well, here are a few group pictures. i thought you'd like to see who's responsible for the defense of finland. the first picture is from the last weekend before we were done. i always had to wait a few hours at the train station for the bus to the base, so i'd often have a beer or two with some of the NCOs. this is a picture of a few alikersantti's and a kersantti who were my 'role models.' the say the army turns boys into men; i'm not sure how true that is

the largest group is my bravo team. we were a collection of guys who got booted out of the antitank forces or the recon team. we were kicked out for various reasons; attitude problems, inability to do basic tasks, various other disciplinary problems, failing tests, whatever. i was told that i was kicked out because i didn't speak finnish (they ignored all my attempts at finnish) even though i performed better than most on the physical and skills tests. the smaller is the group of guys i lived with during basic training. we had a lot of fun together and remained friends for the entire time (even though we were in different units later on)