My father and my grandfather and all my male ansestors from my fathers side were all in the military as far as any one can remember. They brought stories of great battles and sacrifice to our family mythos with them. When I was a child I remember my grandfather telling me a story of hundreds of years back. A story of bravery, heart and strength.
This was a story of of a boy, Tapio, our great great great great and so on grand father at the time of 30 years of war raging in Europe at the time when Finland was still part of Sweden. He was of from Finnish Carelia and a young son of an small forest house when the Kings horsemen came to gather coscripts. Tapio was the youngest in the family, only nine years old, when they came. But the other sons were at the hay so the kings men took him for exchange of higher taxes next year.
His mother cried for two weeks for him and his sisters danced for Ukko to give him the stregth to come back home. His grim faced fathers drank the Wakkas and gave blood sacrifice for war, for they new what the kings men had taken their son for.
Tapio came to Stockholm with 30 other men from other parts of Finland, 10 other Carelians and some cursed Savonians and northern bothians, All of the others twice as old as him at least. Still they had to train together in the Kings army. To form a regiment to kill people who belived in a faith Tapio did not know nothing about.
At ten Tapio was thrown on the battlefields of now northern germany. As three lines they advanced upon the enemy, Tapio loading the guns in the third line and the first and second firing knee by knee. They fired their volleys and advanced trying to get to the 50 meters range. Tapio saw Hundreds of his fellows die in the cataclysm but he stadied his arm, hearing the voice of other Finns crying "Hack Them Through!". When at the 50 meters range the rows of men charged against the enemy. Tapio joined the charging rows and screamed his lungs out as first the bullets and then swords swing above his head.
His arms ached and his legs were bleeding from the strain when they got to the line. The gun smoke filled the air and noices of dying men under the charging foot rang out like a thousand ululating fallen angels. Still he hanged on the line, loading weapons and drawing away the dead.
On the next beat of the battle their luck turned as the enemy charged back with 20 thousand men. They were overrun but Tapio got away in a small forest little way back. There he saw the king on a trail fending of with his guard the attacking Rus. Tapio charged the enemy too, with the musket he was given and two knives he killed his first men.
The attackers were all killed and the king was saved. And young Tapio as one of the brave defenders was called to meet the king. And at the Kings feet he suddenly stood. But when the kings counsilor told him to come to kneel for the king, he took his stand and yelled "Untill Finland is Free!" and slapped him in to the face.
They executed him in the morning. To offend a king is to suffer in hell they say but for a ten year boy to slap a king, I say he dines in valhalla still!