of those were produced right here in the good ol' USA. During WW1 the Imperial Russian government contracted for large numbers of m91 pattern rifles. Two US companies ultimately turned them out, Remington and New England Westinghouse.
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Many of these found their way into Finland, which at the time was still part of Russia. As a fun fact, after the Russians defaulted on the contract (they did have a tad bit of internal upheaval in 1917) Mosin Nagants still stateside were used to train US soldiers, as well as equip some troops headed overseas (most notably the "Polar Bear Expedition" - shout out to 4-31 Infantry up at Fort Drum.
No surplus rifle gets as much love or as much hate as the Mosin. But many people who aren't "into" surplus weapons forget that thousands of them were made right here!
The Winter War end up going badly for the Soviets, and they suffered immense casualties. While Finnish losses were comparatively light, they are a much smaller country and ultimately ceded a portion of their country to the Soviets in order to end the conflict.
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    Jon K.

    Weapons collector, history buff, Army officer, Pug enthusiast.

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