Summer Reading about Winter Shooting

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Something to read when it's hot outside.

http://benandbawbsblog.blogspot.com/201 ... iring.html
When push comes to shove in the winter, whether it be in the boreal forest, muskeg, taiga, tundra or mountains, nature tends to make conditions wherein combat comes often boils down to fairly small units of dismounted men utilizing only small arms to settle the issue. About the easiest and most effective way to increase the small arms firepower of light infantry, winter or summer, whether they are Royal Marines, Rangers, Raiders, Alpini, Jaegers, Sissi, or Chasseurs, is to increase marksmanship.

True light infantry need to be not just familiarized or qualified with their individual weapons, but masters of them, for a variety of reasons. One of these many reasons is difficulty of re-supply in hostile climates and environments. Deep snow can block supply routes and blizzards ground air re-supply.
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Neither motorized vehicles nor horses could operate in the Finnish taiga and boreal forest, so reindeer and native boat-shaped ahkio sleds were used in rough winter country.
A Finnish officer, veteran of both the Winter War and the Continuation War fighting in the deep snow of the forests, muskeg, and taiga near the Arctic Circle against the Soviets, heartily agreed with the mountain troops regarding weapons and ammunition when advising American troops in Alaska after the Korean War.

“Experience in war has shown that it is more desirable to have a plentiful supply of ammunition for a few weapons than to have a number of weapons without ammunition. Often the heavier weapons must be left behind in cross-country operation because wheeled vehicles are road-bound and ammunition is too heavy to allow continuous resupply…The determining factor is: How many weapons can be supplied with sufficient ammunition [original emphasis].

On December 11, 1939, during the Russo-Finnish War, good reconnaissance allowed Lieutenant Eero Kivela and his three under-strength platoons to intercept an entire Russian battalion. The handful of Finns, lacking machine guns and armed “only” with open-sighted bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifles, took the whole Russian battalion under fire at the first light of dawn. Caught on the wide open snow-covered lake in their brown uniforms, the Soviets made easy targets for the sharp-shooting Finns. Within minutes, the remnants of the Soviet battalion had broken and fled across the lake towards the forest. The Finns counted over 200 dead on the ice, and numerous blood trails followed the path of the Russian retreat.
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I'm feeling cooler already. :cool:

ETA...more on the Finns. Day-um.

http://benandbawbsblog.blogspot.com/201 ... finns.html

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