I have been clearing out my grandparents' house in preparation for moving my stuff, as i am inheriting the house after my grandfather died in march and my grandmother moved into a nursing home. I came across a old 40mm shellcasing he kept as a vase and some old memorabilia from when he was in the home guard during WWII, which made me remember him telling me some of the wilder stories of stuff he was up to back then.

I posted this 5-ish years ago so i figured I'd repost it in memory of the man he was.

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Disclaimer: This story was recounted to me by my (then) 92 year old grandfather and is possibly embellished or deviates from the truth to up the drama factor. You have been warned.

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When you are 17 and all you have to entertain yourself with is running goods and refugees from Finland to Sweden under the noses of inept customs guards or poaching moose with your home guard mates you take every chance to party, especially if it involves girls and cheap alcohol.

Gramps and his mates from the home guard had found out that there the German troops near the small Finnish town a couple of kilometers upstream and inland from the border are going to hold a ball of sorts to up the morale of the troops in a week. This ball was going to be a “local girls and soldiers only” thing, so of course gramps decides he must be there at all costs. Said and done gramps and his mates row over to the Finnish side and starts shaking down their contacts for german uniforms to wear at the ball. After some false leads they eventually manage to scrounge, barter, beg and steal enough pieces to have two german uniforms that can pass as complete if you tilt your head and squint a bit. Now six guys has what essentially amounts to two tickets for a good evening of booze, girls and dancing. They decide to pull sticks for them and gramps snags one of the uniforms.

Fast forward to the day of the ball and gramps and his mate is rowing over to the Finnish side again, dressed in fisherman’s clothes with the illicit uniforms stashed away in buckets with regular clothes on top. They get to the Finnish side and walk the majority of the way to the town in their fisherman’s clothes before going of the road into the woods, change into the uniforms, stash their fishermen clothes and step out onto the road dressed as German soldiers, sans weapons.

They pass a bunch of german soldiers who ignores them and, confidence skyrocketing from not getting stopped, head down to the town hall where the the ball is.

Gramps and his mate are let in and after much dancing, carousing and chatting up a nice Finnish girl gramps mate urgently taps gramps on his shoulder and tells him to looks out the window. Gramps glances out the window and, to quote him ”became instantly sober and awake”. stepping out of a car on the gravel path to the town hall are three armed german guards that look like a bad day in themselves and a guy in a SS officer uniform and cap that practically screams Gestapo.

This is the time gramps realize four things: one: they are wearing what is essentially stolen german uniforms, two: they don’t have any identification on them at all, three: only gramps speaks a bit of german and four: If they are caught they will be shot as spies. No slap on the wrist, no fine, no going to lockup for a few days to cool off. Just a final cigarette, a cold wall and a firing squad.

It seems like the Finnish girl gramps was chatting up has similar problems, or understands that gramps is in a heap of trouble, as she takes one look at the officer and drags gramps into a side room and out a back door. They take off between two houses and into the woods as they hear the door they came from swing open, someone blowing a whistle and shouts for them to stop in german. This of course only makes gramps and his impromptu date to run faster. Now, the thing about the terrain in northern Finland is that while it might look like forests all around it can suddenly give way to a large fen, and when you have ran out on a fen in near panic it is very easy to loose your bearings. Which is exactly what happened to gramps and the girl. Trees kinda look the same whichever side of the fen they look at but at least they don’t hear anyone in pursuit.

After a lot of walking, some time hiding in a ditch to avoid German soldiers and stopping a local farmer to ask, in perfect Finnish while wearing a battered and dirty german uniform, which way the Torneå river was gramps find his way to the river. The girl, still tagging along with gramps helps him find a rowboat and oars, kisses him goodbye and head off home. Gramps decides that the german uniform is too dangerous to keep so he undresses to his skivvies and dumps the uniform in the Torneå river while rowing back to Sweden.

To cap it all off when he finally gets back to his village he’s met by his mate that had the other uniform. He had calmly walked out the front door when the Gestapo officer ran after gramps, borrowed a bike to get back to where they stashed their fisherman clothes, changed and tossed the uniform at the roadside then rowed over as if nothing happened.

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RIP Gösta W. 1925-2023

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Edit: fixed some spelling and grammatical errors