Hello everyone!

As some of you may already know, I'll be leaving for my military service next monday (9th of Jan). Conscription is the name of the game here in Finland an I will be serving in the artillery troops at Vekaranjärvi, near Kouvola, about 150 km's from where I live.
The service time is either 6, 9, or 12 months. I have a quiet intention of getting away with just 6, though. I guess I have to be careful to do everything properly not to attract unnecessary attention, but at the same time avoid looking too ambitious so I won't be picked for NCO training (which is 12 months)! :-)

My internet acces will most likely be very limited (quite obvious!), but I'll try to report my feelings, experiences and stories here whenever I get the chance. We should have internet acces at the canteen, but at least I'll be posting when I get weekends off and get back home. It's likely we get the first weekend off after the first couple of weeks.

So, enough talking from me. Now I've better go and finish those last models I have on my workbench and post some pics where they belong (AC MOM Jan and 'From the halls of Montezuma' campaign). Wish me luck with my future endeavors in the army, guys and gals!
m:-)

Eetu, all the best mate, I'll be thinking of you. I'll be interested to know if it's possible to actually enjoy 6 months conscription service, looking forward to your updates. Keep your head down and don't drop too short (Gunners are known as "dropshorts" in the British Army, I've seen this phenomanon first hand )
Mal

Good luck, soldier, and God be with you...keep your head, and you'll do just fine. Who know's, maybe you will enjoy this enough to make it a career choice?
Gunny

Make the best of it. Do everything you can better than the other guy. You don't want any regrets later.
You may never get the opportunity again. Best of luck.

-M60

Good luck and have fun. Six months is not long at all and will be over before you know it.

Travel light and shoot straight!

Good luck Eetu, you'll have fun...trust me. And like Robin said, six months will fly by.

1982-89 flew by for me....

Hi Eetu!

I wish you good luck for your (hopefully) 6 month. I too wanted to go through my "Service Militaire" unoticed with the lowest rank possible and... finished as "Maréchal des Logis" after doing the PEG and PESO training (3 month). I guess they had nothing better at hand!
It was a fun experience if I think about it now and I had the opportunity to obtain my driving licence there... that's why I'm a lously driver now! :-)
I hope you can go back home every week so we can play IL2 every Saturday! Take care of you...

Jean-Luc

definitely keep your head down and do just enough to stay under the radar.

Take care and all the best.

My army thread is green and comes on a 200m spool. Seriously though, have fun, and don't take basic too seriously.

"Have fun"?
I think that's most possible in the canteen, where I'm writing this right now.

The basic training is now underway. I've been here for almost a week now and I think I'm starting to get used to the life in the "pickle suit", like they call the camoflage uniform m91 here in SA (FDF for English speakers).
I was placed at the second signal company instead of artillery.

We have got our assault rifles (RK62) already and have practiced firing positions, aiming and correct triggering with simulator rifles as well as taking the gun apart and assembly. (that's easy, there's only five removable parts when disassembling) Tomorrow we're going to a firing range to practise with blanks, to get used to the kick and sound. On Monday we make our first shots with live ammo. At the same time we also set the sights.

Only today we got to use the normal leather combat boots after we went through a doctor's appointment. (all physical training, including the use of thos boots, is considered dangerous before we are found out healthy and capable of going through the service) Now we can start our physical training as well. I'm afraid that'll include a lot of running from spot A to spot B, only to wait for an hour or so...

Am I enjoying this?
It's bearable at this point, although I would prefer waking up at 9-10 am at home instead of the usual 6 or 6.30 am here (today we had the doctor's check, so we had to get up at 5.30am! ) . No serious signs of homesickness yet, but my urge to get back modeling is getting badder.´
If this weren't mandatory, I probably wouldn't have come here in the first place. The good thing with this is that all the guys are in the same pile of sith.
All I have to do now is try to take it easy (enough, not too easy!), and to my best and at the same time hope they don't pick me for nco training. That means a whole year.
It's tricky, if you get lazy and don't do your things properly, it's a sure ticket to nco trainging. On the other hand, if you're the best at everything, it too could mean a certain year.

At this point, I'm doing fine. It's 8.05pm now and I'll have get back to my unit soon as the canteen closes at 8.30 and at the same time we can start making our beds and folding our sheet (you have to fold it neatly on your stool before going to sleep). The bad thing is that the sheet is chequered and the pattern has to be even and straigth on it...
At 9pm it's time to clean up our rooms and certain areas assigned to our room.

Until my next report, wish me luck!

Good luck. I first joined on Jan 11, 1975 and before I knew it, July 31 1996 came and I retired. Never really regret it one bit. Sure there was a few times I wanted to scream. looking back I personally think it was the best years I had.

That's quite a career you had there. I doubt I'll go that far!

We had our first shots with live ammo today. 150m, we set our sights first by firing 3+3+4 shots and then 10 where we got our scores. I don't remember exactly mine, but I got all of my shots in the board, only one in the outer white area. 8's, 7's, a couple of nines and one ten.
It went pretty well. But the march to the firing range was quite tough. My boots are too big and it's hellish whatever you're wearing here. By having a lot of clothing you're fine when on the ground and standing (what we had to a lot in the range). It's hellish when moving. Or if you wear a little less, you're comfortable when on the move, but freeze when still.

We're getting our first weekend off this week.

Cheers!

Hi Eetu!

Good to have some news from you! So you are shooting for real now? Don´t hit the target too much or you will stay for one year! :-)

Good luck!

Jean-Luc

Yeah, the real ammo kick significantly more than the blanks we practised with first.
We don't have any firing range days this week. Good, because I really need those padding (those flat things that go inside your boots, I don't know the proper word in English) on my boots as even the shorth march to the range is killing my feet without the pads. Some people got them at the start, and I did not...

But then there's the first combat practises tomorrow with the full combat equipment and all. But then there's the bright side to that too. At the doctor's check-up they said it would be good to upgrade my glasses, so they have a car driving me to nearest town to get new lenses. I report to the base's hospital at 12.00
pm while the combat training begins at 14.00pm. I'm going to miss it. But there will be a lot more of that...


Don't worry. Some people got much better scores than me. I wasn't the last, either, or so I overheard.

Now I'm looking forward for our first weekend off.
Until that, cheers!

Hmmm, is this normal in European armies? Over here, in an infantry unit you gotta serve several years before being considered for your first stripe. Should have joined the Finnish army, I'd have made RSM in my first year :-) .

Hi there Eetu... I'm waiting for my enlistment date... I know it'll be this year (2006). But I have no idea when yet. For me, it's going to be 2 years of the army.

Sounds like you're having an "OK" time at the army. Best of luck to you and enjoy your first weekend off!

We have approx. 5200000 people in our country, and we have a small army here in Finland. The mandatory (for men) armed service is nowadays 6, 9 or 12 months. Only the officers are making a career out of the army. Well there are, or at least were, a few hired nco's in the army, but the cannon fodder is mainly young men, who don't even want to be there

So, our nco's too are conscripts like the others, and after doing their 12 months, they'll end up in reserve like the others. I don't know about other european countries, but this is the way it works in Finland.

I myself served 8 months in signals section of an artillery regiment in 1994. 8 months was the minimum at that time. :-)

Good luck to you Eetu, time really flies, and most likely you'll get a few new friends an certainly lots and lots of good memories. I certainly did!

-Petri

I've been shopping today. I bought a LED lamp with a head band for possible (and most likely inevitable) nocturnal activities, insoles (now there's the word I was looking for!) for my boots (I hope they keep my feet a little warmer, two socks is apparently not enough. They should keep my feet less sore as well), a pair of thin cloth gloves to go under my leather gloves to keep my hands from freezing (we haven't been ordered to use our mittens yet and I don't know why. Minus 25 celcius is pretty cold for wearing only the issued leather gloves that have no lining) plus two pairs of chemical hand warmers just in case of extreme colds in the woods or whatever's the situation.

Eetu you should find yourself lucky. When I was in basic training we were so wound up we didnt even know what a computer was, and that was almost 2 years ago! Anyway sounds like your enjoying yourself to the point of survival. When you get out, if you had lots of fun, you'll end up saying you wanna go back for the fun. At least I did.

Hello everyone!
I'm now on my second weekend off at home. We had a longer week this time, we our weekend started on Saturday but we have Monday off so next week is a little shorter than usual, probably because we'll have our first night in the field in tents. That's just warming-up, we'll learn to set up a camp, night watches etc, the basic stuff. We also have our second march of the total of four we do on our basic training.
The first one was done with just light gear and was around 7 kilometers. The coming second one will be marched with basic combat gear, the third with full combat gear (which is around 15-20kg, I think. Plus the 3,5kg of metal in the form of an RK62 of course), the final one is 20km trek with only light gear.

You get quite hungry & tired on the marches. When we got back at the barracks, one guy in our room got himself 3 twix chocolate bars from the unit's vending machine and gobbled all three in 2 or 3 minutes!

I don't know yet how I'm going to survive the the third march with full combat gear, however, as we'll be carrying almost half of all the stuff we we're issued at the start.
Before the first march, we walked around our barracks with that gear on our backs. The distance was ridiculously short but it was hard to get up the stairs and back to our rooms! :-)

We have been on the firing range again, now practicing shooting from standing and knee stances. That went pretty well, I got a score of 86 out of 100 (from ten shots) from a practice where we had 15 seconds to fire one shot in standing, then switch to knee with another 15 seconds to fire and so forth untill we had fired all ten rounds we had (from 50 meters).

I somehow still seem to get better scores with the simulator rifle we use at the garrison for practicing aiming and firing positions. Last time we fired two series of five rounds. I got a score of 48 on my better try. All I have to do now is do the same with live ammo on the range.

It's good to have nco's with a little sense of humor.
When they give orders to the whole floor of the company for getting ready for moving to lunch or whatever, they yell "Company!" and every manned room must quickly have one person come at the door to hear what the have to say.
When they think that the action wasn't swift enough, they usually say "tTo slow, carry on", and soon after they usually yell something like "Company!, two men and a stool at the doors!"
Well, one time this week we we're ordered "Company!, Daltons at the doors!"
After a few seconds of thought, every room had four heads peeking from the doors! :-) :-)

(Anyone wondering, the Daltons are the four bandits from Lucky Luke. I think every must now how they look when they peek around a corner)


We're soon in the middle of our basic training. Our swearing-in will be on February the 10th, in the middle. At the end of our basic training, we get to know our final training. I hope for the basic signaler (what's the right word for a soldier serving in the signals?) with 6 months of total service. If I get that lucky, I get back home in early July.
We'll be interviewed about our wishes about our further training, but people can't completely control who they'll be trained, however. I'll have to convince the big guys that I really have to get home in July. But not with the excuse of "exciting campaigns starting in Armorama"! :-)
I've heard that signals require a fairly high amount of nco's because the signal companies will be widely spread in action and therefore needs more nco's than other branches to lead them.
Well, I can always tell them my voice wouldn't hold. My throat is already sore from yelling "attention!" when an nco enters our room, or yelling good morning etc.

It's getting late over here, I'll have to end my report here this time. If I remember anything more worth telling, I'll post some more tomorrow of on Monday. Otherwise, take care everyone and wish me luck.

Hi Eetu!

It seems you have a lot of fun! But take care! This is a trick to keep you longer there! :-) Don´t fall into the funny side of the force! 12 month without building is very long

Jean-Luc

Bummer, I have to get back there this evening...
This week is a short one, that's a good thing. But then there's that march number two and a two-days long encampment practice and a drill tomorrow where the brigade's commander himself is rumored to appear.
I have to remember to get my rifle's sling turned around of replaced as the buckle is otherwise on the way and clings to my gloves while doing gun manouvers in the drills.
A Lieutenant on our last drill complained about my gun movements and I mentioned the sling issue and he said it can be taken care of when we take out guns from the vacation storage. If that's really the case, everything should be fine. If not, I'll get complaints again.

Eutu,
Enjoy yourself in military service. I had the best 26 mths of my life there. I went thru pain of basic training, the enduring moments of specialist school, the lost feeling leading a squad and the satisfaction of leading a platoon as a platoon sergeant.
The Infantry will always have a special part in my life. I may have left the army for good now, but part of me stays with my men, my buddies and my fellow squad leaders who without them, running my platoon would be a big mess. Many frienship were forge during that 26mths and will last me till i am thru.

Every draftee took the soldier's oath on Friday. From now on I'm a signaller.

Further training selections are starting next week. When I get interviewed, I'll just say that I have no motivation of serving longer than 6 months and hope I get back home 7th of July.

There's also march number 3 and a three-day soldier's camp coming up where we dig foxholes, wake up to alarms in the middle of the night etc. Although the march is pretty short, I hope I don't die or get my back busted.

Hi Eetu!

Nice to hear from you! Your stories are fun to read because they remind me my time at the Army. One night, after a long walk during a very cold winter, we had the chance to sleep on the roof of a building. It was not very warm but it was better than sleeping outside in tents. The morning we woke up, one guy had a frozen hear because he slept with his face directly on the beton ground
So here´s my advice for you: if it´s cold outside your sleeping bag, take care of your ears! :-)

Have fun Eetu!

Jean-Luc