"HUMAN SEARCHLIGHTS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 45, 3 May 1940, Page 4

"HUMAN SEARCHLIGHTS"

The Bravery Of The Finns T= story of the amazing bravery | and self-sacrifice with which the | tiny Finnish Army held its own against the Russian Forces is "now one of. history’s great epics. Although hostilities have ceased, and Peace has been signed in Russia's favour, this article by an Italian journalist, Signor Indro Montanelli, who visited the Finnish front lines, has lost nothing of its vital human interest. This is what ‘he wrote for the "Corriere della Sera," published in Milan: In the semi-darkness of the Arctic, the Finns, dressed to match their surroundings, float like bats through the fir woods, and silently, on their skis, reach the Red positions. But there is rarely enough light to fire a rifle. To overcome this difficulty the Finns have organised a "suicide squad,’ a body of men, only the bravest of the Finnish Army, who become "human searchlights." Two or three men in each platoon are fitted with powerful dry-battery electric projectors, which lie flat on their chests. When the raiding party has reached its objective one of the human searchlights separates from his comrades, and, after an arranged interval, and from an arranged position, he switches on his searchlight. A dazzlingly white beam is suddenly thrown on the Red troops, who are usually huddled together for warmth. By this time the rest of the Finnish raiding party has crept silently from tree to tree until they are on the top \of the Reds. They open a murderous fire with a special type of weapon, the " Bergmann," a sub-machine-gun similar to that used in American gangster films. Each of its charges holds 25 rounds of ammunition. By these tactics, scores of Russian troops are mowed down before they have time to defend themselves. All this is done with extreme rapidity. If he is still living, the " human searchlight " shuts off the current, as obviously the light makes him a certain target for any of the enemy who happens to be outside the zone of light. The "human searchlights" are men predestined to death, but to carry the searchlight is considered a privilege, a sort of medal, and it is granted only to those soldiers who have shown themselves the bravest and quickest in combat. When the searchlight has been extinguished, the raiding party makes off in the darkness into which the lightblinded Russians cannot follow them, and repeat their exploits elsewhere along the line. F More like ghosts than men; in fact, they haunt everywhere the ill-clad, famished Russian line, materialise themselves for an instant, stay, and are gone.