Independence Day post

This is going to be so long that it doesn't fit in a regular update.

This Independence Day post starts a little further back. In the end of the 19th century the Finns tried to resist the russification efforts of the emperor Nicholas II through peaceful political means. In a drive known as the Great Petition , activists gathered 520,000 signatures from all around the nation and planned to send a delegation of 500 men from all around the country to deliver the document to the emperor. In the picture below, we have the representatives of the Wasa county - modern day Southern Ostrobothnia. (This picture was captured from a facsimile of the book displaying them all.)

The village of Alah?rm? (top left corner) was represented by a man called Elias Kangas . Here is a picture of Elias in better detail.

Elias was the son of a farmer from Kauhava , a small village approximately 80 km to the east of the administrative centre Vaasa. Twenty years before, he had had the privilege of being one of the young men in the first year of the newly formed Vaasa Finnish Lyceum for Boys (history in Finnish only on the school's own site), and in early 1885, at the age of 22, he started a family with Liisa (née Jaskari), daughter of a local smith well known for his short temper. The family eventually grew to number ten children. Eight lived to adulthood, six had offspring.

The first world war swept over Finland too. Imperial Russia fell and a revolution created the Soviet Union. In connection with those events, Finland declared her independence 105 years ago, on December 6, 1917. The new nation was not born without internal struggle, though. Already in the end of January, a civil war started that would last three and a half months.

Son Toivo was just past 20 years old. Both father and son had joined the national guard. The young man fell at Ruovesi in March 1918. The father was determined to carry on and was mortally wounded himself in the beginning of April by a shot to the stomach. He fought for ten days until succumbing to his injuries. Both father and son are buried in the war heroes' grave at Kauhava.

Several of Elias' grandchildren would go on to become officers in the military of free Finland, including the son of daughter Helmi and son-in-law Juho Jalmari Huhtala, Aimo Antti Elias Huhtala.

Aimo entered the mandatory military service in the spring of 1939 after completing his high school finals.

On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland unprovoked, without declaring war. The conscripts were pulled into active duty. After the Winter War ended in March 1940, Aimo remained in the forces. By 1941 he graduated from officer school, which at the time was in Munkkiniemi, Helsinki. The war resumed and he proceeded through the ranks, making captain by 1944.

The air force became Aimo's life's work. He remained in service after the war was over, completing military academy in 1953.

In 1963, he was promoted to the rank of colonel.

This would be his final rank. In December 1968, the then commander of the air force, General Reino Turkki, died unexpectedly during his term. Aimo served as the interim commander until a permanent replacement would be installed. Colonel Eero Salmela was promoted to Lt Gen and got the job; Col Huhtala had served for 30 years and took full retirement at the age of 49, seeing the prospects of any further promotion as rather dim.

Aimo died in the summer of 1994, leaving five children and four grandchildren. In his funeral, the eldest grandson (yours truly) had the task of reading out the notes of condolence. Wearing a suit, hair freshly cropped to a crew cut after completing the non-military service and no longer needing a long hair, and having a loud voice, the old man's friends from the service came to the son-in-law (my Dad) to say that it's obvious your son has completed his patriotic duties... If they only knew.

Knowing what we know now, maybe opting to conscientiously object wasn't the most farsighted choice. But freshly after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90's, life looked very different to the forties, or the sixties-seventies, or today. If a situation comes up, IT engineers will be needed too, I'm sure.