ABSTRACT
Lieutenant General Hugo Viktor Osterman himself had seen panzers before, but few of his men had ever witnessed masses of heavy panzers rumbling towards them in the snow, firing in all directions. For the Russian foot soldier panzers meant power, protection, and a piece of Mother Russia to follow into battle. Osterman's border troops fired their field artillery on a straight trajectory to destroy the oncoming panzers while ski troopers hit the infantry from the sides and Finnish sharpshooters picked off the tightly clustered Red soldiers by the hundreds. The Molotov cocktail was born as the State Liquor Board, Alkohooliliike, went to war. In the early part of the war soldiers wrapped a gasoline-soaked rag around the bottle's neck before igniting and throwing it. Anti-panzer man Kaarlo Erho could hear the sounds of field artillery as he marched toward the front line and he wondered what it was going to be like up there.
