Talonz in the FDF

Hello! Your very own beanie-wearing parkouring turian here!

As most of you probably know, I'm currently in the Finnish Defense Force (FDF, Fin: Puolustusvoimat) as a conscript. Therefore I've been very inactive for the last few months and will continue to be until my eventual discharge and move to reserve. However, you guys are an amazing online community (missing you already!) and that's why I'd very much like to stay connected to these boards in some way, even if I don't have the time to RP. Therefore I've decided to start a blog/AMA of sorts regarding my time as a soldier. There will be pictures, videos and stories. And if anyone has any questions about the FDF, combat training or army life in general feel free! I'll be happy to answer.

Let's start with the basics.



The Finnish Defense Force was established in 1918, in the same year as this nation gained its independence. President Sauli Niinistö acts as the supreme commander, and the current acting commanded is general Ari Puheloinen. Its main mission is the defense of the country, but Finnish soldiers are involved in peacekeeping operations around the globe.

In Finland conscription is in effect, so every male Finnish citizen has to serve in the army, do civil service or ultimately go to jail. The service is 6, 9 or 12 months, depending on your posting. Women can also join the army as volunteers, and every year about four to six hundred women serve in the FDF.

Then on to more interesting stuff, which is ME!

I started my service on the 8th of July in the Armoured Brigade of Parola (Parolan Panssariprikaati)), one of the most technical and modern units in Finland. In Parola, we have several smaller battalions and regiments. Mine is the Armoured Battalion of Häme (Hämeen Panssaripataljoona). The battalion is made from four companies: tank company (Panssarivaunukomppania), pioneer company (Panssaripioneeriomppania), military police company (Sotilaspoliisikomppania) and jäger company (Panssarijääkärikomppania). My home is the first one.

What followed the first shock of entering the military area, putting on the uniform and learning how to cope with a whole new rhythm of life was an eight week basic training period, boot camp or "p-season" where we learned the essential skills to every soldier: Shooting, fighting, basic tactics, maintenance of our equipment, camps and of course physical training to help us get in at least some sort of shape. After that we were assigned to our new posts which we would be training for our remaining time. This was done based on our own desires, our performance during basic training, assessments by our NCOs and officers and apparently at random.

I was chosen to ride this baby.



Leopard 2A4 main battle tank. 9 months of awesomeness ahead of us 20, for the next 5 weeks we studied the things in detail, how things worked and learning to do basic maintenance. We even got to ride the things for an hour or so! (video!) Then we were selected for our positions in the tank, again based on assessments by superiors and performance during the 5-week training period. I was made a tank commander.

Which is pretty damn epic.

All the inactivity has made me a lazy writer so I'll post some photos instead!



The flag of Panssariprikaati



Me in full combat kit, ready for any and all gas attacks!



My home for now, the barracks in the evening.



Here we are turning the track around. It worns more on the inner side as the gear that provides power digs in, so the track lasts longer if it is turned after a certain amount of kilometeres behind it.



Aaaaaaand here's me, showcasing the M05-camouflage. Black's the color of armoured troops in Finland, which is again extremely cool. Others get green (infantry) or blue (air force) berets, but ours are BLACK.

Again, if you want to ask anything do so! I'll be happy to answer

NCO-in-trainee Talonz signing out

Congratulations!

Tell me, what's it like sitting in a tank?

Nice to see that you are procting the Finnish people from the Reaper threat

Cramped, to give you a short answer. Especially the commander and gunner are sitting practically on top of each other. The loader and driver have more space, as the former can stand up straight and the latter has a damn arm chair for a seat.

Sitting in them is getting pretty commonplace as we do maintenance and train to use the systems every day. However, driving or commanding a tank is a different story. Being in charge of a 55-ton war machine is quite a feeling. :P

Did you go straight to driving a Leopard or did you train in a T-55 first?

We went straight to Leos which is a shame really! Those old T-55s are amazing machines and I would've loved to fool around in one. However, they are so different from one another that there really wouldn't be any use to have us train with a T-55. They drive around the motor pool every now and then. Gorgeous tanks.

Jägermarch behind me. 42 kilometers through the night, took us about 11 and half hours. I acted as a platoon leader through the whole ordeal, which basically meant I was at the front all the time, read the map and arranged the breaks. My feet still hurt like hell but I'm pretty proud of myself and my mates. We only had one dropout, all the others made it to the end.

Earned me a promotion to a corporal at least.

Congratulations!

That's a good thing, right? Was it worth it?

Let's just insert the obligatory "air force teasing the groundpounders" jokes here so I can get it out of the way and now say

Congratulations :)

Grats and keep us posted!

What do you usually eat in the field?

Good work Talonz!

Impressive:)
Good thing it turned out as you hoped for:)

Yo.

We had our two first drills this week and the week before that. The first one was a combat excercise, meaning tighter light and noise discipline, less sleep and zero free time but the one this week was about shooting, which meant a sauna every night and less "throbbing" (sykkiä; working hard, especially physically to finish a given order)*. Let's dig into those in a bit more detail.

*Finnish military slang explained

Parola Drill #1: Operataion I CAN'T SEE SHIT

We left on Tuesday, drove a few klicks to an excersice area and immediately started to practice how a tank platoon moves in acombat enviroment. In corners you take it slow and steady as you have no idea what's behind the trees but as soon as there's open or a straight; floor it. A faster target is a harder target. A particular focus was how to counter a tank's worst enemy: enemy air forces. "India Sierra Sierra" or a particular hand signal meant "Stop. Air Cover." After that you find a suitable trail and reverse into it, as far away from from the trail as possible. Engine is stopped, and the crew throws on camouflage netting to make the tank harder to stop. Then the leader sprints through the trees to find the platoon leader the receive further instructions. Time: two minutes from the second you received the order. I got to admit, that the netting part sucked. The camo net gets stuck everywhere you don't want it to get stuck, and never stays in place when you want it to stay in place.

The second aim of the drill was to teach us how you live in a combat enviroment. That meant no lights, no shouting, no fires. As the darkness arrived as early as 1700 the rest of the night was spent tripping over every single rock and stump and cursing under your breath. Eating was also similary challenging. During the night we had two guard guard duties, a kipinä (spark) or more officially close protection guard whose duty is to ensure the tent's lantern and stove stay lit so your platoon mates won't freeze to death, as well as to guard the tent's surroundings. Two other guys stay at a Leo to act as observers, using the tank's thermal optics to look for threats (or in this case, cars, animals and pedestrians in the distance to fight off boredom).

Then a little something about the organization. A tank platoon is four machines, arranged into two "combat pairs" (taistelupari; an essential part of the Finnish fighting doctorine. You always have a combat pair, who looks after you, supports you in a firefight and gives you first aid in case it's needed). "Ten" and "two" are one pair, and "one-five" and "four" the other. I acted as the "one-five" that week, which means platoon logistics officer (even though I'm an NCO) and the senior tank of the other pair in the platoon. Since our platoon leader "ten" is still in reserve officer school I had to stand in for him in addition. Meant a lot of running from one place to another and yelling at tired men who never were anywhere on time.

Thankfully the drill lasted only for three days, and we drove back to the barracks on Thrusday afternoon.



Still had enough time to take selfies. From the leader's seat of a Leopard 2A4 MBT


Hätilä Drill #1: Operation CHOKOCHOKO

(choko or suklaa; chokolate, meaning easy in context to a drill)

On this Monday, Delta (Leo-platoon) and our one reinforcment tank from another unit dubbed X-Ray zero-one started a track march with the MTLBVs from our company to reach Parila's designated firing area Hätilä, which has a sort of a legendary status among the men of Panssariprikaati. We would spend a week there, familiriazing ourselves with the basic concepts of armoured warfare. It was early morning and the sun was just rising when we were stressing our commuters by blocking the roads with a kilometer long conga-line of armoured vehicles. It was beautiful.



We reached our destination with little hassle, and started practicing a soldier's most valuable skill: marksmanship. Since the real 120mm KE-ammunition (kinetic energy penetrator) (alikaliiperiammus, or IMO the rather cute sounding alikali) have a danger zone of at least a hundred kilometers (seriously, if you fire one towards Helsinki from Parola it will land in the fucking sea) we use a 50-cal installed into the barrel of the gun. It's definitely not as manly, and most of them fire like a damn shotgun much to the frustration of our gunners. Still, it's better than nothing.

We practiced different firing missions, with the leader giving driving missions to the driver and spotting targets for the gunner, with the gunner obviously shooting at them and the driver speeding the tank in and out of cover and into a mighty charge with the machine gun blazing.

Short story short: it was very, very cool.

If it wasn't your turn at the range, the crews sat around a campfire, smoking, eating or talking or doingmaintanance work to their own machines. In the evening you could go to the sauna, the area had good lighting and we only had a kipinä on duty so you didn't even have a guard duty every night. Basically, choco. It wasn't even cold, with the temperature staying pretty much at zero degrees Celsius through the entire week.

The march back was a bit more hectic, since we had heavy snowfall and visibility was bad. It was interesting listening to the company network where commanders gave even a bit panic-ridden status updates and notifications about near misses. The evening streched out, and we left the barracs at 2000. I was home at midnight.

At the drills you really learned how important constant maintenance is to vehicles that are under great stress, including weapons. I neglected cleaning my pistol for the first drill; during the second I noticed the slide didn't lock back because the amount of sand in the weapon. The Leos were under constant stress all the time: there were always something to be fixed and there would've been more if you didn't check up on the systems all the time. X-Ray zero-one had rust on their other MG3, the one that's on the roof. The amount of flak they received from the officers about that... Oiling and cleaning weapons was constant; you did not want any distractions that jams and other problems brought during a fiery exchange of fire of life and death with the wood-and-fabric target 800 meters away.



Corporal and I have the brass to prove it



Drying my gloves and warming up in the cozy driver's seat



Leo's parked at Hätilä



My usual uniform. Sorry for the cropping and hipstah instagram filter.



Fine. Here's the uncropped one. Drill prepartions in full motion as can be told from the gear all over the place.



My wordly possessions. It's usually not this organized.


Then on to comments and questions

Thanks! It was definitely worth it. I wasn't even that exhausted after the march, I could've gone on for ten, maybe twenty kilometers more. But it still felt good when it was all over. You could really pat yourself in the back after that.

Thank you! Well, while you dance around in the sky being all pretty we grind the mud and fight for every single meter like a trooper. ;)

Doing my best to update more frequently. Thanks to you too, scary kitten.

Our food is delivered to us by trucks in large containers, and it's made at the barracks in large kitchens. It usually includes a slice of bread, ryed or white, then porridge if it's breakfast or potatoes and sauce/macaroni/soup/stew if it's lunch or dinner. Also there's a small dessert and hot juice. We eat the food from mess kits (pakki, which are funnily enough prepared for a "firing drill" [pakit ampumakuntoon] when a meal approaches) at a designated area. At Hätilä we sometimes got to eat indoors.

Thank you good sire!

Thanks! I'm glad as well. To be honest, I can understand why most of the conscripts think this army business is utter shit that they are simply forced to go through but I've set my attitude so I can enjoy it.

Great report! Carry on.
You made me browse through my own military album again. It's been a while since I looked at that.

That's pretty wicked, mate. Good to hear the service is going alright for you.


Vaikka ootki panssarirunkkari niin saat anteeksi :)

SINÄ

EI NY PERKELE SUOMALAISET VALTAA LAUDAN

Basically this, except replace 'browse through' with 'create', since I tried to avoid pictures while I was in the military, but I know there are at least half a dozen of me in my unit somewhere. I did turn in most of my gear, but I do have a fair amount that they wouldn't take back. Like uniforms.