My grandfather from my father's side was too young to join when the
Winter war between Russia and Finland broke out in November 1939, but when the hostilies resumed after a year and a half in 1941 he was in. He served as an engineer in various places around the front, most notably in the battle of
Tali-Ihantala, where the Finns finally stopped the Russian offensive of 1944. There he practically lost his hearing from one ear when some kind of grenade hit the rock he was sheltering behind, but otherwise he came out unscathed. The war stories he has told us have always been about the "happy times", like when they were fishing lobsters, when everyone got sick and was ****ting all over the place because there was a dead reindeer just upstream from their camp, when they found a cellar full of vodka and got so drunk they had to pull back momentarily etc. On new year's eves he used to build some nice devices(that went BANG) from the stuff he brought back from the front, but I guess he's already run out of it because it hasn't happened for a couple of years now. He's still alive and well and living on a farm in southern Finland.