One last story from that trip in '84 that still haunts me.
Part of the group we were with were the Import Principals from several countries for their annual Business Meetings with the SAKO Execs. Different Principals had different ways of promoting the Sako line as it was out of their own advertising budgets and they spent the money however they wanted. The guys from the UK were great to hang with and the wife and I had just spent 9 days on our own in London and the South of England, and in Dover and Canterbury on vacation before we went on up to Finland, and why my wife was along on this trip. Anyway, the Brits had an annual raffle for buyers who had bought a new rifle that year and sent in their Warranty Cards, with the prize as a plant tour and moose hunt in Finland.
After we arrived and were introduced to everybody I noticed the Brit Raffle Winner had a really funny brogue accent unlike any I had heard before in England and a dark swarthy skin color like the southern Italians, but was a really nice guy who tried to fit in with us other footloose non Principals. It was explained the he was a Hungarian by birth and had escaped Hungary after the 1956 Uprising and had a history that was "intertesting" by a SAKO Product Manager who I was close to. Everywhere we went as a group the local Finns were really very aware of this Hungarian guys presence and the Finns were treating him like a celebrity with lots of staring and quiet pointing him out. Several of us Americans and the Canadian Raffle Winner from Edmonton decided we wanted to take the train over to the Russian border and we tried to coerce the Brit-Hungarian to go with us to get our Passports stamped with a Russian entry stamp on our "Free Day" rather than shop and spend money on souviniers in Helsinki... and he got real tense and refused to be around us the next day.
That nite it was explained to us that the reason the guy had had to escape Hungary without his family was that as a 12 year old, he had Killed 3 Russian tanks in the streets of Budapest by himself with nothing but Molotov Cocktails during the 1956 Uprising after his family was killed by tank cannon fire, and the Russians were still stalking him in 1984. If he were to have walked thru the Russian Passport checkpoint the Russian Border Guards would have seized him on the spot to disappear forever. That information also explained why a Finnish Border Guard Captain had quietly joined us mid week and stayed close to this guy. The last day of the trip at our final function, a special full luncheon in Helsinki at a traditional Russian Tea Room restaurant, the entire staff of the Restaurant stood in a receiving line and applauded him as we entered and before we were seated. This guy was the real thing and the Finns showered him with tears of love.
Only then did we understood the importance of why the old man who had acted as the Offical Greeter of the private Hunt Club we were hunting on during the Moose Hunt had taken a round of ammo out of each of the foriegn hunters ammo pouch every time we got off the bus, then put it in one of our shirt pockets and jabbered some thing in Finnish at us face to face to every one of us before walking away ...and later during the Goodby Ceremony on the last day, he cried like a baby when he was asked about it. He said he was 87 years old, that after losing 2 wars to the Germans and 2 Wars to the Russians in his lifetime, he only hoped and dreamed to live long enough to kill some more Russians ...and saved a bullet from each box of ammo he opened to do it with for taking the 40K wide swath of Finland down the entire length of the Russian border where his family land and relatives were still being held captive from the 1948 War.
Those people have long memories and no forgiveness in their souls for a reason...and why this series of events still truobles me sometimes when I get complacent and complain about how bad we have it here. As my old friend from Ft Worth says.
Better Tommorows,
Ron
Last edited by verhoositz; 02/16/12.
