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tuomaskoivurinne — 'Corporal Rokka'
Published: 2010-04-19 15:35:16 +0000 UTC; Views: 5504; Favourites: 67; Downloads: 94
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ink & digital 2010,Corporal Viljam Pylkäs is being remembered from his daring deeds from the Winter War and the Continuation War. According to Väinö Linna, his character of "Rokka" in novel Tuntematon Sotilas was based on Pylkäs.
Depicted here is the incident in which Pylkäs wiped out the entire flanking group of Soviets in Pertjärvi, Syväri in April 1942. Estimates for casualties vary according to source, many claiming 83 enemy dead.
Pylkäs was wounded in early July 1944, during the fighting retreat from Eastern Karelia.
NOTICE: I later learned that, in this particular incident Pylkäs used the 50-round box magazines, not the 70-round drum magazines I have depicted here.
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Comments: 29
Aikas hienoa jälkeä, onskos tämä se kohta Tuntemattomasta Sotilaasta kun Rokka ampuu siellä pellolla ne 60-80 venäläistä nurin?
Hieno kuva!
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Luetaan niitä kuvatekstejä, eikös juu?
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It's on Youtube, too...
starting from right after the 4 min mark
Nice job drawing, too
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T,
I really like the style you´ve used here. I am a real sucker for the use of color instead of lines, making everything slightly less defined than your normal work, but it really lends itself ot the piece, almost asif you are looking at this through a bit of a snow haze. Also, the colors you´ve chosen are really subtle but really good for giving it the bleak winter look.
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Thank you 
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Outoa, ettei rokkaa otettu leffaa,kun piti tehdä johtaja-analyysiä tuntemattomaan sotilan ukoista aukissa. vai oliko alikit silloin jotain muuta?
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aukissa ilmeisesti joku perinne katsoa tuntematon sotilas ja siinä oli lista eri johtajista, joista piti tehdä johtaja-analyysi. Rokka puuttui listasta, vaikka siihen ainakin itse smastuin eniten ainakin suunsoiton,frägityksen ja nukahtamisen osalta.
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Meillä ei ollut tällaista "perinnettä", mutta juu outo juttu jos Rokka puuttui tuollaisesta. Mies oli vanhempi reserviläinen ja alikersantti. Muistelisin että Lammio mainitsi tämän saapuessa täydennyksenä, ettei johtajan vakanssia ollut sillä hetkellä vapaana?
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Hienoa ja yksinkertaista jälkeä, ja myös kiva yhteensattuma koska sain eilen äidiltä Fruit of the Loomin "Tikkakosken Mannekiini" t-paidan.
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Hyvä sattuma, oli tuossa jossain välissä mielessä palata sota-aiheisiin hiilitöihin ja mieleen tuli tehdä sellainen "mannekiini"
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If you're going to kick ass, the M/31 is the weapon to do it with. I love your Finnish hero series, excellent stuff. If "Rokka" took down ~80 guys he would have ended up killing two platoons worth of Russians singlehandedly. That's pretty insane stuff.
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Moved the discussion here:
When it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, you use what ever you get your hands on; rifle, club, knife, shovel, helmet, fist, boot, fingers, nails, teeth anything. But as it's said, the winner is the man who still has that one last round in the chamber. Thus, always be aware of how much ammo you got left.
Quarterstaff fighting (had to look that up from google) seems somewhat similar to how you'd expect to use a rifle in such situation.
It doesn't really matter if it's the flash suppressor, the RK butt, attached magazine, or the even the cocking handle, when it's in your opponent's eye or teeth, it hurts. Also a proper bulldog attitude with added loud yelling and cursing helps to paralyze any normal opponent. We did have (maybe one) occasion where we used a fixed bayonet, link . Basically just to show us what it looks like, and what to do if you miss with your first thrust, and how to remove it when it gets stuck between the man's ribs. They were never issued to us, and I never carried one in the field. Almost everyone had a puukko though, the only non-army issue item you're allowed to carry visible with the FDF uniform.
I think the actual "assault gear" of a Soviet counterpart wasn't that much heavier. Both carried a rucksack, but when it was time to attack, the burden was lightened consirably (excluding maybe sissis and other long range reconnaisance troops, carrying everything they might need, unless they had established a camp somewhere).
The Soviets tested tanks like KV-1, KV-2, T-100 and that another superheavy... Battlefield.ru says: Before the Great Patriotic War, the T-35 didn't take part in any military conflicts. Any mention in Western (and some Russian) accounts about T-35's that served in the Winter War are false. same site claims that it was SMK that was tested in the Winter War by 91st Tank Battalion of the 20th Heavy Tank Brigade. I recall we had the "was it SMK or T-35" conversation earlier, what ever it was, one was destroyed by a Finnish anti-tank mine in Summa, December 1939. I really can't say, I have a photo of it in a book if you want to see.
The frozen grease-illustration was inspired after reading some battle accounts from Kuhmo, during the Winter War. More than once, the Soviet patrols were destroyed and they discovered afterwards that their new automatic AVS-36s were never fired. I don't think I've read any same sort of sad accounts about SVT-38 and SVT-40 though.
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It sounds as if the FDF - if you gained your understanding of the melee from the FDF and not from heavy metal bars 
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Well... personally neither have I...
Just came to my mind, I feel that I'm not enough aware of Your doings there across the Atlantic. I think you're great guy and I'm proud to call you a friend, but I sadly know very little about you.
I recall you mentioning about Cadets. I associate this with military, but I haven't heard about you serving in the armed forces.
Mind telling a bit more?
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Sure thing. Will send via note.
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Sigh. DeviantART is giving me a lot of shit about being able to post comments lately. So, to finish my above commentary:
RK-62 bayonet looks like a pretty good design, obvious puukko influence there, probably an attempt to make it slightly more useful as a utility knife, which is what most bayonets get used for, most of the time. I've never had much success beating people with my helmet, what I tend to do is grab theirs and pull it over their face or, if they've got the strap buckled and I can get around at them from behind, grabbing the front brim and hauling back so they have to stare at the sky makes it quite easy to kick some ass (sometimes literally) in melee drills. Knee to the kidney = tremendous pain. And yeah, I do speak from personal experience on that one, goddamn crazy South Africans.
As to the Soviet heavy tanks, I'm not enough of a grognard to ID pre-Barbarossa Soviet armour. It may have been SMK or T-35; in any case it was a big beast. With as much of Finland's terrain being boggy as it is, I'm surprised armour had much employment at all; but then again the Soviets have always been tank heavy and have always operated fairly mobile tanks. (On a side note, the only Western tank to approach the mobility of Russian tanks is the Churchill, though it can't handle snow as well it just doesn't care about mud. Slow, but goes everywheres. The Soviets operated some in a Guards Heavy Tank Regiment or two.)
RKKA troop training levels were obviously quite low if the troops didn't know to check their weapons before combat. I heard that in the FDF, protocol is to leave the rifles unlubricated during the winter so they can't freeze up, and not to bring them into the tent during the winter so condensation can't ice the working parts. Now that your gov't has invested in all sorts of advanced non-freezing oils and such though, that may have changed. In the summer I imagine the RK-62, 76, and 95 should be lightly oiled, though like all AKs they don't *need* to be oiled.
I am still curious as to how the Finns fight in the forest, operating by pairs with one man running, the other covering, advancing in a general direction and communicating with other pairs on their flanks, or what? Use of a GPMG like the PKM or a LMG like the KvKK to suppress the enemy must be difficult when you can't necessarily see the enemy; but at least everybody has an RK now, instead of a few men having M/31s and most with bolt action rifles; so it is possible for the above-described "Battle Pairs" to suppress a position reasonably well, mostly by virtue of the 30rnd magazine than the ability to fire full auto. The typical squad is seven men, is it? I am speaking purely in modern terms, or at least post-WWII terms when all the lessons of the Winter War, Continuation War, and Lappland War had been absorbed.
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The bayonet link doesn't seem to work, at least on my computer for some reason, it's:
[link]
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Pylkäs was accompanied with private Kärkkäinen refilling the SMG magazines.
Overall he used 17 mags, some 680 rounds of ammunition. After firing that much his M/31 barrel was overheated and caused a malfunction, but fortunately the situation was already over by then.
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Fortunately, yes. Though, from what I am told the M/31 has a quick-change barrel feature: of course, that only does you any good if you've got a spare barrel handy. I doubt that Pylkäs or Kärkkäinen would have had them available.
M/31 certainly made an impression on the Soviets, leading directly to the development and fielding of PPD-40, PPSh-41, and PPS-43 as part of the "Oh shit we need more submachineguns, look at what the Finns achieved with theirs" thing.
Interesting note, for you and any other Finns who don't opt for 'civil service'. The Russian NR-series knives marketed to soldiers nowadays and issued to Soviet special forces during WWII derive from a common "Finnish Knife" heritage. Looks like the Karelian puukko also made an impression.
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Yes, the barrel exchange can be done very quickly. From what I read, the SMG wasn't Pylkäs's own personal weapon, but he asked for one when he was ordered to secure the flank.
Interesting thing is that the Soviets had two submachine guns, PPD-34 and PPD-34/38 available, but these were extremely rare and only issued to few specialist units during the Winter War. Guessing that, once again, they thought they weren't going to need those.
I'm not really familiar with Soviet/Russian knife culture. I do know that during the war, the Soviets were trained and expected to use the bayonet. Finns always had this dislike against it, and although one was issued, the puukko being more than just a weapon, was favoured.
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The bayonet is not instinctive to a man who's been raised with an axe, puukko, and possibly leuku. I've been trained in quarterstaff fighting, which is identical to spear and thus bayonet fighting, and I really like it because of the reach it gives me against an opponent armed with a knife.
But I am also a knife fighter, and I can get past the point of a bayonet pretty easily. It's a rather fair fight if you're remotely skilled, and the Finns had the advantage of not being heavily burdened going into combat like the RKKA troops were, so they could be more agile than a man with thirty pounds on his back. I notice that in WWII the Finns are never heavily burdened with ammunition, rations, etc, usually it's just a canteen, magazine pouch or two, haversack (maybe), rifle/SMG, and puukko, all hanging off one belt (well, except the firearm).
As to the PPD-34 and PPD-34/38, you're quite correct. These weapons were not anticipated as being needed in any great numbers (apparently nobody looked at a map. When I see forests, I assume I'll want lots of automatic capability or at least everybody-gets-a-semi-auto). I think the Talvisota, for the Russians, served as at least a partial combat testing of their new weapons. You have an excellent drawing done titled "Packing Grease", I believe, about SVT-38s and similar AVS rifles and so on being found jammed up due to the cold acting on non-cold-proofed lubricants and so on. They also tried some of their heavier tank designs there, I think that the Winter War may be the only case of multiturreted tanks going into action (T-35).
I mention the knife thing as a curiosity, what I just told you is about all I know. I was surprised to learn that the Finns had an aversion to the bayonet, but as I outlined above it makes sense to me. Is this still true now, or has the FDF hammered bayonet fighting into its troops?
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Lienee se kuuluisa lakin osuminen sopivasti hollille. 
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Juurikin siihen näreen kohdalle.
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