Pentti Parvio began collecting militaria in 1943, at the age of 15. At that time, Pentti, later to become a famous Finnish actor, was a boy scout "runner" in the air defence organisation for Helsinki.

Such youths were used on a variety of tasks, including message delivery, raid plotting, and, as the picture, left, shows, filling shells. In this case, a magnesium flare insert is being put into a standard 88mm shell to form a "scarecrow shell", designed to scare away Soviet aircraft by making them believe that the air defences were much more powerful than they really were. Deception played a large part in Finnish air defence and was notably successful.

At the start of the Winter War in 1939, the Finns were desperately short of materiel, especially heavy weapons, and had to depend upon donations from friendly countries such as Britain and France. In the early stages of the Winter War, Finland captured substantial amounts of equipment from the Soviet Union. Later, during the Continuation War, this was supplemented by more Soviet materiel, captured by the German Wehrmacht. Some idea of the variety of weapons can be gained from the picture, below right, which shows a section of the Parvio Collection.

Going around the picture, clockwise from the bottom left corner:

1 is a German-built 50mm Jv4/38.

2 is a 75mm Jvk/97-38. This unusual field piece has a French barrel, mated to a German carriage.

3 is a 75mm Jv/40. This gun is complete with tools, spares, and all accessories, some of which can be seen displayed on the bench behind in their original cases.

4, 5, 6, and 7 were all captured from Russia and later used by the Finnish Army. Item 4 is a 76mm RK/27; item 5 is a 45mm Jvk/42; item 6 is a 45mm Jvk/38-41; and item 7 is a 45mm Jvk/32.

8 is an example of the well-known Zundapp K-750 VM-42 motorcycle combination with two driven rear wheels. This particular machine has seen service in several Finnish movies.

9 is a Russian field kitchen, dating from the1880s and used during the Russo-Turkish War of 1887, when Finland was still a province of Russia. Although not visible in the picture, it boasts an authentic bullet hole through the chimney.